AMPR works to reduce the number of students per classroom to address academic delays

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President Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR), Victor Manuel Bonilla Sanchezguaranteed this Wednesday The best way to deal with academic lag Public school students are Reduce the number of students in the classroomtoday wandering around 25 to 30 per course.

“Year after year we have proposed reducing the number of students in groups to 15 in order to give individual attention to teenagers and children”Bonilla Sanchez said in an interview Noon Subwaywho stressed that student enrolment at the island level reached 122,000.

“(We should) personalise instruction and provide more time for any skills in which students are lagging behind. I believe (this way) we will gradually be able to overcome academic lags and the proportion of children and adolescents who are unable to master one or two basic subjects.”he added.

Yesterday, Tuesday, Metro Puerto Rico It was revealed that last academic year, 66,364 students, or 27.5 per cent of the total number of students, received a grade of D and/or F in at least one subject at the end of their course. Of these, 8,727 students did not move on to the next grade at the end of the academic year in May because they did not pass three or more subjects.

Last year the number was 9,583reflecting that 856 fewer students did not advance to the next grade compared to the previous academic year. In 2022, the number of students who did not pass the degree was 12,132. This is a significant decrease compared to the 25,000 students who failed in 2021 during the pandemic, which forced students to attend non-face-to-face classes since March 2020.

Meanwhile, this year’s total of F grades in all subjects and all grades was 50,585. For D grades in all subjects and all grades, the number was 110,903. In both cases, ninth grade was the highest-achieving grade. From first to third grades, the subject with the most Fs and Ds was Spanish. From fourth to sixth, English. From seventh to fourth, math.

Earlier on Wednesday, Bonilla Sánchez reported that AMPR had commissioned a study to update the situation of academic lags in public schools. The study is expected to be completed in four months.

“We have a contract with the experts and we have to make the study responsible and say if there have been losses of two years or more. We are commissioning it now, this summer,” Bonilla Sánchez told the network news.

The delays have been exacerbated by hurricanes Irma and Maria, earthquakes in the south, and the COVID-19 pandemic. AMPR insists that the Department of Education (DE) should address the issue, but in the eyes of teacher leaders, no secretary is interested.

“They (the plan to address the delays) were presented to him but none of the secretaries welcomed him. None of them sat down and discussed any plan about the lagging. I guess they also don’t believe in 15 students, they are only focusing on 25. They don’t think it is effective and that is why we are offering this alternative to address the academic lagging,” said the president of the organization of teachers.