In Colombia, education for Venezuelan migrant children is one of the most requested requests by this population that continues to arrive in the country due to the crisis in Venezuela. According to the Colombian Ministry of Education, around 600,000 Venezuelan children have entered the school system.
The coffee nation, which shares a 2,219-kilometer border with Venezuela, has become the largest recipient of Venezuelan families with more than 2 million, however some parents have stated that they still face difficulties for their children to enter educational institutions in Colombia.
“Due to the economic situation in Venezuela, I came with my children looking for a better future here in Colombia. On the way I lost my documents and those of my children. I don’t have a stay permit and I don’t have the up-to-date papers that prevent me from going to school because I don’t have the resources to get the documentation again in Venezuela,” he told the voice of america Yuleidy Falcón, a Venezuelan who has been living in Colombia for more than three months.
In Colombia, the legislation says that Venezuelan children, whether they are in a regular or irregular way, have the right to study. In this sense, migrants are in the same conditions as Colombians to access a school quota in an educational institution in the country.
How Venezuelan children can access a public school
The Colombian Ministry of Education says that Venezuelan children who are of an age to begin their studies in preschool, basic and secondary education, can access the quota request free of charge, which is carried out in the same way for students of Colombian nationality. The request for a school quota must be made before the educational institution or the Secretary of Education of each city or municipality.
To start this process, it must be taken into account that if the student has a visa or the Temporary Protection Statute (ETP)educational institutions must enroll them and formalize their registration in the Integrated Enrollment System (SIMAT).
On the other hand, if the Venezuelan student does not have an identity document validated by the immigration authority, they must be enrolled and registered in SIMAT with the Number Established by the Ministry of Education (NES).
Lucía Ramírez, a researcher at the Justice Studies Center, told the VOA that “many of the problems faced by Venezuelan parents correspond to the difficulties in the certification required by educational institutions, despite the fact that there should be no impediment to access a quota.”
“We found that, for example, there is a lot of ignorance about the regulations that really allow migrant boys and girls to access the educational system without any restrictions,” he said.
“Then there are other problems related to permanence, which have to do, for example, with the economic capacity of parents to buy school supplies, uniforms, food and transportation issues,” he added.
For Ramírez, another of the factors that impact access to studies corresponds to the lack of “training of the educational system”, in particular those who are in management positions, such as “principals and coordinators”, who in many cases “are unaware that They must guarantee access to the educational system for migrant children, regardless of their immigration status or that of their parents.”
In this sense, according to the Justice Studies Center, the cities where the most Venezuelan migrant children arrive are Maicao, Riohacha, Barranquilla, Soledad, Cúcuta, Villa del Rosario, Arauca, Puerto Carreño, Pasto, Ipiales and Bogotá, the latter being the one with the highest number of migrant children who manage to enter public schools, with 60,000 students.
Strategies to guarantee the right to education of migrant children
According to the undersecretary of access and permanence of the Secretary of Education of Bogotá, Carlos Reverón, work is being carried out in the active search for the Venezuelan population that does not have the school materials that allow them to continue with their learning process.
“We have a whole strategy of active search for the out-of-school population. Documentation is not a barrier to entry, migrant children have the same guarantees as the Colombian population. For this reason, when the registration process ends, we carry out an active house-to-house search to identify where there is more population that is not attending school to carry out the registration registration with all the guarantees,” Reverón explained.
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