Most of the Cuban territories will end the 2020-2021 school year on March 5, which was marked by different contexts throughout the country, due to the uneven dates on which face-to-face teaching activities were resumed, ACN highlights.

According to Eugenio González Pérez, Deputy Minister of Education, on the date referred to, students in basic secondary school, the sixth grade of primary school, as well as the first and second years of technical and professional education must complete the school year.

Likewise, the end of the school period for the first, second and third years of pedagogical training and the tenth and eleventh grades of pre-university education is scheduled for March 5.

In a report on Cuban television news, the director specified that in the case of early childhood and students from first to fifth grades of primary and special education, the school period will end on March 11.

Said national schedule will not be met in the province of Las Tunas, where there were delays in the incorporation of face-to-face activities.

Another exception is made up of some municipalities in the country, where the epidemiological situation was favorable last year, and their students advanced the 2020-2021 academic program, so that in January 2022 they began the following period.

The 2022 school year, in most of the country, will begin on March 7 and 14 (it will end on November 19), the date on which new teachers will be incorporated, after their graduation in February.

At the beginning of this month, the process of continuity of ninth grade studies began, which will end with the granting of specialties at the municipal level, from January 31 to February 4, and at the center level from February 7 to 11.

The twelfth grade pre-university students begin this January 31 a period of intensive preparation for the entrance exams to higher education, which will take place on March 1, 4 and 8 (Mathematics, Spanish and History in that order).

The deputy minister points out that the closing stage of the current period covered between 16 and 19 weeks of face-to-face classes, in which work was carried out in order to supply the contents that students must overcome in each grade.

For that stage, the governing body of Education in Cuba established as priorities the quality of teaching, compliance with hygienic-sanitary measures to avoid contagion by COVID-19, and flexibility taking into account the particularities of each school in the country.

In the 2020-2021 academic year, the epidemiological situation forced students to stop attending classrooms in almost all the country's municipalities, although in these cases the Ministry of Education (Mined) attended the television classes, together with the help of technologies for online teaching (such as the virtual reviewer).

The anti-COVID-19 pediatric vaccination campaign in Cuba, the first of its kind in the world, allowed the school year to partially restart in October 2021, with the majority of students and workers in the sector immunized against the disease.

On October 4, 2021, face-to-face classes resumed for twelfth grade students, third and fourth years of pedagogical training, as well as the third year of technical and professional education (except the provinces of Las Tunas, Pinar del Río, Sancti Spíritus and the municipality of Santa Cruz del Sur, in Camagüey).

Some 612 800 more students, joined on November 8, from the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grades of primary, secondary and special education, and also tenth and eleventh of pre-university, and first and second years of pedagogical training and technical and professional education.

Finally, on November 15, the start of the course was completed at all educational levels, when more than 718,400 students between preschool and fifth grade joined their classrooms, as well as students from Mayabeque, Villa Clara, Camagüey, Las Tunas, Holguín and Granma, who could not do it on January 8th.

The Mined determined that, as a first activity, a diagnosis would be made to the students, to later consolidate the knowledge received in tv-classes, and then teach the remaining topics.

The Minister of Education, Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, highlights that the school organization in the country was characterized in this period by the constant transformations in its design, based on the improvement of the epidemiological situation and the revitalization of the economic and social life of the country, always maintaining compliance with hygienic-sanitary measures.