Abstract

CASTELLAR PATERNINA, Everly. Education free of charge: a case study. Zona prox. [online]. 2015, n.23, pp.73-87. ISSN 2145-9444.  https://doi.org/10.14482/zp.22.5832.

This article presents the results of a case study research whose purpose is to analyze, in the context of public policy in Colombia, the scope of the implementation of free charge education at an official school in Barranquilla in the period 2008-2012. The methodology combines qualitative techniques such as semi-structured interviews and quantitative techniques as an "Ad hoc" questionnaire. A documentary analysis was done on documents issued by the Ministry of Education and the Educational Institution. The simple regression analysis was used to check the behavior of the independent variables, in this case free charge, and dependent variables such as enrollment and dropout coverage, that would make a contrast of the scope and effects of free charge educational institution in order to study. Finally, a triangulation was performed in order to compare and contrast the results of the various techniques, and so to obtain general results, as follows: i. Free charge education is applied according to the guidelines of Decree 4807 of 2011; ii. Government’s investments in free charge education policies are not communicated to parents; iii. Teachers are unclear about the specific destination of Government’s investments; iv. Desertion is no directly related with the policy of free charge education. Having analyzed the results, the following conclusions were drawn: free charge education is not directly related to the reduction of drop-out rates; the school must improve the communication system with parents; free charge education is not related to learning but rather to access.

Keywords : education free of charge; policies; desertion.

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