Chile has a population of 17.5 million, 90 per cent of which lives in urban centres. Despite stretching over 5,000 kilometres from North to South, around three quarters of the population is concentrated in the fertile Central Valley, including the capital city, Santiago, and the nearby conurbation of Valparaiso / Viña del Mar. The metropolitan area of Gran Santiago has a population of over six million. This, together with a centralised system of government, gives Santiago an inevitable pre-eminence in national affairs.
Chile has a stable democracy which was dominated by a succession of centre-left coalition governments from 1992-2010 when the centre-right coalition’s candidate Sebastián Piñera became the fifth president since the end of the Pinochet era. All five elections have been judged free and fair. The president is constitutionally barred serving consecutive terms. The state institutions are effective and corruption is exceedingly rare.
Chile’s economy is based on the export of minerals, which accounts for about half of the total value of exports. Copper is the nation’s most valuable resource, and Chile is the world’s largest producer. Agriculture is the main occupation of about 15% of the population; it accounts for about 6% of the national wealth.
Chile is one of the South America’s most stable and prosperous nations, leading Latin American nations in human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalisation, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption. However, it has a high economic inequality, as measured by the Gini index. In 2006, Chile became the country with the highest nominal GDP per capita in Latin America. In May 2010 Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD.
Chile spends just under 4% of its GDP on education, representing 18% of total government spending.
Primary and Secondary education in Chile is universal with a solid and improving quality. Chile has virtually 100% primary school attendance and an adult literacy rate of 99%. Chile’s performance in the 2009 OECD assessment (PISA) noted universal improvements and a relatively greater improvement among the poorest students. Chile’s education system is marked by high inequalities which mirror the three types of school providers: state, private-subsidised and private.
The enrolment rate into higher education is 37.5%. Access to universities has boomed since 1980s when Pinochet opened up the system to allow private institutions to open alongside what were then eight traditional universities. Now there are 34 private and 25 traditional universities. Vocational or technical higher education remains weak with few reputable institutions.
A handful of traditional and private universities dominate the Chilean market in terms of research – most notably the two largest – the Universidad de Chile and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Financing for higher education relies heavily on students fees (in comparison to GDP per capita, the highest in the world) with the state’s contribution reaching only 0.5% of GDP. Chile has low spending on research (0.4% of GDP in 2008, compared to an OECD average of 2.3%) with the majority financed through private companies and 40% conducted through universities. Only 20% of university teachers hold PhDs)
The Chilean government scholarship (Becas Chile) was launched in 2008 through the interest on an US$ 6 bn investment to finance post-graduate studies in programmes of excellence abroad. After three years, 800 scholarships on average have been awarded annually. UK universities have performed excellently, gaining between 20-24% of the total awards. Competition is close between the US, Spain (particularly for PhDs) and Australia, but in the recent 2011 results, the UK held its percentage share and became the top destination for the first time.
Only 5% of private sector innovation is conducted with universities and the state research council Conycit has highlighted this as an area for improvement.
The previous and current administrations have agreed that the education system has long needed reform, and education is currently the top priority of the domestic political agenda. Students demonstrations in June-July 2011 brought the issue further to the forefront. Concerns range over the validity of for-profit and non-profit providers and a lack of transparency, over funding models for teaching and research universities and over teacher training and development. At the heart of the debate is a concern for quality and greater equality of access.
In July 2011, the government announced a new US$ 4bn national education plan with measures that include the creation of a Sub-Secretary of State for Higher Education and a Higher Education Watchdog, changes to the higher education loan systems, and the creation of new scholarships for vocational and technical education.
English proficiency continues to be a major barrier to Chile’s economic development and global engagement.
English is compulsory from 5th - 12th but a recent national benchmark exercise applied to all 11th graders revealed desperately poor results with pass rates of only 3% among state schools and 10% among private.
President Piñera has announced his aim of a bilingual Chile, but as yet concrete proposals have been limited to the Ministry of Economy’s decision to increase scholarships to blue-collar workers from 4,000 to 10,000 annually.
British Council Chile is committed to promoting UK education. We run an education enquiries service which deals with almost 3,000 local queries about studying in the UK to complement the information on our local website. We have a strong collaboration with our European partners to run a biannual, high-profile EuroPosgrados Fair in Santiago and the regions, in which many UK universities participate.
Through our work to promote training for English language teachers and our work in school leadership, we have a good working relationship with the Ministry of Education.
We co-ordinate a programme of language assistants. This links trainee English teachers in Chile with UK schools, and UK students with Chilean universities and other institutions.
British Council Chile Contact Details for further information:
Project Manager
Deborah Sepúlveda
Deborah.sepulveda@britishcouncil.cl
+ 56 2 410 6918
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