Mineduc has 10 days to nominate the new SLEP evaluation council while adding five months to the current one.

The Chilean Ministry of Education (Mineduc) has 10 days remaining to nominate the new evaluation council for the Public Local Education Services (SLEP), despite having ignored the current council for five months. This comes amid ongoing debates over the implementation of the SLEP system, which aims to transfer municipal schools into publicly managed services. The law strengthening this process, Law 21.819, was published on May 25, after nearly two years of legislative work, marking a response to challenges identified since the initiative began in 2018. According to the updated legislation, the Council for the Evaluation of the Public Education System must consist of six members appointed by the president through Mineduc, with prior agreement from the Senate, requiring two-thirds approval. Under Article 10 of the transitional provisions, the government had 90 days from the law's publication to complete the appointment. That deadline is now down to 80 days. Officials at Mineduc claim the selection is progressing within the timeframe, though specifics remain unclear. Reports suggest that Subsecretary of Education Daniel Rodríguez has been tasked with identifying potential candidates, many of whom come from academic institutions. Currently, four of the six required members are still active: Aldo Cassinelli, Teresa Flórez, Gonzalo Muñoz, and Omar Jara. The other two have left their positions to join the government, Rodríguez himself, who previously served as a council member, and Fernando Peña, who now heads Junaeb, the national student assistance service. Since the current administration took office, however, the council has become less prominent in the executive branch’s considerations. This shift became evident in late May, when the government proposed pausing the decentralization process, a move strongly opposed by Rodríguez while he was still part of the council. At that time, officials requested a meeting via email to discuss possible modifications to the reform, but the request was marked as "seen," with no further action taken. There were also no subsequent invitations to discuss the government’s recent proposal, introduced just 80 days after the previous law was enacted, which delays the full implementation of the SLEP until 2040 and relaxes requirements allowing municipalities to retain control of certain schools. The significance of the council’s absence lies in its legal authority to recommend changes to the President, including adjustments to the schedule for establishing SLEP, deferring or excluding specific communes from the process, altering the total number of SLEP entities, or proposing other modifications. Several of these decisions have already been made by Mineduc under its latest initiative, which entered the legislative process shortly after the previous law was passed. These changes could potentially conflict with existing regulations. Senator Yasna Provoste (Democracy and Innovation Party) raised concerns during the initial discussion of the new bill in the Education Committee, noting that the proposal bypasses the need for a positive assessment from the evaluation council before considering the first rescheduling of the SLEP rollout. Her remarks highlight growing unease among those familiar with the reform process regarding how Mineduc will respond if the newly formed council recommends different measures than those currently being proposed. Questions persist about why neither Minister María Paz Arzola nor Subsecretary Rodríguez sought input from the existing council before making key decisions. With the nomination period approaching its final stretch, the role and influence of the new council remain uncertain, particularly given the contentious nature of the reforms shaping the future of public education in Chile.