Chile’s Senate Education Committee approved, on Wednesday 21 October, in general, the Executive’s bill that changes the School Admission System. Three votes for, one against. A committee vote. Not a promulgated law. Dump La Tercera.

The bill lets schools run their own pre-admission before the algorithm. Yasna Provoste (DC), the only member present who voted against: the family used to choose the school, not the school the family; pre-admission turns that logic around. Criteria such as last year’s attendance and parents’ participation, she said, do not tell a sick child from a family that does not turn up. ADN Radio confirms the same score and the same line of argument.

Rojo Edwards, an independent, voted for it. He rejected the idea that his vote was a vote for discrimination. He said he was defending the most vulnerable. That is not a denial of the text. It is the justification of a vote.

Minister María Paz Arzola: ten years of SAE; if there had been a will to change it, it would have been changed. Provoste answered with three laws already on the books — 21.052, 21.014, 21.397 — and said the Executive had left a Chamber of Deputies agreement bill sitting. Two readings of the same past. Neither is today’s law.

Senate TV: bulletin 18.389-04, second constitutional stage, “mutual choice” in admission. The committee sends the bill to the floor. The floor has not voted it. The president has not promulgated it.

Dump La Tercera. The rewrite rests on La Tercera and ADN Radio.

Image: Chile’s National Congress building, Valparaíso, seen from the Mall Paseo Ross terrace, 2 December 2017, ShootingStarMax, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The façade, not the committee room.

Sources consulted: Comisión de Educación del Senado aprueba cambios al SAE — ADN Radio.