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CUBA UNDERTAKES MASSIVE SCHOOL RENOVATION PROGRAM.

Article Excerpt
Cuba has recently completed a massive project to rehabilitate substandard schools, especially in Havana, and to strengthen a teaching staff, which, according to some accounts, had become as rundown as many of the schools. Despite the deterioration in the schools, Cuba maintains a superior public education system.

The goal nationwide was to refurbish all the schools, reduce class size to 20 students or fewer, put a television set and computer lab in every classroom, and induct thousands of newly trained teachers into the profession by the start of the school year this month.

In Havana, where the school problem was most severe, 746 primary and secondary schools have been renovated and 33 new ones built in 22 months in what President Fidel Castro called "an educational revolution that will be a model for the world."

Although spending on education has risen somewhat in recent years, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimates that budget allocations for schools dropped by 48% between 1989 and 1995--the period of the decline and disappearance of Soviet aid. The government says it now spends 8.1% of GDP on education compared to the average of 4.6% of GDP in Latin America...

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