State, social policies and education in bolivarian Venezuela: notes for a discussion about venezuelan educational policy

Abstract

This study aims at contextualizing the Venezuelan educational policy, as well as situating the influence of neoliberalism on education in Venezuela and the emergence of a new educational project in Chavez governments’ context. Documentary research, literature review and on-site observation were used. The study started from a critical approach to establish the necessary relations to explain the investigated object. The educational policy of a country is not detached from current social relations. The neoliberal reforms which have directly focused on that basis through mediation produced effects in education of Venezuelan people with regard to access, retention, funding – among other aspects – that signaled the dismantling of public education in that country. The contradictory movement observed in reality shows that the real effects of this process have been reversed in framework of Bolivarian project with policies, programs, projects and actions that seek to modify the conditions of historically excluded people from social benefits, such as education, for an egalitarian educational policy, which justifies this study.