Nica School System

Cousin in-law Vanessa would like to know what schools are like south of the boarder!  In a short answer, they’re similar, yet different.

Preescolar = Kindergarten?  Starts at age 3/4 and goes for 3 years.  I’ve never been to one so I don’t know what they learn/do there.  Only in the mornings for 3 or 4 hours.

Escuela Primaria = Middle school.  Ages 6/7 and lasts for 6 years.  Again no experience here.

Insituto = Highschool.  12/13 years old and is a 5 year curriculum.  This is where I work so I have a decent idea of what goes on.  The students attend either in the morning or the afternoon for a little less than 5 hours (7am-11:45 or 12:15-5pm).  Of course a borderline obnoxious amount of this time is wasted or lost by students arriving late or what have you.  Classes are in 45 minute periods.  From what I observed, the only classes that meet nearly every day are Spanish and math.  Other classes include: history, sciences, psychology/sociology, English, physical education and OTV.  This is a little embarrassing because my course is in the OTV curriculum and I really don’t know what it stands for.  Anyway, throughout the first four years of OTV students learn life skills such as word processing, self-esteem etc..  Then in fifth year comes OTV Emprendedurismo aka Entrepreneurship aka my class.

After they graduate highschool they can attend a vocational school or a university.  These are usually three or four years and offer all higher level education for everything from teachers to doctors.

This may be needless to say but I feel I should state that Nicaraguans are very intelligent.  I observed a math class during training and was expecting the students to be doing long division or something.  Instead they were graphing trigonometry functions, yuck.

Well I had a rough three day work week, off to the beach!