Program for the inclusion of intercultural aspects in the National System of Secondary Education

With the aim of strengthening the integral development of children and adolescents through interdisciplinary spaces to enhance their emotional, social and cognitive skills, the Ministry of Education of Ecuador implemented the action "school projects", which seeks to stimulate cooperative work and research as well as social skills. Thus, students should build a project applying their knowledge and skills in a creative, innovative and enterprising way, resulting in a concrete and entirely developed by them product.

School projects are aimed to students from first to tenth grade of Basic General Education. Students perform them for three hours a week (within the school day) in all public and private educational institutions at national level. This program considers, among its cultural disciplines, animation for reading, plastic arts, crafts, film, choir, dance, artistic drawing, graffiti, ancestral instruments, music, theater and production technologies.

Until August 30, 2016, the program has benefited 10,832 students from 108 school circuits nationwide. From this total number of students benefiting from extracurricular activities, at least 50% participates in artistic and cultural activities (See Annex 5).