Paraguay’s Senate debated the public education crisis as teachers’ unions maintained a nationwide strike announced for September 17 and 18. The stoppage was called after the draft 2027 National General Budget excluded salary increases and long-standing demands previously agreed between the government and teachers’ organizations.
The unions are seeking the gradual implementation of a minimum salary of 5 million guaraníes per shift for primary-school teachers, as well as proportional adjustments for subject teachers and principals. The salary debate is taking place alongside discussion of the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), administered digitally in 2025 to 6,507 15-year-old students. Information released about the assessment indicates a decline in Paraguay’s performance compared with 2022, although the available materials do not detail all the areas affected.
Senator Blanca Ovelar of the National Republican Association (ANR), also known as the Colorado Party, a former education minister during the government of Nicanor Duarte Frutos (2003–2007), said the system now has more resources than it did two decades ago but remains below the Latin American average. She cited school absenteeism of 59% and bullying of 27.7%, and questioned teacher training and the quality of universities authorized by Congress. She also compared Paraguay with countries such as Chile and Uruguay and mentioned the existence of low-quality degrees known as “garage degrees.”
Celeste Amarilla, a senator from the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), responded that Ovelar was also part of the trajectory that produced the crisis. “You were also part of this,” she said, noting that a student who was six years old at the end of Ovelar’s administration would now be in their late 20s. The 2025 assessment therefore measures current results but involves generations educated under different administrations of the Ministry of Education and Sciences.
In an interview with broadcaster ABC Cardinal, Amarilla again called some teachers “stupid,” saying she had repeated that criticism for eight years. The statement is the senator’s political assessment, not a substantiated characterization of the entire profession. She also advocated greater meritocracy in education and compared the requirements imposed on doctors with those applied to teachers. In her argument, she said reading deficiencies could prevent students from pursuing careers such as medicine and cited cases of young people who end up seeking professional alternatives in Pedro Juan Caballero.
The senator also criticized the results of the Ñe’ẽry program, which focuses on reading, writing and oral skills and received a US$12 million investment in 2023. Amarilla questioned how many books students and teachers would have read after the initiative. Ovelar, for her part, focused on institutional shortcomings, professional training, absenteeism and bullying. The two approaches reveal a dispute between assigning responsibility to specific policies and administrations and treating the problem as the accumulated result of systemic deficiencies.