‘Free’ education has a cost, says cardinal

Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, Archbishop of Santiago, has said that Chile is facing a major challenge as the new Government attempts to implement education reforms.

The Chilean president Michelle Bachelet came to power at the end of last year on a promise to implement reform and provide high-quality “free” education, including for many university students, raising corporate taxes to do so. The cardinal said that although the Government should pay for education, it could bring about a “dangerous situation” if it expected to impose its own values on the education system.

“Free education sounds great, but what does it lead to – to the state being in charge of the education system. It says: ‘I pay, I make the demands’, and it imposes a model of education different from that in which the community has the right to choose.”

The cardinal is anxious to defend public funding for religious schools and universities. “Citizens are denominational,” he said on Chile's national television network. “Taxpayers are citizens and they have to choose the style and shape of the education of their children.”

Education has long been a major issue in Chile, particularly following huge student protests beginning in 2011, demanding free higher education for all.