”The model is a decision method used to determine school placement. It takes into account demand vto help put together the most efficient proposal and answer questions such as; whether it should include primary and secondary school; how many classes there should be per year; how many hours assigned to each subject and other requirements” explains the academician.
The location of schools, both primary and secondary is not just important in terms of efficiency and coverage: it also affects the quality of education as it distributes resources, allocating them according to students and teacher per course. The project headed by Jorge Amaya, a researcher at the “Centro de Modelamiento Matematico de la Universidad de Chile” (Center for Mathematical Modeling at the University of Chile), is a new form of support designed to help in assigning said resources to primary and secondary schools; using new technology designed by the team.

“The model is a decision method used to determine school placement. It takes into account demand to help put together the most efficient proposal and answer questions such as; whether it should include primary and secondary school; how many classes there should be per year; how many hours assigned to each subject and other requirements ”, explains the academician.

The group has already run pilot projects in the municipalities of Peñalolen and Maipu. It has also won the “Validacion y Empaquetamiento” grant (Validation and Packaging) based on R&D and is now poised to scale up to a national level.

The software provides support for decision makers and starts by factoring in indicators that affect quality such as the amount of students per classroom, distance between the schools and student homes, hours spent on each subject, the optimal number of teachers per school, budget limits and still others.

These numbers are set against social and financial factors and demographics such as the local population, its age, size of local economy, employment rates, growth rates for determined areas of the city, commute time etc. in order to structure and model the demand for education establishments.

It makes the distinction between emerging neighborhoods with young couples and small children and other more consolidated areas, areas where families have adolescent children for example. The first requiring more primary schools, while the second would require secondary schools.

The data is linked to a geographical information system and subsequently displayed on a map, illustrating the information on schools and their location, Amaya explains further: “you always have an image of what’s happening; places where its lacking and others where competition is excessive.

You can study new or future scenarios and even project scenarios 10 years in the future”. The interface is designed in conjunction with a company called U-Planner, which also sells the program.

The project will be developed in 2016 and 2017. Given the sheer amount of variables and scaling up to national level, the project will use the country’s most powerful supercomputer located at CMM. It will also have the support of the Ministry of Education. However, there is a chance it will be exported to other countries as explains Juan Pablo Mena at U-Planner: “Because the software puts great value on quality of education and helps provide wide coverage, it has equally great potential for the Latin American market, both for respective ministries of education and regional government”.