Education in Chile

While we were eating our Thankgiving's dinner, my Canadian "family" asked me how the education in Chile is , especially before going to university.
In Chile, people start to go at school when they are five years old and they have to study for 12 years. After that, they have to take a national standard test and depending of their score, they can choose their career and university.

Chile's educational system is divided into two parts : public schools and private ones. Public schools are generally very bad, teachers who work there, aren't so good and also they cannot do much because there are at least 45 students per classroom. The atmosphere which surrounds that kind of school is not good also because most of the students have a difficult life and they don´t want to study; they attend school because they must do it not because they want to learn or improve their situation.

On the other hand, private schools are really good but of course people who choose this system have to pay a lot of money and actually some private schools are as expensive as Chilean universities. Those schools have good teachers because they offer better salary and teaching conditions. Private schools usually have no more than 30 students who want to go there because they want to apply to universities.

Chile has a huge gap between both kinds of schools and for that reason, parents have to think carefully abou what place is better for their children to attend and most of them will try to afford  investing in private education.