IMPLEMENTATION OF YOUTH AND ADULT EDUIMPLEMENTACIÓN DE LAS DIRECTRICES

Abstract

Youth and Adult Education (YAE) is a modality of basic education that reaffirms the right to schooling for individuals whose educational trajectories were interrupted throughout life, requiring public schools to adopt pedagogical arrangements consistent with students’ experiences, time constraints, and specific needs. This article aims to analyze how YAE guidelines are implemented in public schools, focusing on their implications for curriculum organization, school management, teaching practices, assessment processes, and student retention strategies. Methodologically, this is a qualitative bibliographic and documentary study, grounded in the analysis of key regulatory frameworks that support the modality and in academic literature addressing its contemporary challenges. The findings indicate that guideline implementation remains uneven across education systems and schools, often characterized by the reproduction of regular schooling models, with limited contextualization of the curriculum, teaching approaches that fail to connect with adult learners’ realities, and assessment practices that are predominantly summative and classificatory. Institutional weaknesses are also evident, including low integration of YAE into the school’s Political-Pedagogical Project, insufficient specific continuing teacher education, and the lack of consistent routines for attendance monitoring and active outreach, which contribute to dropout and to the decline in enrollments observed in recent years. Conversely, the analysis suggests that implementation becomes stronger when YAE is treated as a pedagogical priority, supported by tailored planning, a meaningful curriculum, formative assessment, and retention policies aligned with the real conditions of working students. It is concluded that consolidating YAE guidelines in public schools requires institutional commitment, policy continuity, investment in teacher education, and the reorganization of everyday school practices so that the modality is no longer peripheral and can fulfill its role in educational inclusion and social justice.