Education in Today’s Cuba – Havana Times
The authorities “seem to be abandoning responsibilities they assumed for many years regarding education—at least in terms of material resources and human capital,” said a lay member of the Archdiocese of Camagüey.
HAVANA TIMES – On September 1, 2025, at the start of the school year that ended this week, my ten-year-old son’s teacher earned the equivalent of just over $12 USD a month. Today, her monthly salary is worth barely $7 dollars.
And that is assuming she is lucky enough to find someone willing to exchange US dollars for Cuba’s devalued currency in which she is paid.
The peso’s depreciation against the dollar is the most visible consequence of the crisis gripping the Island. Its impact reaches every Cuban, regardless of whether they participate in the foreign exchange market. The country’s deep dependence on imports means that any fluctuation in the value of foreign currencies is immediately reflected in the price of goods and services, especially basic necessities. Since April, for example, the prices of chicken and cooking oil have nearly doubled, while the price of charcoal for cooking has risen as much as threefold in some inland provinces.
Even obtaining cash has become more difficult. Until recently, banks typically allowed people to withdraw between 1,500 and 2,000 pesos a day. Then the limit was reduced to less than 1,000 pesos (under 2 USD), and more recently it was announced that only retirees would be allowed to make withdrawals so they could collect their pension checks.
Banks claim they have had to impose these restrictions because of the country’s critical cash shortage, which they blame on private businesses for holding large amounts of banknotes. The government insists that all goods and services should be payable by bank transfer, but that option—besides being unreliable because of the frequent blackouts, is rejected by most private businesses and entrepreneurs, who need cash to replenish their inventories. Ironically, nearly all state employees have been required to receive their wages through bank transfers, and the authorities intend for everyone eventually to be paid that way.
Thanks to the father of one of the students, who owns a cafeteria, my son’s teacher does not have that problem. Every month, he exchanges her digital salary for cash. It is not the only favor the parents have done for her. A couple of months ago, one mother gave her antibiotics to treat a persistent flu that had developed into pneumonia, while other parents chipped in to buy new tires for the old bicycle she rides to school.
These are forms of assistance we parents provide as a kind of compensation for her meager salary and the effort required to teach a class of 42 students, nearly double the enrollment established by the Ministry of Education for elementary school classrooms.
My son is one of the children who was originally assigned to another classroom. But midway through the school year, his teacher resigned to take a job in the private sector. Because of the teacher shortage, the three fifth-grade classes were reorganized into two larger classrooms, increasing both class size and the workload for the remaining teachers.
Regulations state that teachers in these circumstances are entitled to extra pay to compensate them for the additional workload, but neither my son’s teacher nor the other fifth-grade teacher has received it. After months without an explanation, they were recently told that they might receive the back pay retroactively.
Different Times
At least for the coming school year, parents are reassured: the teacher has promised she will continue with the children into sixth grade. Beyond that, however, the outlook is bleak.
Under Cuba’s educational system, students move on to middle school beginning in seventh grade, the level of education facing the greatest difficulties. Chief among them is the shortage of teachers. At the start of the 2025–2026 school year, the country faced a shortage of more than 26,000 teachers—12.6% of the national teaching workforce—Education Minister Naima Ariatne Trujillo acknowledged last September. Nearly half of those vacancies were in middle schools.
Yoania Aguilera has experienced this firsthand through her 13-year-old daughter, who has just completed eighth grade at a middle school in the city of Camagüey. Since entering the school two years ago, she has had five different math teachers and three Spanish teachers, while subjects such as geography and chemistry have never been taught at all. Beginning in February, her class schedule was cut in half as part of emergency measures to cope with the fuel crisis caused by Donald Trump’s oil embargo.
“Since she wants to attend the Vocacional [a specialized pre-university school for gifted students], her father and I decided when she was in seventh grade that she should study with a private tutor. Every afternoon she goes to an academy, just like a couple of her classmates. That’s where she’s learned most of the material that should have been taught at school. More than a ‘tutor,’ he’s been the girl’s real teacher,” Yoania explained.
Not all parents can afford the 5,000 pesos a month such services cost (especially those living off a salary). In Havana, similar centers may charge twice or even three times that amount. In an effort to help students and their families, the Catholic Church has spent years organizing tutoring academies, an initiative that has now spread to several provinces.
“But our efforts have limited reach. We are not in a position to assume the role that the State should be playing,” said a lay member of the Archdiocese of Camagüey. In his view, the authorities “seem to be abandoning responsibilities they assumed for many years regarding education—at least in terms of material resources and human capital. More and more parents are complaining about the shortage of teachers and even basic school supplies. Not long ago, a mother asked us how she could get a box of chalk so her child’s teacher could continue giving classes. I don’t think I’ve seen a situation this serious, not even during the Special Period [the economic crisis of the 1990s].”
Against that backdrop, it becomes easier to understand the controversy sparked in May by an advertisement featuring Claudia “Muma” Alvariño, the best friend of Hollywood star Ana de Armas and deputy director of the children’s theater company La Colmenita. In a promotional video posted on social media, “Muma” advertised the Spanish Educational Center of Havana (CEEH), an exclusive private school serving students between the ages of two and eighteen.
Founded in 1986 for the children of Spanish families living in Cuba for business or diplomatic reasons and integrated into Spain’s educational system, the CEEH boasts air-conditioned classrooms and other amenities unimaginable in the Island’s “ordinary” schools. Critics pointed to that contradiction and to the fact that it was precisely “Muma” Alvariño who had promoted the school.
“Isn’t she the one who later talks about ‘revolutionary commitment’ in her work with La Colmenita? With what moral authority can she serve as the face of a school that, even in our wildest dreams, can’t be compared to the schools attended by the children of her own country?” one internet user asked in one of the many Facebook discussions on the subject.
A persistent rumor at the time claimed that the CEEH was attended not only by the children of foreigners, but also by those of high-ranking government officials and Cuba’s newly wealthy elite. The controversy prompted no reaction from the authorities. Nor has the dire condition of Cuban schools been addressed recently.
“It’s as if no one cared that children can’t sleep at night because of the heat and the blackouts, or that many arrive at school in the morning without having eaten breakfast,” Yoania speculated.
Meanwhile, the new elementary school textbooks, printed thanks to a donation from the Mexican government, continue to depict freshly painted schools and smiling children in immaculate uniforms—as though they were postcards from the past.