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Officially, the school is compulsory for 10 years from
the children is 6 years. The primary school is 6 years old.
The high school is 6 years (3 + 3 years). All education,
including university education, is free. The country has the
lowest rate of illiteracy in Latin America (about 2% in
2003). Private schools follow the same curricula as public
schools and are controlled by the public. The country has
six universities. See TOPSCHOOLSINTHEUSA for TOEFL, ACT, SAT testing locations and high school codes in Uruguay.
1984 Parliamentary democracy
The dialogue on returning to parliamentary democracy
collapsed, triggering widespread civil disobedience to the
dictatorship. After a 24 hour general strike by PIT, the
dialogue in January 84 was resumed, this time with the
participation of Frente Amplio. The leader of the Blancos,
Wilson Ferreira Aldunate, was arrested the same year when he
returned from his exile, and just as the FA candidate, Líber
Seregni, he was banned from participating in the elections
later this year.
With the slogan of "changes in freedom", Colorados with
Julio María Sanguinetti won the election. After extensive
national pressure, during its first month, the new
government was forced to implement an amnesty that would
release all political prisoners. Sanguinetti resumed the
country's diplomatic relations through support for a number
of Latin American diplomatic initiatives and the
establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba and
Nicaragua. During the first two years of the government, it
benefited from positive international economic cycles, but
then returned to the dictatorship's neoliberal economic
policy, which had faced widespread opposition from the
people.
In December 86, with 75% of the vote, Parliament passed
an amnesty to all military people accused of human rights
violations. After extensive mobilization work, the left
succeeded in bringing the resolution to a referendum, but
through a joint effort by the government and the other right
wing, as well as threats from the military about coup,
managed to scare a majority of voters into voting for
amnesty.
In May 89, the government secretly signed an agreement
with the World Bank on the implementation of a " structural
adjustment program ", against which it supported the
refinancing of the country's foreign debt through
international private banks. The government committed to the
program to reduce social spending, privatize cracked banks
that had been rescued by the state, and reform public
companies to make them profitable and possible privatization
objects.
In the November 89 election, Blancos won in 17 of the
country's 19 departments, got 37% of the vote and got their
candidate, Luis Alberto Lacalle elected president. Frente
Amplio won with Tabaré Vázquez in the lead mayoral election
in the capital Montevideo - for the first time in the
country's history. 6 women were elected to the Chamber of
Deputies and 7 others to the City Council in the capital. On
the same occasion, a referendum was held that gave
pensioners the right to have their pensions adjusted
according to the development of salaries of public employees
- a regulation that went beyond the government's agreement
with the World Bank.
Sanguinetti had been voted out because of his cutbacks.
Lacalle now continued the same policy: taxes were raised and
public companies privatized. In March 91, Uruguay adopted
the same with Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay to form the
South American common market, Mercosur.
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