Although education as a human right has been present in Latin American discourse, policies, and a certain alignment with international conventions since the 20th century—from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, through the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966, and subsequent Conventions and Declarations, as well as the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in 1990, and the various World Education Forums from 2000 to 2021 with the active participation of our countries—its formal recognition and consolidation process has been multifaceted and complex. Significant inequalities, as well as the persistent shortcomings in school coverage and the provision of services to rural, indigenous, and Afro-descendant populations, among others, attest to this.

Currently, we observe that the expansion of right-wing and far-right movements, along with the repositioning of conservatism, is unleashing an aggressive dispute surrounding the recognition of the right to education in our region (Feldfeber, 2020; Saforcada, 2020; Saforcada and Ximenes, 2024; Cuenca, 2024; Portillo, 2024). The shifting balance of power among the various governments in our countries has, in many cases, led to setbacks in relation to the more universal and comprehensive policies that some governments in the region had implemented (Gluz, Rodríguez, and Elías, 2021).

It is not surprising that, from the 1990s to the present, we have observed social movements emerging from educational spaces and actors, as well as from other non-educational spheres, and that these movements incorporate guarantees for the full exercise of the right to education into their demands (Olivier, 2024). The strengthening of student and union resistance movements at the national, Latin American, and international levels observed throughout the century is a clear example of this (Cornejo et al., 2019).

The scenario is further complicated by tensions arising from the emergence of new public-private partnerships (Olivier, 2014) and a series of actions aimed at the endogenous and exogenous privatization of all levels of education, among other crucial effects such as the outsourcing of state functions, the centrality of New Public Management and its expressions linked to entrepreneurship, as well as the spread of individualizing perspectives that, under the guise of resilience, emotional education, leadership, and coaching, operate simultaneously in assigning responsibility for educational trajectories and devaluing the work of teachers. (Saforcada, 2020; Croso and Magalhães, 2016).

These issues were exacerbated recently by the COVID-19 pandemic and its post-COVID effects, which added a critical component due to the disruption of educational pathways and the further complexity of working conditions (Oliveira, Pereira Junior, and Clementino, 2021). These factors, in turn, created new demands stemming from the return to in-person learning. Additionally, issues such as the increasing presence of digitalization and the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have deepened socio-educational and technological gaps (Garay and Gutiérrez, 2019; Lugo and Iithurburu, 2019), revealing significant challenges for the democratic development of schools. This has affected teachers, with educational policies based on the delegitimization of the teaching profession and its unions (Saforcada, 2019). Dismantling public teacher training systems or hiring professionals from other disciplines with limited certification from private sources are some of the mechanisms (Bordoli, 2022). Programs like Teach for All, which originated in the US and is being developed in several Latin American countries, express this logic (Moyá, 2022).

Within this framework of conservative restoration and policies that promote an educational system serving the formation of a global-colonial subject, it becomes necessary to understand the vectors of tension and the complexity of the scenario through comparative studies that can generate knowledge at the regional level and, at the same time, contribute to the formation of groups of researcher-activists capable of intervening in the disputes over the production of meaning and contributing to popular struggles for the realization of the right to education. We adopt a regional and comparative perspective that allows us to identify common patterns and the actors seeking to define global and regional educational agendas, as well as reveal the specificities of each country in the policies implemented and in the progress and shortcomings in realizing the right to education.

It is within this contextual and epistemic framework that we formulate this proposal for the renewal of the GT; a proposal that continues the work carried out over 25 years within CLACSO, takes up the lines developed in the last periods (2019-2022 and 2023-2025) and advances in new actions, with the conviction that the issue has enormous relevance at the local, regional and global level.

The group comprises researchers from diverse backgrounds in two senses. First, in terms of their countries of residence: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Second, in terms of the different types of organizations in which they work: universities, teachers' unions, social and community organizations, and public policy institutions. Furthermore, a significant number are members of the Latin American Network for Studies on Teaching Work (Red ESTRADO), created within the framework of the Working Group itself more than two decades ago.

Over the years, we have consolidated a broad community of researchers with these diverse backgrounds and areas of action, with the common purpose of contributing to the analysis of trends in educational policy in the region, to the production of information and proposals linked to the realization of the right to education, as well as to the deployment of resistance strategies against conservative advances and the violation of rights.

In previous years, we studied the forms that post-neoliberalism took in the educational field, identifying policies regarding the expansion of rights and the recognition of new indigenous, LGBTIQ+, and Afro groups (Gluz et al 2018; Feldfeber and Gluz, 2021); we advanced in the systematization of the proposals of emancipatory social movements and showed how, along with the important advances in the materialization of the right to education during progressive governments in Latin America, privatizing and exclusionary trends persist in our educational systems. In recent years, the GT has focused on the reorientations of educational policies in the region, the new agendas of the right and the place of teachers' collectives in a context of conservative restoration (Martinis and Falkin, 2017; Feldfeber, 2020; Gluz, Rodrigues and Elías, 2021), as well as on the emergence of the pandemic, which profoundly affected educational trajectories and the conditions of teachers' work (Gluz, Rodrígues and Elías, 2020; Feldfeber, 2021).

The progress made by the GT in these 25 years constitutes a strong foundation from which to advance in the analysis of the present, so complex in the region, marked by disputes to reorient education in profoundly individualistic and privatizing ways, as well as questioning, as never before, the understanding of education as a right.

Educational policies underpin the expansion of democracies based on the full exercise of the right to education. In Latin America, this right is crucial for the critical development of individuals and the construction of more just societies. Likewise, knowledge production is essential for understanding social inequalities and proposing socio-educational alternatives. The rapid advance of narratives that legitimize neoconservative and far-right models defines our time. Post-truth is intertwined with discursive production, challenging basic human rights and calling into question historical social struggles. Therefore, it is necessary to deepen the production of critical knowledge capable of contesting political, social, and educational meanings, considering the relevance of this issue in three senses:

1. Theoretical Relevance. The notion of the right to education is central to human rights theory, which, although broad, multidimensional, and multi-sited, has developed in Latin American thought as a basic condition for democratic life and emancipation linked to the exercise of other rights. Mariátegui (2004), Gilly and Roux (2015), Cabrera (2019), and Roniger (2018), among many others, have contributed to the discussion and critical thinking of the last century and the present, generating studies that are constitutive of Latin American thought. Thus, it gains relevance with respect to theories of justice, as a sine qua non component of the exercise of the right to education and the shaping of policies. Authors from the region (Magendzo, 2019; Poggi, 2014; Costin, 2018) have argued that education is a crucial means to achieve a just society.

2. Social Relevance. The importance of the articulation between the academic and intellectual sphere, the dynamics of production and reappropriation of situated knowledge by the collectives that challenge education. Faced with the tensions of the current context, education presents itself as a central dimension of transformation and resistance, articulated with academic research as interacting parts, promoting public policies built from the bottom up (Olivier, 2025).

3. Intellectual Relevance. The debate and reflection on the cross-cutting issues arising from the right to education are raised, opening up possibilities for interdisciplinary interpretation and pedagogical potential in relation to its theoretical and methodological problems. Its relevance lies not only in the presentation of ideas through the research program, but also in the development of training opportunities for different sectors and audiences, as well as in fostering direct dialogue with educational communities, social organizations, and decision-making bodies. Furthermore, strengthening the relationship between collaborative and intergenerational intellectual production is a fundamental principle.

Based on the above, we maintain the following lines of work for the development of the GT's actions and as a form of internal organization in the work:

Social inequalities and educational policies

The ideological and political framework that influences inequalities is shaped by differing conceptions of social, political, and economic rights, which impact their guarantees and affect the realization of the right to education (Gluz, 2018). We aim to generate information that explains the structural discrimination underlying socialization processes and the construction of gender, ethnic, and socioeconomic stereotypes. We are interested in analyzing the globally structured mechanisms and mechanisms, as well as the specific ways in which they affect the realization of the right to education in each country (Oliveira, Pereira Junior, and Clementino, 2021).

Privatization and commodification of education

This study examines both new and traditional privatization processes—expansion of the private school sector, deregulation of the education market, transfer of services from the public to the private sector, financing of private provision, and privatization of public policies—as well as other recent processes of ideological control that return the politicization of crucial educational issues to the private sphere. It aims to critically analyze the consequences of commodification and its specific characteristics on educational dynamics and processes. (Saforcada et al., 2022; Oliveira et al., 2017; Cornejo, 2018; Bordoli et al., 2017; Olivier, 2011).

Work and teacher training

In current hegemonic discourses, teachers are blamed for the decline in educational quality (Barroso & Carvalho, 2011). This is based on standardized assessments from organizations such as the OECD. The work of teaching is regulated by the omnipresence of external evaluations (Sisto, 2014), with continuing professional development mediated by platforms that contribute to job insecurity. Civil society movements and church groups are also contributing to this, seeking ideological and political control over teachers' work and the curriculum. Simultaneously, multiple forms of resistance and alternative projects are developing, rooted in regional traditions (Birgin, 2020; Feldfeber, 2020).

Right to education: theoretical and political aspects

This study analyzes the consequences of the neoconservative initiatives promoted by the far right regarding the notion of the right to education and its relationship to the regulation of public policies. Changes are observed in the orientations and purposes of educational and university systems, in legal frameworks, in teaching practices, and in socio-educational policies that strain the concept and regulation of this right in the region and globally (Saforcada and Ximenes, 2024). It is important to address the theoretical and political perspectives on this right, allowing for an understanding of the shifts in educational projects, as well as the disputes resulting from social, political, and economic changes that reposition power relations. This analysis examines the discursive apparatuses and epistemic positions, establishing a political analysis that allows for the identification of processes, stages, lines of knowledge production, as well as alternatives and new approaches.

Policies and rights in higher education

Higher education systems have been one of the major arenas of socio-political dispute and conflict, transcending the educational sphere itself (Trotta and Saforcada, 2024). Effects such as privatization and the widespread commodification of social life (Cuenca, 2024; Olivier, 2014) have impacted foundations, perspectives, management, work programs, knowledge production, professional training, and subjectivities. We propose to address the development and implementation of higher education policies, distinguishing the diversity of existing types that have been reconfigured and have resisted the expansion of private offerings and the neoliberal management mechanisms of public institutions, which have tended to undermine education as a right. A comparative analysis of reforms and policies in the region will be undertaken, examining their possibilities, challenges, and their role as promoters of democratization and social engagement.

The Working Group intends to continue these lines of work and the actions it has been developing (listed in the activity plan), and to undertake as its main project the creation of a Latin American Observatory on the Right to Education. It is expected that this Observatory will serve as a platform with information and analysis to inform public debate and promote initiatives with key actors in the political arena: public policy teams and social and labor organizations.