Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet has unveiled the first part of her education reform package, to answer the call from millions of students who’ve taken to the streets in the last couple of years to demand free, quality education for all – not just for the elite upper class, as the leftover policies of the Pinochet dictatorship have done.

“We’re taking the first step toward Chile’s most significant education reform in 50 years,” President Bachelet said,  “We’re following through with what our students repeatedly said:  Education is a right, not a privilege.”

Bachelet is asking lawmakers to end state subsidies to for-profit schools.  Those funds would be diverted to lowering or even eliminating fees that parents are forced to pay at other institutions.  It also forbids government-backed primary schools and kindergartens from rejecting students on the basis of tests or interviews. 

“This will be a fundamental advance towards making education free and to strengthen the quality of public education,” said Aldo Cornejo, the speaker of Chile's lower house of Congress and a member of President Bachelet’s Nueva Mayoria political alliance.

This legislative package is a stepping-stone to a measure that would make university education free in Chile, to be sent to Congress later this year.

Bachelet also plans to sharply increase the number of preschools, creating 90,000 places for preschool students.