The most recent report from the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), as of August 14, confirmed that 2,486 educational centers suffered some type of damage following the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that shook the country on August 10.
Chocó, the department where the epicenter was located, bears the brunt of the damage, with 796 affected schools. It is followed by Caldas, with more than 400 sites reporting some damage.
The magnitude of that figure has no recent comparison. This is warned by Laura Arbeláez, researcher at the Education Economics Laboratory (LEE) of Javeriana University: “Comparing the number of affected educational sites, 2,486 according to UNGRD, with the annual averages Colombia had been presenting in damages from any type of disaster, we are talking about the earthquake damages alone tripling the worst year, which was in 2024.”
Meanwhile, local authorities have been making announcements about how the return to classes will be carried out. For now, there is no official consolidated number of children and adolescents whose educational service was interrupted.
Behind those figures, there is also a tragedy that mourns the education sector. In the municipalities of Calima El Darién and Yumbo, in Valle del Cauca, six students died due to the collapse of school infrastructure, according to the Ministry of Education.
They are the children Anthony Ríos Gómez, María José Lozada Torres, Emanuel Bastidas Arredondo, and Jesús Muñoz Quinceno, students of the María Inmaculada site of the District Educational Institution (IED) Gimnasio Calima. Also deceased were Luciana Moreno Flórez and Niela Nicol Vernaza Corrales, from the Panorama site of the IED Gabriel García Márquez of Yumbo.
The underlying problem: schools built without seismic-resistant standards
The magnitude of the damage reported after the earthquake reopened a discussion that the Colombian education sector has been dragging on for years: the structural vulnerability of a large part of its sites.
A public educational infrastructure report prepared by the Educational Infrastructure Financing Fund (FFIE) — to which a subsequent diagnosis by the Ministry of Education on the seismic resistance conditions of the country’s institutions was added — revealed figures that help understand the size of the challenge.
Of the universe of sites studied, only 5 percent, that is 638 establishments, complied with the seismic resistance standards contemplated in NSR-10. Another 1,132 sites, 9 percent, had partial compliance with that standard. A smaller group, 175 sites (1 percent), had conducted vulnerability studies and consultations thinking about future interventions.
The figure that worries experts the most is the last one: 10,773 sites, equivalent to 84 percent of the total, did not comply with the standard nor had ongoing studies or construction projects.
Yezid Alvarado, professor at the Faculty of Engineering of Javeriana University, points out that the age of much of the school buildings partly explains why schools end up being some of the most vulnerable spaces to this type of disaster.
In departments like Caldas, this phenomenon also has a particular origin. Luis Herney Vargas, Secretary of Education of that department, explains that several institutions were built on donated land, without a regulated infrastructure requirement. “Many times they do not have a regulated infrastructure requirement and it became something cultural,” Vargas assures, adding that this is how schools were left in much of the department.
Colombia, however, has advanced in its seismic-resistant regulation. The Ministry of Education adopted the guidelines of the Comprehensive School Risk Management and Education in Emergencies Policy (Gire), designed precisely to shield the sector against this type of event.
The problem is that most schools in the country were built 40 or 50 years ago, when those guidelines did not exist, and today they do not necessarily have the reinforcements required by current regulations.
“The problem is not only the building, but that zoning plans do not include threat zones where construction should not occur,” warns Arbeláez, LEE researcher.
For Unicef, the damage reported in schools goes beyond the simple interruption of classes. “Children have seen their homes and schools fall, and face increasing risks, while essential services remain interrupted in the most affected communities,” said Tanya Chapuisat, Unicef representative in Colombia.
Schools also serve a protective function for children. In an emergency like this, the organization warns, minors may be exposed to risks of violence and exploitation that under normal circumstances the educational institution itself helps to contain.
Unicef is already preparing a second phase of response focused on education. In places where schools cannot continue operating, temporary classrooms are planned, with flexible learning activities and the delivery of educational and pedagogical kits for students.
Nancy Palacios Mena, professor at the Faculty of Education of the University of the Andes, insists that behind the number of affected sites there are very different realities. “Behind that number are educational communities facing very different situations today: institutions with minor damage, sites requiring structural repairs, establishments that still cannot reopen, and in the most painful cases, schools that were scenes of human losses,” explains the professor.
Thus, the challenge the country faces is not limited to rebuilding walls and classrooms. “Beyond rebuilding buildings and classrooms, the country faces an urgent challenge: recovering safe spaces, supporting communities affected by loss, and preventing a temporary interruption from affecting the educational trajectories of thousands of students,” adds Palacios.
The academic is emphatic that the return to classrooms cannot happen before technical guarantees exist. “Returning in a safe environment, after technical evaluations and adjustments that give confidence to all members of the educational community, is fundamental,” she states.
In sites where students, teachers, or other staff lost their lives, she considers that different support is required than for other institutions. “It will be imperative to support the return of these institutions with interdisciplinary teams, who accompany the return to school routine with strong work of support, care, and attention for each member of the institutions,” Palacios proposes, for whom “the urgency to recover in-person attendance can never outweigh the physical safety of communities.”
The professor also warns of a challenge that will become visible once the most urgent part of the emergency passes: protecting students’ educational trajectories. Families who lose their homes may be forced to move temporarily or permanently to other municipalities, while some communities could go weeks without an available site.
Faced with this scenario, Palacios proposes removing any barriers that delay the admission of affected students to other institutions, from uniform requirements to administrative documents that a family displaced by the emergency may not have immediately available.
Along the same lines, Arbeláez warns that the underlying risk is that the emergency leads to school dropout and learning loss. “It is already widely documented that school closures cause learning losses that will not automatically recover upon returning to classes and that affect students from more vulnerable contexts more severely,” explains the researcher, who identifies rural areas as the hardest hit by the earthquake and, at the same time, those with the fewest additional classrooms available to continue the service.
Progress of the return to classes in the hardest-hit cities
So far, no national directives have been issued regarding the resumption of the school calendar, so each affected city has defined its own path. For Arbeláez, the pace of recovery will depend on one concrete factor: how many of those sites have minor damages that can be resolved in weeks and how many, on the other hand, have serious structural damage that will require longer processes.
In Cali, 89 official educational institutions and 214 sites reported some type of infrastructure damage. The Secretary of Education met with the 92 principals of official institutions and issued a resolution establishing the path to guarantee the continuity of educational service according to the conditions of each site.
The resolution includes defining in-person, virtual, or hybrid modalities, pedagogical support to adapt guides and institutional educational projects (PEI), and planning necessary actions for enabling, recovering, or rebuilding sites. It also includes the reorganization of essential services such as the School Feeding Program (PAE), school transportation, and cleaning.
With that path set, classes with students will resume in Cali starting August 24 at the sites already enabled, under the modality corresponding to each educational community. Between August 18 and 21, Institutional Development Week will be held, and the academic calendar will end on Friday, December 4, 2026.
In Pereira, however, the recent seismic movements led the Mayor’s Office to suspend in-person classes in 67 official educational institutions. The municipal administration does not yet have a defined date for the return: resumption will depend entirely on the results of technical inspections at each site and the diagnosis of the safety of their infrastructures. Only after those reports will it be known which schools can reopen and which will need additional interventions.
Manizales presents a different scenario. Mayor Jorge Eduardo Rojas presented on Wednesday, August 12, the balance of activities after the third day since the earthquake. According to the mayor, the city’s public educational institutions, suspended since Monday, August 10, will resume classes on Tuesday, August 18, once the holiday weekend is over.
Rojas explained that 24 public and 16 private institutions suffered major damage, and that after visits by infrastructure review commissions, decisions about their future have already been made. “Only two public schools remain completely affected and will not be able to operate: Liceo Isabel la Católica and the El Libertador site, in the La Cabaña village. And among the private ones, Semenor,” the mayor specified. The situation affects about 1,500 students in the city.
In this context, Arbeláez does not rule out that other cities will follow Cali’s example. “It would not be surprising if measures such as extending the school calendar in the most affected areas are considered. The regulations allow it, and in fact, there are already cities like Cali where calendar changes have been announced,” she points out.
EDUCATION EDITORIAL