The AGCBA Recommends Strengthening the Control Circuits in Subsidies for Private Education
<p style="text-align: justify;">This was said after detecting, from a survey, that some schools accounted more or less money than transferred as a subsidy by the Directorate of Private Education. 50% of the dossiers did not transfer the administrative act which gives them the legality. Therefore, the audit recommended they improve control circuits.</p>
A report of the Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA for its acronym in Spanish), which evaluated the performance of the Directorate General of Private Education (DGEGP) revealed that the amounts of subsidies transferred to schools "have differences" with the reported 18% of private schools in the sample. Therefore, among other reasons, the audit recommended "strengthening the control circuits."
The study "aimed at examining the legal and technical aspects of the transfers made by the Ministry of Education for educational institutions midlevel privately run". For this, the AGCBA analyzed 28 of the 278 schools that received grants in 2008. For that year the total allocated money exceeded $262 million.
In its report, adopted in September 2010, the Audit compared transfers by the DGEGP values and the information provided by schools and detected in some schools it was higher than the amount given as a subsidy and vice versa.
The "Administrative Act" is supporting each grant awarded by the Directorate, "giving legality to the transfer of public funds managed by each educational establishment". However, as stated by the AGCBA, in 50% of the sets of the sample "the administrative act was not located."
On the other hand, the Functional Organic Plants (POF) for 2008, according to the provisions of Decree 2541/91, determines the maximum amount of eligible employees for the middle level and the hourly load were analyzed for each of the educational establishments. At this point, auditors "found errors in more than half of the schools in the sample: 29% of the establishments of the POF had a higher amount of charges to the maximum eligible campus established in the regulations". In "32%, there were errors in the number of academic hours allocated in accordance with the provisions of the respective study plans, and 43% of schools errors were found in the liquidation of assets".
In addition, the AGCBA found in different records that "the documentation was - misfiled, without adequate formal order, poorly foliated or - directly - without foliate".
In conclusion, and as a result of the observations made by the auditors of the city, the watchdog noted the "need to strengthen the circuits of internal control in order to minimize deviations or differences that could cause a potential financial risk to the administration".