The seminar took place on 1st April in Santiago, Chile. Some 200 people participated, including school principals and managers from the Municipal Education Directorates (DAEM in its Spanish acronym).

Minister Eyzaguirre opened the seminar by especially highlighting the work of the European Union's EUROsociAL programme in one of the key components of the Chilean educational reform, which is the Law on Public Education and its new institutional structure.

Likewise, the Head of the European Delegation in Chile, Rafael Dochao, highlighted in his speech the importance of European cooperation through the EUROsociAL programme in the transformations in government that President Bachelet is promoting. Dochao placed special emphasis on education as an engine of economic growth, highlighting the programme's consolidated agenda of support which will contribute an international collaboration horizon to the process to promote internal debate and help with decision-making.

The Chilean Ministry of Education is currently immersed in a process of reforms in which the axis relative to the Reform of Public Education has a special role.  Through discussion, dialogue and analysis, the process aims to provide channels for participation to collect inputs that can be systematised and incorporated by the Ministry of Education in the preparation of the draft Law on Public Education.

The seminar was organised with the support of the European Union's EUROsociAL II programme, which sponsored the participation of the Belgian expert Vincent Dupriez, an academic from the Catholic University of Lovaine and Director of GIRSEF (Interdisciplinary Research Group on Education and Training Systems). Chilean professor Juan Eduardo García Huidobro and sociologist and Master in Sociology Gonzalo Muñoz, from Chile as well, also participated as speakers, stimulating discussion, dialogue and analysis of the Law on Public Education.

In addition to the speeches by the three experts, there was important committee work in which the inputs from the attendees were collected in order to enrich the discussion and favour decision-making, one of the strategic lines of support of EUROsociAL, which has the Italo-Latin American Institute as the coordinating partner in this sector, and the Organization of Ibero-American States as the technical executing partner.