Schools selection in the Department of Caazapá applying mathematical programming

Abstract

The educational infrastructure in the Department of Caazapá, as in other regions of Paraguay, presents characteristics that do not favor the development of the educational process. Caazapá currently has 469 schools in this department, and the average number of students per school is 83. If we also consider that 62% of schools have less than 15 students per class, it can be inferred that there is an underutilization of the infrastructure and cost overruns in large part of the schools. In contrast, 1% of the schools have on average more than 49 students per classroom. This inefficient distribution of schools causes high investment costs for improving and maintaining schools and resource management problems. It is imperative to the application of strategies that are oriented to the optimization of available resources. This study adopts a mixed-integer linear programming model to select schools to minimize operating costs, investment in infrastructure, and transportation. We combine operation research techniques with geographic information systems to analyze the problem and interpret the results. The results show opportunities for improvement in the design of the educational network, and it is feasible to reduce investment costs by consolidating the demand in fewer establishments than currently exists. Additionally, this result would also allow generating economies of scale to optimize the operating costs of the establishments.