Bill 118.

Summary.

The bill establishes a right for students at the first and second levels of education, in public and private schools throughout Panama, to receive mandatory socioemotional education. Its objectives include recognizing and managing emotions, developing empathy, resolving conflicts peacefully, preventing risky behavior, and addressing emotional and academic development together. It proposes incorporating these subjects from preschool through secondary education through activities, strategies, and programs with diagnostic, monitoring, and evaluation components. It declares the inclusion of emotional education in the curriculum a matter of public necessity and preferred national interest.

The text defines terms for its application, including well-being, emotional competencies, educational community, psychoaffective development, socioemotional education, and psychoaffective recovery. It allows the competent authority to adjust those definitions when preparing guidelines and regulations. Its principles address the person's overall development, continuity of emotional education throughout the curriculum, joint participation by the educational community, and periodic review in response to participants' needs. It requires socioemotional education to be integrated across the curriculum at both levels through educational policies, plans, or programs, with psychoeducational resources for teachers.

The bill creates the National Socioemotional Education Program within the Ministry of Education (Ministerio de Educación). Its areas of training cover children and adolescents, parents, educators' management of their own emotions, and interpersonal and institutional relationships. The program has an educational and preventive purpose. From preschool through the second level of education, it addresses identity, autonomy, emotional regulation, conflict management, and life skills.

The National Directorate of Psychoeducational Services (Dirección Nacional de los Servicios Psicoeducativos) is responsible for implementing and coordinating the program in schools with regional education offices and support teams. It must train and convene teachers, encourage student and family participation, prepare teaching guidelines, coordinate resources, and evaluate results. It must also conduct research or evaluations at least once during the school year, develop or obtain measurement tools, consider regional circumstances, and issue annual recommendations. Implementation activities are assigned to psychology professionals in psychoeducational teams, who may receive help from university psychology students and volunteers from educational organizations. Teacher training programs, including summer professional development seminars, must cover socioemotional skills.

The Ministry of Education must organize training opportunities for people exercising parental responsibility or guardianship. Psychoeducational teams provide individual support and, where possible, group support for emotional and family difficulties. Cases requiring clinical intervention may be referred through coordination with the Ministry of Health (Ministerio de Salud), the Social Security Fund (Caja de Seguro Social), the Ministry of Social Development (Ministerio de Desarrollo Social), the National Disability Secretariat (Secretaria Nacional de Discapacidad), or the relevant community board. High-risk or urgent situations receive immediate attention for the student and family. Schools must activate the existing legal pathways for assistance, protection, and restoration of rights.

The National Directorate of Psychoeducational Services (Dirección Nacional de Servicios Psicoeducativos) reviews and evaluates program procedures and performance indicators using scientific evidence and methodologies associated with UNESCO and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe). The bill preserves protections for children and adolescents, directs the Executive Branch to issue regulations through the Ministry of Education, and provides for commencement on the day after promulgation. Its provisions concern these public bodies and community boards, as well as public and private schools, universities, educational organizations, support professionals, students, and their families.