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Some 60,000 students and supporters marched through the streets of downtown Santiago Thursday to press the government into legislating education reform.
President Michelle Bachelet was recently reelected to a second term on a campaign platform promising reforms in education, but they have yet to be legislated.
In a repeat of earlier marches, crowds marched along several blocks of the city's central Alameda Avenue, demanding free, quality public education.
"Today, secondary school students once again call for education that is at the service of the people and of Chilean students," student spokesman Ricardo Paredes said, addressing the crowd gathered at the Monument to the Heroes, a main protest site.
"The government must understand that the consensus on which education reform rests can in no way be the consensus of the minorities who have pushed this market-oriented, segregationist system, but the consensus of the social movement," another student leader said.
Mass student protests first broke out in 2011, during the previous conservative administration, under which education in Chile was increasingly privatized and tuitions were raised.
The protests have been relaunched to coincide with congressional debates on Bachelet's proposed education reforms, which students say don't go far enough to meet their demands.
"We know that we are at a very crucial stage in educational reform," said Naschla Aburman, spokesperson for Chile's Student Confederation (Confech), which represents university students.
"The risk of reaching agreements behind closed doors with sectors that want to remain shielded from the changes, to maintain their privileges, threatens the future of our country," said Aburman. "That's why we are here to say we are many and we want real change."
