E/CN.4/2003/90/Add.2 page 19 Constitution was not approved in full, the Executive adopted the conclusions arising from the work of the Joint Commission as from 2001 and some of the measures are being put into effect, although only as “pilot programmes”. A consultative committee attached to the Ministry of Education is monitoring this process. 52. The Special Rapporteur was informed in detail by the education authorities about progress in introducing these reforms; he also acquainted himself with the opinions of several experts, and numerous Mayan leaders and leaders of non-governmental organizations who are pursuing educational projects independently. These reports express unanimous satisfaction at the level of acceptance of the political approach which encourages bilingual intercultural education, as reflected in its steadily higher profile in the government apparatus. Various opinions exist concerning the most suitable technical and administrative solutions to the issue of Guatemala’s linguistic diversity. All concur in noting the inadequacy of financial resources for carrying out the reform and in general for improving indigenous access to education. The lack of a sufficient number of well-trained bilingual teachers is repeatedly mentioned as a major difficulty.26 The process has reached the stage of planning the macro curriculum (national) and the intermediate curriculum (ethno-linguistic regions), while micro curricula are being prepared for the local levels. A number of school texts have been revised and redrafted, and teacher training has recently begun in bilingual teacher training colleges. The civil-society organizations say that they would like consultations on these advances with the people at each level and efforts to facilitate inputs from the Mayan peoples’ own institutions and experiences in education throughout the process. They say that opposition by powerful political and economic groups to this progress continues, coupled with lack of comprehension on the part of the teachers themselves and resistance by some parents of indigenous families (who agree to their children being educated exclusively in Spanish). 53. In addition to the progress mentioned, a major effort is being made by civil-society organizations to promote pilot experiments in Mayan education, generally with the support of international aid. It is also clear that, of the proposals contained in the Peace Agreements, this topic is systematically monitored by the civil-society organizations and is possibly the area in which most interaction and dialogue between them and government institutions have been achieved. By the end of the year 2000, the main aspects of this reform were the subject of consultations at the municipal, departmental and national levels, and high rates of consensus had been attained. Under a UNESCO project aimed at mobilizing support for Mayan education (PROMEM), a proposal has been submitted on curriculum development for basic education in the areas of Mayan mathematics, Mayan values and Mayan art and aesthetics for incorporation in the educational reform. 54. As United Nations reports have noted,27 and as the organizations participating in the National Council of Mayan Education and in the Third National Congress on Mayan Education have repeatedly said,28 there is still no overall system of intercultural and bilingual education set out in curricula adapted to the language and the needs, values and systems of the indigenous peoples themselves and effectively reaching schools in small localities. In practice, a model of