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On 11 September 1973, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinoche came to power and during the 1970s, he privatized Chile’s education system. The central government gave money to some private schools, while the public schools remained grossly underfunded. This commercialization of education began a legacy of educational attainment disparity along socioeconomic class lines—the poor received poor quality education, received jobs that paid meager wages, and remained poor, while the wealthy received high quality education, went on to university, and obtained well-paying jobs that increased their wealth.

Student governments of Chilean universities assembled to be represented as the Confederation of Chilean Students Federations (CONFECH), the leading organization of the campaign. College students Camila Vallejo and Giorgio Jackson took leadership of the protests and were both integral in creating the "Social Agreement for Chilean Education" (Acuerdo Social por la Educación Chilena), the proposal that was presented to the Chilean government. The students of CONFECH  demanded the following:

In April of 2006 Chilean high school students had many complaints against the government and the way it ran the public school system.  Chief among their concerns included bus fares and university exam fees.  Over the previous few years, there had been isolated protests throughout the city, but none had gathered very much momentum.  In 2006, however, in the first major social movement since “Chileans overthrow Pinochet regime,” the students took the general public by surprise.