Second meeting of ministers of education

Context

The demographic breakdown is an important factor in designing and implementing education policies. The number of children and young people in the populations determines the potential demand for education and, consequently, helps shape the demand for teachers, material resources, and physical facilities. The American continent is composed of 42 countries and almost 800 million people. Of these, some 500 million are in Latin America and the Caribbean, with almost 300 million in the USA and Canada. In Latin America and the Caribbean there are around 105 million children aged between 5 and 14 (the primary and junior-high age groups in most of the countries) and 50 million young people between the ages of 15 and 19 who would, in most cases, be eligible for junior-high or high school.

Access, Participation, and Progress

Education produces citizens who are able to live within society and contribute to it, and individuals who can adapt to the new demands of modern labor markets. It is therefore in society’s interest to guarantee educational opportunities for all citizens.

Obligatory education and periods of formal study demonstrate, in theory, nations’ aspirations in terms of the minimum amount of education to which their people are entitled. Requirements in Latin America range from 6 to 11 years which, in most instances, would cover the time spent in primary and junior-high education. Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama — that is, three countries from eighteen — require minimums of six years, whereas Peru is the only Latin American country that requires more than ten years of obligatory schooling. In the Caribbean, in contrast, the range of obligatory schooling is wider: the shortest period, six years, is found in Haiti, Jamaica, and Suriname; whereas Anguilla, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, with 13 years, have the longest. However, in contrast to the situation in Latin America, all the countries in the Caribbean subregion, with four exceptions, require between 10 and 13 years of obligatory schooling. The Caribbean situation is closer to that of Canada and the USA, where between 10 and 14 years of education are compulsory. While obligatory schooling in the USA varies from one state to the next, in Canada it is set at the national level; education is obligatory for those aged from 6 to 16.
An analysis of compulsory schooling levels alongside the educational breakdown of the adult population gives an idea of the extent to which the rules imposed by countries are observed. Thus, this serves to indicate how aspirations measure up against the reality of the years of schooling completed by the population.
Although Argentina, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela require ten years of education, only Argentina and Uruguay have succeeded in ensuring that almost half their populations meet that requirement. In contrast, in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, only 30 and 40 percent of the population, respectively, finish ten years of schooling or more. So, although none of the countries requiring a minimum of ten years at school has actually managed to provide universal education to that level, some countries have made better progress than others.
Eight Latin American countries require between eight and nine years spent at school. Of these, only Chile and Mexico can report that more than 90 percent of their populations aged between 15 and 24 have spent at least six years studying. Of the three countries that require six years of formal schooling, only Panama has succeeded in providing that level of education for more than 90 percent of its population; meanwhile, in Honduras and Nicaragua, around 80 and 70 percent of the population, respectively, attain the minimum level set by their countries.
Although none of our countries has managed to provide all its citizens with the years of schooling required by law, they have clearly progressed at different speeds; this shows that in some cases, the requirements set are not suited to the nations’ conditions and that there is not always a correlation between aspirations and achievements. In other words, a country that requires only six years of schooling, such as Panama, has a better education profile than other countries with higher formal requirements, such as Brazil (eight years) and El Salvador (nine years).
Both the gross and net rates for access to the first year of primary education show that the region has no serious access problems. Thus, the gross rate ranges from 94 percent in Jamaica to 246 percent in Haiti. A gross rate in excess of 100 percent — which is the case in the vast majority of the region’s countries — indicates that the education systems have the capacity to receive all the children of official school age: in other words, teachers and facilities are available for all children of the applicable age. But it also underscores the enormous extent to which the age at which formal education begins can vary from the one set by law.
Enrollment in preschool education also varies greatly across the region. Differences in the gross rate, in particular, are pronounced, ranging from 11 percent in The Bahamas to 105 percent in Guyana; the net rate, in comparison, varies from 10 percent in Trinidad and Tobago to 93 percent in the Netherlands Antilles. No patterns that would distinguish the trends in one subregion from those of the other are apparent.
The education cycle in which countries have invested the greatest effort seems to be the primary level; indeed, the average net enrollment level in Latin America (97 percent) and in some Caribbean countries show that the region is close to providing universal primary education. In Latin America, the lowest net primary school enrollment rates are above the top rates reported for other levels of education; in addition, coverage in primary education is more equal than in either preschool or secondary education. This means that the possibility of entering primary education is distributed more equitably among the countries. For example, Brazil has a net enrollment rate of 98 percent, which means that of every ten children of school age, practically all of them are studying; meanwhile, in Haiti and Nicaragua (countries with net enrollment rates of 80 percent, the lowest in the region), eight out of every ten children in the relevant age group are enrolled in primary education.
Although from our countries’ achievements in primary education coverage it could be concluded that there are no major access problems at that level, this indicator could well hide weaknesses within the system. For example, these figures give no information about whether the students remain at school or successfully conclude their primary education. A study of schooling levels in our nations indicates that in reality, the conclusion of primary education is still a challenge for several of the region’s countries: for example, in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Honduras, fewer than 75 percent of the population aged between 15 and 24 years have attended school for six years or more.
Although, on average, the demand for secondary education is better covered than the demand for preschool education, it does not approach the level of primary level coverage. Gross secondary school enrollment rates range from 33 percent in Guatemala and Haiti to 105 percent in Barbados, while the net enrollment rate varies from 20 percent in Haiti to 105 percent in Barbados. The low coverage at this level, together with pronounced differences in access to secondary education among our countries, has major implications for the region’s development and its chances of meeting the goals set by the Summit of the Americas.
This result is of greater import within the context of economic globalization, wherein secondary education is a minimum prerequisite for the development of a competitive work force. In Latin America, the average net enrollment rate indicates that only 54 percent of the young people of secondary-school age are enrolled in schools; this means that the subregion faces the risk of a widening gap vis-à-vis the developed countries. This situation is even more serious in those nations that fall short of the average, a group that includes most of the subregion’s countries. This suggests that drop-out rates are a common challenge in the Latin American subregion.
Enrollment issues are seen differently in Canada and the USA, which to some extent weakens regional comparability. In speaking of education coverage, the emphasis in Canada and the USA is on preschool, secondary, and tertiary education rather than on primary schooling, which practically enjoys universal access already. In both the USA and Canada, coverage is almost universal — i.e., over 90 percent — and schooling begins at the age of five or six, although the USA has a coverage rate of almost 50 percent among four-year-olds. High coverage rates prevail up to the age of 14 in both countries; that is, practically all children aged between 5 and 14 are enrolled in school systems in both Canada and the USA.
While the rates are high in both the USA and Canada, they drop off when compulsory education comes to an end, which takes place at the ages of 17 and 16, respectively. Thus, the coverage rate in the USA begins to fall after the age of 16, reaching a level of below 50 percent among 19-year-olds. Similarly, in Canada, where obligatory education ends at the age of 16, the coverage rate among 18-year-olds is less than 50 percent.
With regard to the numbers of primary school pupils who are held back to repeat academic years, the two subregions — Latin America and the Caribbean — display different patterns. While more than half the Caribbean nations reporting this indicator (five out of eight) have total primary repeat rates of less than 5 percent, the same can be said of only six of the 16 Latin American countries. There is also less dispersion among the Caribbean nations: a minimum of zero percent is reported in Anguilla, compared with a top level of twelve percent in Haiti. The variation in repeat rates among countries reflects not only the efficiency of the systems, but also the different education policies and models that, after due debate, have emerged and been put in place. In some cases, therefore, not only does using repetition indicators distort international comparability; it also undermines analyses of how the quality of a country’s education system has evolved.

Resources

Investment in human capital is a key factor in personal and social development as well as in national economic development and in establishing equality of opportunities. Investment in education is therefore of vital importance, in that it is a determining factor behind the kind of education services provided and their quality standards.

Average total public spending across the region, as a percentage of GDP, amounts to 4.2 percent. This speaks of the efforts being made by countries to fund their education systems. Ten countries (Jamaica, Aruba, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Canada, Barbados, Panama, the USA, Brazil, and Paraguay) have spending levels above that average, while spending in eleven nations (Argentina, Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Bermuda, Uruguay, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras) is below the average level. Nicaragua’s spending is equal to the average. Notably, there are differences between Latin America and the Caribbean. Spending in the Caribbean (5.1%) is higher the Latin American average (3.8%). Irregularities are, however, found in both subregions: the levels in Costa Rica and Bolivia are even higher than the Caribbean average, while Trinidad and Tobago and Bermuda are the only Caribbean countries where this public spending indicator is lower than the average level in Latin America.
The proportion of total public spending earmarked for education also varies within the region. The average stands at around 15 percent. Seven countries have above-average rates (Peru, Paraguay, Aruba, Bermuda, Guatemala, Panama, and Chile), while another eight countries (Anguilla, the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Uruguay, and Brazil) have below-average levels. The figure for Barbados is equal to the regional average. In general, the Caribbean nations invest a lower proportion of their public spending in education.
Per-pupil spending is distributed unevenly among the different levels of education. Thus, with respect to preschool education, Argentina is the country that spends the most public funds per pupil — around eight times as much as Bolivia, which is the nation that invests the least in that level, in USD-PPP terms. Only two countries (Argentina and Costa Rica) have per-pupil spending rates in excess of USD-PPP $1000 per annum, while three countries (Peru, El Salvador, and Bolivia) spend less than USD-PPP $330 per pupil per year.
As regards primary education, per-pupil spending in Argentina — once again, the country with the highest investment levels — is almost five times that of Bolivia. Only three countries (Argentina, Costa Rica, and Chile) have annual per-pupil spending levels in excess of USD-PPP $1000, while another three countries (Paraguay, Peru, and Bolivia) spend less than USD-PPP $500.
Per-pupil spending tends to be higher in secondary education than at other levels. Costa Rica’s per-pupil spending level is the region’s highest and is eight times that of Bolivia. Four countries (Costa Rica, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile) spend more than USD-PPP $1000 per pupil per year, whereas Peru, El Salvador, and Bolivia spend less than $500.
Investing in human resources means investing in education professionals. Although the fact that teachers are important in improving the quality of education is receiving increasing acceptance, this perception is not, in most cases, backed up by sufficient resources.
Pupil-to-teacher ratios indicate the extent of countries’ investments in human resources. At the preschool level, pupil-teacher numbers range from seven in Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands to 45 in Haiti. At primary schools, the figure ranges from nine in Bermuda to 38 in Guatemala. Eleven countries have fewer than 20 pupils per teacher; all of these, with the exception of Colombia, are in the Caribbean; 16 countries have between 20 and 30 pupils per teacher; and seven countries average more than 30 pupils for every teacher. At the secondary level, the range is practically the same as in primary education: it varies from seven pupils per teacher in Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands to 36 in Brazil.
In theory, greater numbers of pupils per teacher mean lower education costs, since expenditure on personnel accounts for the lion’s share of education spending. The relationship is, however, more complex than that. Although higher numbers of pupils per teacher could be associated with increased coverage, in practice this is not the case. Thus, at the primary level, countries such as Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Chile, Haiti, and Jamaica, which have the highest pupil-to-teacher ratios (above 30), also have the lowest coverage rates.
There is a tendency toward interpreting low pupil-teacher ratios as being synonymous with better quality education. This matter is still, however, subject to debate. While some studies indicate that lower pupil-to-teacher figures help improve quality, other research reveals that there is no correlation between those two variables.
The wages paid to teachers and the likelihood of pay increases over their professional lives are the main material incentives for attracting professionals into the education system and keeping them there. At the primary level, Mexico is the country where teachers’ starting salaries represent the highest proportion of per capita GDP (1.2%), while lowest level is found in Uruguay (0.6%). Although this indicator is comparable in terms of the effort countries have to make to remunerate their teachers, these wage levels also depend on how rich a given country is. In other words, although as a proportion of per capita GDP, a teacher’s starting salary in the USA (0.8%) is lower than in Chile (1.1%), in PPP dollars the teacher in the USA earns more than her Chilean colleague because the USA’s per capita GDP, in PPP dollars, is more than four times that of Chile.

Quality

Although most of the countries of both Latin America and the Caribbean have developed national quality evaluation systems, using internationally comparable indicators, no information is available for the region as a whole. In general, what are available are isolated experiences with participating in standardized tests that are intended to assess the quality of different education systems and were designed by either countries or institutions from the developed world.

While the region’s most developed countries — Canada and the USA — have regularly participated in international studies, only two Latin American countries (Chile and Colombia) and none from the Caribbean have taken part in internationally comparable evaluation efforts. Thus, Canada and the USA have participated in studies conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (such as the TIMSS), which are intended to assess the performance of primary and secondary pupils in mathematics and science, as well as in other efforts developed by the OECD (e.g., IALS) intended to measure literacy rates among the adult population. Both Colombia and Chile have participated in the TIMSS (in 1994 and 1998, respectively), while only Chile has been involved in the IALS (in 1998).
Not only are there differences in countries’ participation in international studies, the results they have obtained are also different. In the TIMSS study conducted in 1994-95, Colombia — the only Latin America country involved — ranked 40 out of 41 countries in mathematics and 38 out of 39 in science. Meanwhile, Canada finished 18th and 10th in mathematics and science, respectively, with the USA finishing 28th and 9th. Chile participated in the 1998-99 TIMSS test and ranked 35 out of 38 in both science and mathematics; in the same test, Canada was placed 10th and 14th, respectively, and the USA ranked 19th and 18th. These results were largely mirrored in the IALS literacy study: Chile, the only Latin American country to participate, took the last place of 22 in all the areas analyzed, while Canada finished among the first ten and the USA among the first fifteen.

This indicates not only the disparities that exist within the region, but also the shortfalls that still prevail between the developed world and the developing countries.

The only regional experiment was the Latin American Education Quality Evaluation Laboratory, carried out by UNESCO/OREALC in 1997 and involving Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. This study analyzed the mathematics and language skills of pupils in the third and fourth grades of primary education.
It revealed no major differences in achievement levels among the countries, with the exception of Cuba. In general, the richest countries, or those with higher levels of per capita GDP, enjoyed better results, in both mathematics and language skills.
New initiatives for assessing quality are currently being developed. Most of these, like their predecessors, involve studies designed by international organizations from developed countries; however, in contrast to what has happened in the past, a larger number of the region’s countries have displayed interest in participating. For example, PISA³— an international study developed by the OECD in conjunction with its member states, intended to analyze how knowledge and skill acquisition among 15-year-olds enables them to play a role in society — already involves such countries as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru.
At the same time, Brazil — the coordinator of the quality assessment project of the Second Summit of the Americas — has proposed developing a Hemispheric Forum for Educational Evaluation, in order to plan, articulate, and disseminate different initiatives in this area.

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