EDUCATION-PERU: Poverty Blamed for Schooling Slump

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Feb 24 1998 (IPS) - Little Luis Huaman,11, will not be at school this year because he must tend to the family farm in Huancavelica, in the south-central highlands of Peru, while his father travels to the coast in search of work.

Nine hundred kilometers away, in the San Juan de Miraflores area of Lima, Jorge Rios, another 11-year-old boy, also is not attending classes. He sells candy on the streets to make a few coins and “because its more entertaining.”

They are just two of some four million children who technically are enrolled in primary school, but who should really be part of the official statistics on those dropping-out of school.

According to “Social Data,” a social policy newsletter of the independent institute Apoyo, 170,000 children between the ages of 6 and 11 did not attend school in 1997. In the 12-16 age group, the number of truents reached 350,000.

The story of Luis and Jorge are a minute segment of a phenomenon that affects mych of Peruvian society. Luis, who lives in San Pedro de Orcos, will not attend school because his father has decided against it. His decision is the product of a widespread belief in some Andean regions which states that only the children of rich families may go to school.

Poor children, on the other hand, must start working as soon as possible. As a result, people with little formally education who then migrate to the city can only opt for low paying, manual work or become part of the mass of the underemployed masses of street vendors or domestic servants. Moreover, the children of these workers do not live in conditions that would allow them to take advantage of the free education provided by the state.

This is Jorge’s situation. Even though his family wants him to go to school, an absent father and a working mother “make the street more attractive.”

According to a study conducted by Apoyo, for every ten children and adolescents, six live in poverty, four have no access to health care, and one is not in school. The government Institute of Statistics admits that the problem exists, but it does not agree with Apoyo’s figures, and holds that obly five percent of all children of school-going age are not attending classes.

The institute recognizes, however, that in urban areas three percent of children and adolescents leave school in order to work and that in rural areas the drop-out rate reaches 70 percent, mostly because they need to contribute to their families livelihood.

In a national survey of homes conducted in 1996, 32 percent of truancy and desertion was attributed to economic problems and 10 percent to health problems. Some 42 percent had no explanation for not going to school while six percent stated that they did not go to school because they needed to work.

Congressman Freddy Ghilardi, a representative for the social democratic Aprista Party and member of the Economy Commission of the national Congress, maintains that as a result of growing unemployment, 13 percent of adolescents neither work nor attend school – a population ripe for delinquency in the future.

The effects of poverty are not only limited to desertion among highland indigenous families or the breakdown of families among residents of shantytowns in coastal cities made up mostly of migrants from the Andean region. Poverty also affects the performance of children who remain in school.

“Poverty causes malnutrition, which affects the concentration and energy level of students. Malnutrition during the first four years of life, moreover, also results in lower IQs,” according to physician Marta Rondon.

These factors explain the high rate of elementary school students who are held back to repeat grades at least once in their careers. According to the Ministry of Education, this rate is 21 percent in urban areas and 26 percent in the countryside.

According to sociologist Alberto Panessi, these figures are somewhat deceptive. like all nationwide statistical generalizations which do not distinguish between more and less depressed areas of the country.

Educator Carmen Eyzaguirre maintains that the rate of repeating students would be much higher if teachers were more demanding. “Another problem facing education are the low salaries of teachers. Their real wages have fallen by 50 percent since 1970, which has resulted in an exodus of teachers from the system,” she said.

Another factor which affects the efficiency of public schools that is also the result of poverty is the decrease of class time.

Eyzaguirre pointed out that “while in Japan students are in school for 1,750 hours and in Chile for a total of 1,000, Peru’s schools are in session 450 hours in urban zones and 226 in rural areas.” (FIN-IPS-al-dm-ag-ed-pr-mg-98)