Development & Aid, Education, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

EDUCATION-LATIN AMERICA: Another Lost Decade?

Diana Cariboni

MONTEVIDEO, Jul 1 2004 (IPS) - Teachers in Bolivia earn just 100 dollars a month, and 60 percent of adolescents in Argentina drop out of high school. Given such statistics, is it really possible for Latin America to reach the goal of providing quality education for all by 2015?

Since the late 1980s, Latin American governments have assumed a number of commitments towards that objective, including preschool education for all children between the ages of three and five, universal primary school coverage, 75 percent high school enrollment, and eradication of adult illiteracy.

But in spite of increases in spending on education in the region in the 1990s, preschool coverage stands at 51 percent, primary school at 93 percent, and secondary school at 62 percent, while 11 percent of adults remain illiterate.

According to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), only eight countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are in a position to meet the challenge – which coincides with the United Nations Millenium Development Goals – without the need for extra-budgetary funds.

The eight countries are Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay. But, UNESCO clarifies, that will only be possible with average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of at least 2.6 percent a year, with an increase in public expenditure on education of less than two percent a year.

In addition, Chile and Costa Rica, although they already spend proportionally more than the regional average, should increase expenditure on education by 2.6 percent to overcome a slight deficit by 2010, says the U.N. agency.

But 12 of the 22 countries studied by UNESCO and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) will be unable to meet the goals only with public funds.

The deficit will be more acute for the countries that lag farthest behind in education and have the lowest per capita GDP: Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, on the other hand, will have to increase spending on education by less than five percent a year to meet the goal – a smaller proportion than the rise seen during the 1990s, say the two U.N. agencies.

Some 149 billion dollars in additional funds – approximately 7.5 percent of the combined 2000 GDP of the 22 countries studied – would be needed to meet the goal by 2015. In 2000, public expenditure on education totalled 81.9 billion dollars region-wide.

These statistics are provided by the study ‘Financing and Management of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean’, presented Wednesday in Puerto Rico during ECLAC’s 30th session, running Monday through Friday this week.

But it is not only coverage and enrollment that must improve. Drop-out rates in primary and secondary education are far higher and quality of education is much lower than the average of industrialised countries.

In the educational reforms of the 1990s, ”the interest in ensuring universal access was maintained, but an equal focus was not put on ensuring that students complete their primary and secondary education,” Ana Luiza Machado, the director of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education, told IPS in an e-mail interview from Puerto Rico.

With 27 percent of students behind their age-group in school, the region squanders some 12 billion dollars a year, according to the report, which says repetition and desertion remain a problem of ”efficiency” in the region’s educational systems.

The reforms of the 1990s put an emphasis on quality of inputs without focusing on the quality of the actual learning results, it adds.

In tests measuring academic performance in reading, writing and math in Latin America, southeast Asia and industrialised nations in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Latin American countries consistently ranked last.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, ”spending on education increased in the 1990s, on average, from three to 4.1 percent of GDP, with major differences between countries,” ECLAC Executive Secretary José Luis Machinea told IPS by e-mail from Puerto Rico.

By comparison, ”The OECD countries spend an average of 5.5 percent, but with GDP four or five times higher, and with a much more relaxed demographic situation,” he added.

But ”Despite the financial contraction of the late 1990s” in Latin America, ”education’s share of the budget did not shrink in either relative or absolute terms. The countries…understood that there can be no turning back in the effort” to improve education, he said.

The study looks at different ways to strengthen the assignation of resources, such as redirecting public spending to make it more effective, broadening or reorienting tax collection, encouraging private sector (family and business) contributions to education, and swapping public debt for spending on education.

In Machado’s view, there is no debate between public and private education. ”Education is a responsibility of the state, and in its management and/or financing it can join forces with the private sector, while making sure it does not fall into outright mercantilism. Education is not a business.”

For his part, Machinea said ”the debate on public and private education has not been resolved, but it should not be seen in terms of a choice, but as a question of complementarity.”

”The important thing is to find mechanisms of regulation by the state that help promote private contributions,” while ensuring ”equal access to decent education,” he added.

But how can equal access be assured if most of the private financing in education comes from the families themselves?

”If the share of family spending on education increases proportionally to total expenditure in the sector, the fear is that families will receive the kind of education they can afford, which would discriminate against the poor,” said Machinea.

”It is very important for the state to make sure that the differences in family income are compensated by intra-system transfers of funds, while concentrating public spending on the most vulnerable sectors,” he added.

Swapping public debt for education is one solution proposed by countries like Argentina, Brazil and Peru.

”There is a group of countries in the region that, due to the gaps they suffer with respect to meeting the minimum goals of educational coverage, should have the support of the international community, and swapping debt for education should be discussed in that context,” said Machinea.

In terms of international aid for education, the study says the plans implemented in the past 40 years have achieved less than impressive results that should force a rethinking of the traditional structures.

The suggestion is to abandon the single-model focus, while bringing about a change in attitude on the part of donor countries and aid agencies ”from a vertical to a more horizontal relationship,” while respecting the priorities of the recipient countries.

Educators ”have been basically absent from the decisions on reforms, and it is a challenge to achieve their effective participation in the required changes,” said Machado.

”The Regional Education project for Latin America and the Caribbean (adopted in Havana in 2002) recognises that changes promoted from above and outside of the schools do not bring about significant modifications in academic performance,” she said.