Teachers protest in São Paulo on Jan. 9, 2024 for better working conditions and remuneration in public education in Brazil. Most teachers are women, and they face complex physical and mental conditions in exercising their profession. CREDIT: Roberto Parizotti / ProfeSP

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 15 2024 (IPS)

Alice went for eight weeks without Portuguese language classes after starting her first year of high school on Feb. 5 in this Brazilian city. Her chemistry teacher taught only two classes and disappeared. But the worst part is the classroom without air conditioning in the heat of more than 35 degrees Celsius some days during the southern hemisphere summer.

Her public school in a central neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, with more than 500 students, illustrates the conditions of public education in Brazil, with poorly paid teachers and the resulting poor work attendance, as well as precarious infrastructure and other problems."The statistics show a challenging scenario, with many students lagging behind because they flunk or drop out of school. In addition to the 'pe de meia' program and other measures, systemic policies are needed, such as adequate infrastructure, teachers and full-time education." -- Natália Fregonesi

It is precisely in secondary education – the last three years of high school after nine grades of primary and middle school – that the biggest bottleneck in Brazilian education is found, according to an assessment agreed on widely by experts. The first nine years are for students up to the age of 14 and the last three years for students between the ages of 15 and 17.

Since Mar. 27, the Senate has been discussing a reform of the New Secondary Education Law, which came into force only two years ago. The government, in office since January 2023, proposed the modifications whose key points were already approved by the lower house of Congress.

Brazil is thus trying to overcome the shortcomings in education that have placed the country among the lowest ranked in comparative assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which studies 81 countries.

The new reform raises from 1,800 to 2,400 the number of hours to be dedicated during the three years of high school to compulsory subjects such as mathematics, natural and human sciences, and the Portuguese, English and Spanish languages.

It also provides for the extension of full-time education to a minimum of seven hours per day, and in technical-vocational schools as well.

In full-time primary and secondary institutions, students are at school for at least seven hours a day, attend regular classes in the morning and extracurricular activities, such as technical courses, sports or special subjects in the afternoon, or vice versa.

In addition, they receive two or three meals at school and in some cases can take a shower there – an attraction for students from low-income families in a country marked by huge social inequalities.

Even so, opportunities are not the same for everyone because the nine years of public basic education are in the hands of the municipalities, secondary education is run by the state governments and university education is the responsibility of the central government.

The new reform now depends on ratification by the Senate.

In secondary education, another 600 hours would be allocated to optional subjects, depending on the students’ interests, and may be extended further in the case of technical courses.

Currently, the flexibility applies to 1200 hours, but without adequate management in many educational centers. Alice, the student who preferred to use a fictitious name, complained that the extra hours are used for classes of the regular subjects or without a specific purpose.

“One teacher spent a long time explaining what the colors of the national flag symbolize,” she complained to IPS.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced on Jan. 26, 2024 in Brasilia the “Pe de meia” (savings) program, which will pay poor students in public secondary education 40 dollars a month, as an incentive to stay in the classroom. CREDIT: Ricardo Stuckert / PR

Curbing the school dropout rate

The government also created the “pe de meia” program, which in Brazil means savings. It offers 2,000 reais (400 dollars) per year, divided into 10 monthly installments, to high school students whose families are poor and are registered in the government’s Unified Social Assistance Registry. To receive it, they must demonstrate at least 80 percent school attendance.

The aim is to curb the dropout rate, which is higher in secondary education than in primary or middle school.

In 2023, the number of students who dropped out of school totaled 480,000, according to the Ministry of Education’s school census, released on Apr. 2.

In this country of 203 million people, of the adolescents and young people aged 15 to 29, nine million are out of school and have not completed high school, according to 2023 data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

The savings program seems like little money, but it is important “as a complement” for adolescents, who are generally engaged in informal work, and for low-income families, who benefit from social programs, said Natália Fregonesi, coordinator of Educational Policies at the non-governmental organization Todos pela Educação (Everyone for Education).

The annual IBGE survey points to the need to find work as the main cause of school dropout, which stands at 47.1 percent among young people aged 15 to 29 years. There is a strong contrast between men, with an index of 53.4 percent, and girls and women: 25.5 percent. Pregnancy is the second cause of dropout of girls and women, accounting for 23.1 of all young female dropouts.

Among boys and men, a lack of interest in studying is in second place, accounting for 25.5 percent.

Education Minister Camilo Santana released on Jan. 16, 2024 the results of the exam taken by high school students to enter universities. CREDIT: Marcelo Camargo / Agência Brasil

More time in school

“The statistics show a challenging scenario, with many students lagging behind because they flunk or drop out of school. In addition to the ‘pe de meia’ program and other measures, systemic policies are needed, such as adequate infrastructure, teachers and full-time education,” said Fregonesi, a chemist who specialized in education policies.

Full-time schools are an efficient model, as they create a different relationship between students and schools, offer other subjects in addition to the regular curriculum, help youngsters think more clearly about their future, and give students a leading role, in addition to having full-time teachers, the expert told IPS by telephone from São Paulo.

The idea is to increase the number of full-time schools, which already exist throughout the country, but in a very unequal manner. While in the state of Pernambuco, in the impoverished Northeast region, 66.8 percent of students are in full-time education, in the Federal District, where Brasilia the capital is located, the proportion is only five percent, and in São Paulo, the richest state, only 25.9 percent.

On average, only 21.9 percent of students in the public education system are in full-time schools.

But increasing the number of full-time schools requires a large investment and Brazil has limited availability of public resources. According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which brings together 38 countries, Brazil ranks among the last in terms of spending per basic education student.

The National Education Conference, held in Brasilia in January 2024, was one of the hundreds of forums in which the high school reform to be approved by the Senate was discussed. The Chamber of Deputies has already approved a version, with an increase in hours and classes in regular subjects taken by all students and of technical courses. CREDIT: José Cruz / Agência Brasil

Putting a priority on technical-vocational education

Another measure being pursued is to expand technical education. In Brazil, only 11 percent of students enrolled in secondary school take technical courses, while the average exceeds 40 percent in the other OECD countries, said Fregonesi.

“There is a certain prejudice in relation to technical education in Brazil, where it is seen as ‘inferior’ to high school, as preparation for university,” he said. But vocational training is lacking in the national economy and prepares students just as well for higher education, he argued.

In Brazil, there is growing unmet demand for skilled labor, for example, in information and communication technologies, which makes it necessary to expand technical secondary education.

The country’s educational challenges are colossal. In 2023, there were 47.3 million students enrolled in primary and secondary education and 6.5 million in university courses. But there were 68 million Brazilians without basic schooling.

Above and beyond these figures, the fact remains that the falling birth rate is reducing the school population. In 2019, the year before the outbreak of the pandemic, 57 million students were enrolled in school. The pandemic reduced that number by 9.5 million.

Education in Brazil operates both as a factor of social ascent and, at the same time, of inequality. Around 20 percent of students from the higher income sectors attend private primary and secondary schools, which generally are better funded and produce better results than public schools.

In higher education, the situation is paradoxically reversed. The children of the higher-income segments, who are better educated in private schools, gain easy admission to public universities, which offer better education than private colleges and therefore better possibilities for professional advancement.

To correct this imbalance, progressive governments in recent decades created racial and social quotas or affirmative action to benefit the generally poorer blacks and students in public elementary and secondary schools.

All these measures and some policies, such as financing systems for basic education maintained by city and state governments, have fomented small advances in Brazilian education, which have fallen far short however.

That process suffered a setback with the pandemic and the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). The current administration of left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is trying to get back on course.

The shortages of days in the classroom and teachers, and the poverty of their schools and living conditions, provide for a very poor education for Venezuela's children and augur a significant lag for their performance in adult life and for the country's development. CREDIT: El Ucabista

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 10 2023 (IPS)

Hundreds of thousands of children and young people, and thousands of their teachers, drop out of regular schooling in Venezuela year after year, and most of those who remain go to the classroom only two or three days a week, highlighting the abysmal backwardness of education in the country.

“Why continue studying, to graduate unemployed and earn a pittance? We prefer to get into a trade, make money, help our parents; there are a lot of needs at home,” Edgar, 19, who with his brother Ernesto, 18, has been gardening in homes in southeastern Caracas for three years, told IPS."The education crisis did not begin in March 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic. These are problems that form part of the complex humanitarian emergency that Venezuela has been experiencing for many years." -- Luisa Pernalete

A study this year by the non-governmental organization Con la Escuela (With the School), in seven of Venezuela’s 24 states -including the five most populated- found that 22 percent of students skip classes to help their parents, and in the 15-17 age group this is the case for 45 percent of girls.

In the school where teacher Rita Castillo worked, in La Pomona, a shantytown in the torrid western city of Maracaibo, “for many days in a row there is no running water, there are blackouts, and it’s impossible to use the fans to cool off the classrooms,” she told IPS.

The classes in the school are divided into 17 to 25 children each: the first three grades of primary school attend on Mondays and Tuesdays, the next three grades on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and Fridays make up for whoever missed class the previous days. That is in the mornings; secondary school students attend during the hot afternoons.

These are the first steps towards the definitive dropout of students: 1.2 million in the three years prior to 2021 and another 190,000 in the 2021-2022 school year, with 2022-2023 still to be estimated, with no signs of a reversal in the trend.

“The dropout rate is also high in secondary schools in Caracas, and the students who remain often pass from one year to the next without having received, for example, a single physics or chemistry class, due to the shortage of teachers,” Lucila Zambrano, a math teacher in public schools in the populous western part of the capital, told IPS.

Authorities in the education districts are increasingly calling on retired teachers to return to work, “but who is going to return to earn for 25, 20 or less dollars a month?” Isabel Labrador, a retired teacher from Colón, a small town in the southwestern state of Táchira, told IPS.

Currently, the monthly food basket costs 526 dollars, according to the Documentation and Analysis Center of the Venezuelan Federation of Teachers.

The infrastructure and equipment of many schools is seriously affected in different areas of Venezuela, and its recovery is essential as a space not only for students to obtain knowledge but also for the socialization and coexistence of students, teachers and representatives. CREDIT: E. Carvajal / CPV

Teachers held colorful street protests in the first few months of 2023, demanding decent salaries and other benefits acquired by their collective bargaining agreement, and these demands remain unheeded as the school year ends this July.

Teachers earning ridiculously small salaries, high school dropout rates, rundown infrastructure, lack of services, loss of quality and a marked lag in the education of children and young people are the predominant characteristics of Venezuelan public education today.

But “the education crisis did not begin in March 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic. These are problems that form part of the complex humanitarian emergency that Venezuela has been experiencing for many years,” Luisa Pernalete, a trainer and researcher at the Fe y Alegría educational institution for decades, told IPS.

Numbers in red

In the current school year, enrollment in kindergarten, primary and secondary education totaled 7.7 million, said Education Minister Yelitze Santaella, in this country which according to the National Institute of Statistics has 33.7 million inhabitants, but only 28.7 million according to university studies.

The difference in the numbers may be due to the migration of more than seven million Venezuelans in the last decade, according to United Nations agencies – a figure that the government of President Nicolás Maduro considers exaggerated, although it has not provided an alternative number.

The attraction or the need to migrate, in the face of the complex humanitarian emergency – whose material basis begins with the loss of four-fifths of GDP in the period 2013-2021 – also mark the desertion of students and teachers.

In the three-year period ending in 2021 alone, 166,000 teachers (25 percent of the total) and 1.2 million students (15 percent of the number enrolled at the time), dropped out, according to a study by the private Andrés Bello Catholic University (Ucab) in Caracas, ranked as the top higher education center in the country.

Con la Escuela estimates that at least 40 percent of the teachers who have quit have already emigrated to other countries.

Educational coverage among the population aged three to 17 years continues to decline: 1.5 million children and adolescents between those ages were left out of the education system in the 2021-2022 period. The hardest hit group is children between three and five years of age, where coverage amounts to just 56 percent.

Public school teachers, whose basic salary barely exceeds 20 dollars per month, have held massive protests in Caracas and other cities in the country demanding a living wage and compliance with the provisions of their collective bargaining agreement. CREDIT: M. Chourio / Efecto Cocuyo

According to official figures, there are 29,400 educational institutions in the country, of which 24,400 are public, with 6.4 million students and 542,000 teachers; and 5,000 are private, with 1.2 million students and 121,000 teachers.

They cover three years of early education, six years of primary school and five years of secondary school. It was decreed 153 years ago that primary education should be free and compulsory.

According to Ucab and Con la Escuela, 85 percent of public schools do not have internet, 69 percent have acute shortages of electricity and 45 percent do not have running water. There are also deficiencies in health services (93 percent), laboratories (79 percent) and theater or music rooms (85 percent).

Surveying 79 public schools in seven states, Con la Escuela found that 52 percent of the bathrooms are in poor condition, 35 percent of the schools do not have enough bathrooms, and two percent have no bathrooms.

In 19 percent of the schools classes have been suspended due to the damage to the toilets, and 34 percent do not have sewage pipes.

“Water is the service that generates the most suspension of classes in Venezuela,” Pernalete said. “Classes can be held without electricity in the school, but you can’t do without water, and if the service fails in the community or in the whole town, then it’s hard for teachers to go to work or the families don’t send their children to school.”

The backpack decorated with the tricolor Venezuelan flag, which is given to primary school students in the country’s public schools, is often carried by immigrants, such as these walking along a Colombian highway, as many students and teachers, in addition to dropping out of school, go abroad. CREDIT: JRS

Con la Escuela also found that 36 percent of the classrooms are insufficient for the number of youngsters enrolled, 44 percent of the schools have classrooms in poor condition and 50 percent reported desks in poor condition.

Moreover, the Ucab investigation found “ghost schools”, which appear in the Education Ministry figures but are actually only empty shells.

“We have gone to the field with the list of these schools and we have found that they no longer exist. There are just four walls standing,” said Eduardo Cantera, director of Ucab’s Center for Educational Innovation.

From precariousness to backwardness

If the salary of a new teacher in a public school is 20 dollars a month, those who are five levels higher in the ranks do not earn much more, just 30 or 35 dollars, although they do receive some bonuses that are not part of the salary.

In Caracas, private schools – which serve from kindergarten to the end of high school – a teacher earns about 100, maybe 200 or more dollars, depending on seniority, hours of work, and the families’ ability to pay.

The drop in wages cuts across the entire labor spectrum. The basic minimum is around five dollars a month, although there are food bonuses, and the average salary of formal sector workers is around 100 dollars.

It is a difficult figure to reach for many of those who work in the informal sector of the economy – 60 percent of the country’s workers according to the Survey of Living Conditions that Ucab carried out in 2022 among 2,300 households across the country.

A view of the María Auxiliadora school in a middle and upper-middle class area of Caracas. In private education, families must make extraordinary contributions to improve teachers’ salaries and thus hold onto them. CREDIT: Oema

It is a consequence of the gigantic setback of the Venezuelan economy – GDP shrank by four-fifths between 2013 and 2021 – compounded by almost three years of hyperinflation between 2017 and 2020, and depreciation that liquefied the value of the local currency, the bolivar, and led to a costly de facto dollarization.

Although public education is formally free, parents must contribute a few dollars each month to help maintain the schools. In private schools, prices are raised under the guise of extraordinary fees – the only way to obtain funds that make it possible for them to hold onto their teachers.

Pernalete says that in the interior of the country many teachers have to walk up to an hour to get to school -there is no public transportation or they can’t afford to take it-, not to mention the lack of water or electricity in their homes, or the absence of or the poor quality of internet connection, if they can afford it, or the lack of other technological resources.

And if they do have internet, that’s not always the case for their students.

Damelis, a domestic worker who lives in a poor neighborhood in Los Teques, a city neighboring Caracas, has three children in school. Some teachers, she told IPS, assign homework through a WhatsApp group, but in her home no one has a computer, internet or smartphone.

What is the result? The initial reading assessment test that Ucab recently administered to 1,028 third grade students nationwide showed high oral and reading comprehension (82 and 85 percent, respectively), but low reading aloud and decoding skills (43 and 53 percent).

More than 40 percent of the students only read 64 words per minute or less, when they should read 85 or more. Con la Escuela applied the test to 364 students in Caracas and the neighboring state of Miranda, and the children only read 48 words per minute.

There is also discouragement among teachers. The main public teaching university in the country has almost no applicants. In the School of Education at Ucab, the first two years have been closed due to a lack of students, despite the fact that the university offers scholarships to those who want to train as teachers.

What can be done? “The physical recovery of schools should be one of the first steps to guarantee their fundamental function: to serve as a center for socialization and meeting of teachers, students and representatives around the teaching-learning process,” said Cantera.

“Otherwise, the consequences will be very serious for the country’s development,” he said.

Labrador said she observes “a gradual privatization of education, it is no longer truly free,” and the disparity between public and private education is increasing inequality in a country where in the second half of the 20th century public education stood out as the most powerful lever for social ascent.

Pernalete said it is a matter of complying with the 1999 Constitution, which stipulates that workers’ salaries must be sufficient to live on and establishes the government’s commitment to the right to education, as it states that education and work are the means for the realization of the government’s goals.

A group of girls attend a Shonglap session in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. The peer leader (left) is discussing adolescent legal rights. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
BHOLA, Bangladesh, Jul 9 2016 (IPS)

Four years ago, Farzana Aktar Ruma, now 18, was almost married off without her consent.

Her parents had settled on someone they considered a reasonably wealthy young man with a good family background, and did not want to miss the opportunity to wed their eldest daughter.

Farzana’s father, Mohammad Yusuf Ali, told IPS, “I thought it was a blessing when the proposal came to me from a family friend who said that the talented groom-to-be has his own business and ready home in the heart of a busy district town in Barisal, not far from where we live.”

No one defies Yusuf, an influential man in Char Nurul Amin village in Bhola, an island district in coastal Bangladesh, where most people depend on agriculture and fishing to make a living.

So, without consulting his daughter, Yusuf promised her as a bride and asked the family to prepare for the wedding."The power of knowledge is the key to success." -- Priyanka Rani Das, who quit school in 2012 due to extreme poverty but has since re-enrolled.

Farzana was only 14 years old and did not want to get married, but she didn’t know where to turn. Then Selina Aktar, who lives nearby, offered to help.

Aktar told IPS, “It was not surprising, but I was [still] shocked at how parents readily accept such marriage proposals without considering the age of their daughters.”

On the eve of the wedding, Aktar arranged a meeting with Farzana’s parents and asked them to call it off and let her stay in high school until she graduated.

Aktar is the facilitator of a seven-member Community Legal Services (CLS) organisation that advises students, parents and others on legal rights, including rights of adolescents.

“After several hours of discussions, we were able to convince Farzana’s parents that an educated girl was more precious than a girl thought to be a burden for her family at her early age,” Aktar said.

Abul Kaiser, a legal aid adviser with COAST, a leading NGO operating in the coastal regions of Bangladesh for more than three decades now, and whose work focuses mostly on social inequalities, told IPS, “The society is cursed with myths and most parents still biased on such medieval beliefs favour early marriage. A girl soon after her puberty is considered a burden to the family and parents look for opportunities to get rid her as soon as possible for so-called ‘protection’ of their daughters.”

To challenge the traditional beliefs that still haunt many communities in this modern age, COAST promotes informal learning through various programmes which they believe make a positive impact.

Executive Director Rezaul Karim Chowdhury told IPS, “The society needs to be empowered with information on the rights of such adolescent girls, and that is what we are facilitating. Most parents who may not have had opportunities of going to schools are expected to behave this way but our approach is to change this mindset so that a sense of acceptance exists.”

At Radio Meghna in south Bhola, Bangladesh, teenaged girls broadcast a programme aimed at preventing early marriage and staying in school. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Radio Meghna, a community radio with limited broadcast frequency operating since February 2015 in south Bhola’s Char Fassion, has been at the forefront of such advocacy programmes.

The station broadcasts targeted programmes focused on dispelling myths through informal learning programmes.

Fatema Aktar Champa, a producer at the radio station, told IPS, “We have a large audience and so we take the opportunity to educate adolescents and also their parents on merits and demerits of early marriage. On various occasions we invite experts almost every day to talk about reproductive health, adolescents’ legal rights, need for education and the values, social injustices and many more allied issues linked to challenges of adolescents.”

Unlike other community radio stations, Radio Meghna is completely run by a team of about 20 adolescent girls.

Khadiza Banu, one of the producers, told IPS, “There is a general feeling that the radio team at Meghna has a wide range of acceptance in the society. On many occasions we broadcast programmes just to build trust on parents’ decisions to prevent early marriage and allow continuing education.”

Education is key to development, and girl’s education is especially important since it is undermined by patriarchal cultural norms.

In Cox’s Bazar district, COAST has taken a different approach to empowering adolescent girls to demand their rights and offering livelihood opportunities.

Despite traditional beliefs that devalue girls’ education, especially in poor, rural areas, adolescent girls in many regions of Bangladesh are getting help from a programme called Shonglap – dialogue that calls for capacity building and developing occupational skills for marginalised groups in society.

Priyanka Rani Das, who quit school in 2012 due to extreme poverty, has joined Shonglap in South Delpara of Khurushkul in coastal Cox’s Bazar district.

Part of a group of 35 adolescent girls, Das, who lost her father in 2009, has been playing a leading role among the girls who meet six days a week in the Shonglap session held at a rented thatched home in a suburb of Delpara.

Shy and soft-spoken, Das told IPS, “I had to drop out of school because I was required to work as a domestic worker and support my family of six.”

A neighbour, Jahanara Begum, who had been attending informal classes at a Shonglap session nearby, convinced Das that completing her education would help her earn a much better living in the long run.

Das told IPS, “I realized that girls are behind and neglected in the man-dominated society because of our lack of knowledge. So I left the job and joined Shonglap where they have demonstrated that the power of knowledge is the key to success.”

Das is one of about 3,000 teenagers in Cox’s Bazaar who returned to school after taking basic refresher classes and life skills training like sewing, repairing electronic goods, rearing domestic animals, running small tea shops, pottery, wood works and other activities that generate income.

Jahangir Alam, programme manager of the Shonglap Programme of COAST that runs the programme in Cox’s Bazar told IPS, “Those who graduate are also supported with interest-free loans to start a business – and so far over 1,600 such girls are regular earning members supporting their families.”

Ruksana Aktar, peer leader of the group in Delpara, said, “Shonglap is basically a platform for less privileged adolescent girls to unite and gather strength through common dialogues. Such chemistry for 12 months gives them the moral strength to regain lost hopes.”

Mosammet Deena Islam, 17, comes from a family of cobblers and had never been to school. Islam always dreamt of pursuing an education but poverty prevented her from going to school, even though schooling is free in Bangladesh.

She joined Shonglap in Delpara and after a few months in the group, she enrolled in a state-run school where she now attends grade 9 classes.

Rashed K Chowdhury, executive director of Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), Bangladesh’s leading think-tank advocating for children’s education told IPS, “Educational exclusion for girls is a major problem, especially in socio-cultural context in Bangladesh. Girls are still married early despite stringent laws against such punishable acts.

“Adolescent girls are encouraged to stay home after puberty to ensure ‘security’ and the most common reason is girls are used as earning members to supplement family income.”

Chowdhury said, “I believe such an approach of building opportunities for youth entrepreneurship to poor girls (for income generating activities) who wish to continue education, can considerably change their lives.”

Shonglap, spread over 33 districts in Bangladesh through a network of over 4,600 such groups, aims to give voices to these neglected girls and enable them to negotiate their own rights for life.

The Shonglap programme is being implemented by COAST and other NGOs with funding from Stromme Foundation of Norway.

Poverty no longer explains the high secondary school dropout rate in Argentina, one of the richest countries in Latin America.

Experts say a growing number of adolescents express a lack of interest in education, a phenomenon that can be found across the region.

A recent survey of 13-15 year olds in eight Latin American countries, carried out by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), found that “lack of interest” was the top reason youngsters had left school.

According to Graduate XXI, an IDB initiative to prevent high school dropout in Latin America, nearly one out of every two students in Latin America does not finish secondary school.

Argentina’s Education Ministry has the goal of guaranteeing universal access to and completion of secondary education. Enrolment rose eight percent between the 2001 and 2010 censuses.

But school absenteeism and dropout are still a big challenge.

According to the authorities, 89 percent of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 are in high school. But the latest statistics show that many of them will not graduate on time.

However, two weeks after requesting precise official figures on school dropout rates, IPS had still not received a response.

A study published this year by the Ibero American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC) says economic difficulties have been replaced by a lack of interest as the main reason that teenagers are dropping out of school.

The report notes that 30 percent of youngsters who leave secondary school come from the middle and upper classes.

The issue was studied in 18 countries of the region by the Information System on Educational Trends in Latin America (SITEAL), developed by ISTEC and the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). The study was coordinated by Argentine experts Lilia Toranzos and Norberto López.

An extract on six countries, including Argentina, was later published.

“The statistics surprised us, because we were used to the traditional arguments explaining school desertion as being related to socioeconomic causes, access to the labour market, or teenage pregnancy. This means we have to rethink education,” Toranzos told IPS.

“In the past, the reasons kids dropped out were not linked to what school offered, but to the families themselves,” she said. But the new reasons mentioned in surveys indicate that schools are not catering properly to youngsters, she adding.

Toranzos said the growing access by adolescents to secondary education in the last few decades led to a much more heterogeneous student body than in the past, which poses new challenges for teachers. “The same old formulas are still followed, even when they don’t work,” she said.

“Forty years ago, the population that made it to secondary school was homogeneous and similar to the model of the urban middle-class student for whom the system was designed,” she said. “Now there is greater diversity, different family backgrounds and different interests, and schools continue to think in terms of a kind of student who is largely a thing of the past.”

In the face of the new diversity, many teachers believe the correct response is to “keep the bar high, because that way they can maintain the prestige of the school or of the teachers themselves. They don’t think that, if half of the students are failing, the strategy must not be working,” Toranzos said.

The director of the Fundación Cimientos, Agustina Cavanagh, concurred. The organisation she runs works with teenagers from poor families, providing support of different kinds, including scholarships, to students who would end up dropping out otherwise.

“They enroll, yes, but they have a hard time staying in school,” she told IPS. “They reach secondary school already behind in skills, and the challenge is just too big. They feel they are on their own, fail and repeat subjects, get frustrated, and start to skip class. They don’t see any reason to stay in school.

“In 1950, only 10 percent of adolescents enrolled in secondary school, compared to 90 or 95 percent today,” Cavanagh said. “But that huge leap was not accompanied by teaching approaches that sufficiently motivate students, which is why a lot of kids feel they can achieve more outside the classroom than in it.

“The contents of the curriculum do not really work to motivate them. They say they want to learn, but they describe school as a place that’s cold, unwelcoming, with broken glass in the windows. The thing is, although a great effort is made, there are schools with very little funding, which are attended by the kids with the greatest needs.”

The experts in Cimientos worked with young people to investigate what motivated them, and what hurdles they faced along the way. “For them, participation is a very important factor, but they say the teacher shouldn’t expect students to always follow the rule of raising their hands, because that complicates matters,” Cavanagh said.

Early parenthood is still a major reason that youngsters drop out of school. In the SITEAL study, the issue is included in the category of “domestic” problems, because teenagers also drop out of school to do housework and take care of younger siblings or elderly members of the family.

These factors account for 10 percent of school dropouts in the countries studied by SITEAL. And 97 percent of those who cite these reasons are female.

By contrast, 20 percent of youngsters leave school to work, and of that group, 70 percent are male.

But 31 percent, cutting across the entire socioeconomic spectrum, said they dropped out because of a lack of motivation or interest. That in fact was the number one reason cited.

Cavanagh said teachers continue to expect a different kind of student than the ones who show up in their classrooms. “It’s hard for them to understand that the educational backgrounds in the students’ homes vary greatly, that many come from poor families whose parents did not go to secondary school and whose families have no notion of what it’s like.”

In 2009, the centre-left government of Cristina Fernández introduced the Universal Child Allowance, a cash transfer to parents who are unemployed or work in the informal sector of the economy or as domestics, pregnant women, and disabled people of any age.

The allowance is 340 pesos (62 dollars) per month per child under 18, to be raised to
460 pesos (88 dollars) in June, and is conditional on school attendance and keeping up-to-date on vaccines and medical checkups. It is received by the families of more than 3.3 million children and adolescents in this country of 41 million people.

Another strong incentive for youngsters to stay in school came in 2010, when the Programa Conectar Igualdad (Connect Equality Programme) was launched.

So far, the programme has distributed 2.5 million laptops to public secondary school students around the country. The youngsters keep the laptops if they graduate, but have to give them back if they drop out.

But even with these measures, school dropout rates remain high.

The challenge, the experts say, is to make school more attractive and interesting, so classes are no longer seen as irrelevant, boring and pointless. “The question of incomes is no longer sufficient to explain this,” Cavanagh underscored.