Improving the Quality of Primary Education in Latin America and the Caribbean: Toward the 21st Century »

This report reviews selected issues and progress to date in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in improving primary education quality and provides suggestions and recommendations for the future. The report notes that 29% of all children in LAC primary schools are repeating their grade each year; and LAC spends US $2.5 million each year to teach some 20 million repeaters. Based on international studies of achievement, LAC countries do significantly worse than the developed world, and worse than many developing countries in Asia. The report emphasizes the importance of focusing on three key investments with potentially the most cost effective results in terms of increased learning and retention in school. The first is the provision of programs of early childhood development to the porest and most vulnerable elements of society. The second is that changing teachers' classroom behavior, through encouraging audience and context specific instruction, multi-grade teaching, new strategies for teaching reading, bilingual education, and flexible promotion policies. The third key action is the provision of adequate quantity and quality of textbooks and educational materials to children. To better measure progress LAC countries also need to devise a better system of monitoring key quality indicators, define and monitor minimum packages of educational inputs, through developing educational assessment systems, and through supporting relevant educational research. On average LAC countries ought to increase their spending on primary education by at least 15%, especially to provide adequate textbooks and targeted pre-schooling programs.