UNESCO, UNICEF and ECLAC warn that at the current rate, Latin America and the Caribbean will not reach the education goals set by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Economic difficulties and the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the slowdown and stagnation in the progress of educational achievements between 2015 and 2021 with respect to the SDG4 targets of the Education 2030 Agenda. The crossroads of education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Regional monitoring report SDG4-Education 2030launched this September 8, 2022 in the framework of International Literacy Day.

The report, the result of collaboration between the Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago), the UNICEF Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNICEF LACRO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), identifies the challenges facing the region and the areas that require urgent attention by the countries to achieve the objectives set by SDG4. Due to the richness and breadth of information it contains, this report constitutes a key regional input for decision makers and for the Summit on the Transformation of Educationconvened by the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Conclusions

The publication synthesizes the cycle from 2015 to 2021 in five major regional trends. The first two highlight positive aspects in the evolution of some relevant education indicators.

The first trend expresses the continuity in the generalized growth of the educational level of the population, which is recognized in the increase in adult literacy levels and in the highest educational level reached by the population, indicators that have seen sustained progress for decades. For example, in the last ten years the number of illiterate people has been reduced by 7.7 million, although in rural areas 12.8% of the young and adult population is still illiterate.

Claudia Uribe, director of OREALC/UNESCO Santiago, indicated: “The evidence shows some positive news, but it reinforces the urgent need for greater investment and state capacities to lead the processes of improvement and systemic transformation of education to accelerate progress in the educational goals established in 2015”.

The second trend indicates a more recent improvement in certain educational indicators, combined with a reduction in inequalities. The increase in access to the pre-primary level stands out, more marked in rural sectors and in the quintile of the population with the lowest income. Completion of secondary education also improved, especially in the most vulnerable population. On the other hand, the proportion of students with older than expected ages at the primary level decreased from 14.4% to 7.8% between 2000 and 2020, while in lower secondary education it fell from 18.0% to 13, 0% between 2010 and 2020.

By 2019, the gross enrollment rate for pre-primary education (from three years to the beginning of primary school) was 77.5%, with constant growth over the last twenty years. “Between 2015 and 2020, enrollment in pre-primary education (from zero to two years) increased by 2.1 million boys and girls, a faster pace than in previous years. However, since the beginning of the pandemic, we have observed how early childhood has not been prioritized, which puts these advances at risk. We urge governments to invest in early childhood so that no child is left behind,” said Rada Noeva, Deputy Regional Director in charge of the UNICEF Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNICEF LACRO).

The following three trends show warning signs about the evolution of education indicators. This is the case of the third trend, which shows a slowdown in the improvement of certain indicators that had been progressing in recent decades. For example, between the years 2015 and 2020 the secondary education completion rate increased by 1.9 percentage points for the first cycle of secondary school and 2.1 for the second cycle, while in the period 2010-2015 these values they were 6.1 and 6.0 respectively.

The fourth trend indicates a worrying stagnation in key indicators of access to primary and secondary education and in evaluations of the quality of learning. The percentage of the population out of school in primary and secondary education has practically not changed during the period. “It is estimated that in 2019, 10.4 million children and young people were excluded from access to primary and secondary education in Latin America and the Caribbean, and these figures are prior to the pandemic, whose effects add greater fragility to the trajectories that guarantee permanence in the educational system,” said Alberto Arenas de Mesa, Director of the Social Development Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Learning achievements are threatened by serious setbacks as a result of the impact of the pandemic. In the comparison of the test results of the ERCE 2019 study of UNESCO with the previous assessment (TERCE 2013), the region failed to improve in the areas of reading, mathematics and science, which had occurred between 2006 and 2013. In secondary education, for the ten Latin American countries participating in the latest edition of PISA, in 2018, the results also show that the regional average did not change between 2015 and 2018 in the three areas.

The fifth trend indicates the increase of certain specific gaps at the tertiary level. Despite the fact that between 2015 and 2020 the expansive cycle of tertiary education continued, which in the last twenty years managed to incorporate 17 million students, this expansion is uneven. For example, access to tertiary education in the rural sector increased very slightly between 2015 and 2020. The differences in access between men and women have increased: if in the year 2000 the gross enrollment rate in higher education for both groups was between 21% and 25%, by 2020 the difference widened, with 61.7% for women and 46.8% for men. The access gap by socioeconomic level has also increased. In recent years, tertiary education has favored almost exclusively the middle and upper sectors.

Regarding the financing of education, a key dimension of educational policy and that accompanies the trends identified, 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have reduced their public investment in education since 2015. This stagnation increased with the COVID-19 crisis, which in 2020 alone implied an economic contraction of 7.7% of GDP. Between 2015 and 2019, educational spending as a percentage of total public spending fell from 16.1% to 15.4% in the region and, in relation to GDP, it fell from 4.5% to 4.3%.

The figures provided by this Report have been considered in the preparation of the Declaration of Buenos Aires (2022), within the framework of the III Regional Meeting of Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean. In said commitment, the educational authorities of the region recognized the challenges to advance towards the goals of SDG 4 by 2030 and assumed the need to promote a profound transformation that addresses the structural and systemic factors that have contributed to the debt and the educational injustice that drag the region.

The Summit on the Transformation of Educationwhich will take place on September 19, 2022 at the United Nations headquarters in New York, will provide a global space for continuity to take stock of the efforts needed to recover from pandemic-related learning losses, reimagine education systems to the world of today and tomorrow, and to revitalize national and global efforts to achieve SDG 4. This regional document is a contribution to these balances and to guide future policies.