Inequality: a threat to Education For All in Latin America and the Caribbean; Regional launch of the 2013/2014 EFA report in Mexico
Latin America and the Caribbean is a region that continues to achieve progress towards the objectives of Education For All. However, countries continue to harbour major inequality within their borders, to the detriment of their most vulnerable groups. These were just some of the findings about Latin America and the Caribbean included in the 2013-2014 Education For All Global Monitoring Report, presented on 29 January, 2014, in Mexico City.
This global benchmark report in the field is published each year by UNESCO. The 2013/2014 edition, titled “Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all”, placed special emphasis on the need to promote the formation of an effective and motivated teaching community in order to improve learning indices and to continue onward towards achieving the Education For All goals.
Around the world, 250 million children – most of them from marginalised sectors – fail to acquire even basic knowledge. The Report explains how policy makers can support and develop quality education systems for the world’s children. It also documents progress towards achieving the Education For All Goals and describes the most successful experiences, with a view to establishing new education programmes in the post-2015 period.
Significant advances have been made in Latin America and the Caribbean, with no extreme disparities against girls in primary or secondary schooling. Although preschool education has expanded considerably in the region since 2000, the first Education For All goal (early childhood care and education) is still far from being achieved in many countries. Less progress has been achieved in universalising primary schooling (EFA Goal 2), with coverage remaining stable at between 94% and 95%. Most countries in the region have achieved this goal or expect to, but several are still a long way off.
In EFA goal 3, education and training for young people and adults, the region has made significant comparative advances; however, children should finish the first cycle of secondary education acquiring basic skills, an objective that most countries have failed to meet. Projections also indicate that the region will fail to meet goal 4, adult literacy. Even though adult illiteracy has dropped by 16% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 35 million adults in the region still do not know how to read.
The regional overview in the report also calls for urgent and special attention to EFA goal 6, education quality, and in particular the need to reach the most disadvantaged, as the situation has already developed into a learning crisis. This means that in many countries in the region, children do not even acquire basic skills in reading and arithmetic. This situation is exacerbated by the problem of teachers with no professional certification, a major problem in several countries in the region.
The launch event was attended by the directors of the UNESCO office in Mexico City and the Regional Bureau of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (based in Santiago de Chile), international UNESCO experts, and high ranking officials from Mexico’s Department of Public Education.
More information about the worldwide launch:
