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UNESCO calls for action in the education sector following the low results of Latin America and the Caribbean in PISA 2022
Confirming trends in previous studies, a stagnation in the learning achievements of students from countries in the region was evidenced, with poor performance in the PISA 2022 tests, particularly in Mathematics. More than half of the students fail to achieve basic competencies in the subject, requiring urgent measures.
The PISA 2022 Launch Event for Latin America and the Caribbean was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the UNESCO Regional Office in Santiago. It featured education specialists and government representatives from the region.
'PISA 2022 results reveal that, although Latin America and the Caribbean showed a lesser decline in the evaluated learning levels compared to other more developed regions of the world, a vast proportion of 15-year-olds in the region do not reach the minimum competencies in Mathematics, Science, and Language necessary to successfully face the challenges of today's world,' stated Claudia Uribe, director of the UNESCO Regional Office in Santiago, at the launch.
Uribe added: 'This international assessment also shows a widespread stagnation in most of the region's countries at very low levels of learning, a situation we had already been warning about since the UNESCO ERCE 2019 study even before the pandemic. It is therefore urgent for countries to take decisive and accurate actions to reverse this trend and ensure that students acquire the skills and competencies necessary to live, coexist, and work in a world with many challenges.'
The Comparative and Explanatory Regional Study (ERCE), conducted by UNESCO through the Latin American Laboratory for the Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE), has been evaluating primary students' learning in Latin America and the Caribbean for nearly 30 years to account for various aspects of education quality. LLECE is currently implementing a special post-pandemic assessment and preparing the next ERCE study, to be implemented in 2025.
According to the ERCE 2019 study, despite educational advances in the region over the past decades, signs of stagnation were already visible before the pandemic. This is also consistent with diagnoses from two studies released in 2022: the Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2022: Transforming education as a basis for sustainable development, by ECLAC, and the ODS4-Education 2030 Regional Monitoring Report, prepared by UNESCO, UNICEF, and ECLAC. After COVID-19, there was a high risk of a lost generation that needed to be urgently addressed, warned the Commission last year.
'The results of the 2022 PISA assessment confirm our worst fears about the general deterioration of learning of an entire generation of schoolchildren, not only in the region but around the world. The educational blackout in Latin America and the Caribbean caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest experienced worldwide, has left damages and scars, which unfortunately will be visible in the region for many more years,' warned José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC, at the event.
Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education and Skills at the OECD, noted that 'while we should be concerned about the general decline in performance across all participating PISA countries, our latest results show that, despite considerable challenges, some Latin American countries have made significant progress in terms of performance in Mathematics, Reading, and Science, while also improving in terms of equity and schooling.'
Detailed results
PISA assesses the ability of 15-year-olds (attending at least the seventh grade) to use their Reading, Mathematics, and Science knowledge and skills to face real-life challenges.
As reported during the event, about 690,000 15-year-old students from 81 countries and economies participated in PISA 2022, including 14 from Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
The average level of Latin America and the Caribbean remains significantly lower than the OECD average. In the region, three out of four students do not achieve minimum competencies in Mathematics (compared to 31% of the OECD), 55% lack basic Reading skills, and 57%, Science skills. All countries in the region are better positioned in Reading than in Mathematics and Science.
PISA 2022 recorded an unprecedented drop in OECD countries' performance in Mathematics and Reading. In contrast, the evolution of countries in the region is mixed.
In Mathematics, for example, Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay, and Peru saw their performance decrease; Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Panama remained stable; and the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, and Guatemala improved their performance.
There is also high educational performance inequality that harms students in more vulnerable situations: on average, 88% of the poorest students in the region underperform in Mathematics, compared to 55% among the richest.
In this regard, PISA 2022 reports a greater scarcity of human and pedagogical resources in the region's lower socioeconomic level schools.
According to ECLAC data, on average, in 2022, public spending on education in Latin America and the Caribbean met at least one of two global educational financing commitments: spending at least 4% of GDP or 15% of total public expenditure. However, the countries that invest the most in education in the region invest less than practically all OECD countries. On average, OECD countries invest nearly five times per student what Latin American and Caribbean countries do.
To address these and other challenges, at the end of January 2024, an extraordinary ministerial meeting of Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean will be held at the ECLAC headquarters. It is convened by UNESCO and the Ministry of Education of Chile and co-organized by the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), the World Bank, ECLAC, and UNICEF.
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