Education

The quality of education in the region has undoubtedly room for improvement. The increase in educational coverage and public spending have been important, but equally important is raising the learning outcomes of children and youth  (Rucci 2018, 64)

School performance, secondary education and "NiNis"

Among the countries in the region that participate in the PISA test, there is an important difference in test results among 15-year-olds. In the Dominican Republic, 75.5% of students score below level 2 in all three tests: math, science and language. On the other hand, in Chile, only 23.5% of the students have a low performance in the three tests. Among the countries as a whole, the median is 40.65%.

Among Latin American youth, an average of 58.9% have completed intermediate education. By intermediate education, we mean upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education. This indicator shows great variation between countries. While in Chile 86.9% have completed secondary education, in Uruguay only 8.4%. We take this figure among young people between 20 and 24 years of age since it is assumed that the intermediate level of education should be completed at this age.

It is important to compare these figures with the percentage of young people who neither study nor work. We see that in general, the countries with the largest amount of young people neither studying nor working are the same countries with the lowest percentages of completed secondary education. This is the case for the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.