Data from UNESCO's new ERCE 2019 reveals that in 16 countries in the region, an average of 40% of third grade students and 60% of sixth graders have not acquired basic competencies in reading and math.
In addition, the study found that in most countries, there has not been significant progress in learning achievements among primary education students between 2013 and 2019. Some countries have seen reversals.
PARIS - Latin America and the Caribbean face an educational crisis; progress in basic learning achievements and the effective right to education continues to be pending tasks. Achievement levels are still deficient, and in the majority of countries improvement over time is not apparent.
These are the findings of the Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE), published on 30 November by UNESCO by the Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago) with representatives of the 16 participating countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
The data illustrates the urgency of mobilizing efforts to improve achievement levels among third and sixth-grade students in Latin America and the Caribbean, as a high proportion are falling behind. Among third-grade readers, 44,3% are in the lowest level of ability in reading; in math this figure reaches 47.7%. At sixth grade level, 23.3% of students are in the lowest achievement levels as are 49.2% in math and 37.7% in sciences.
The study reveals that third-grade students in the lowest level of reading achievement cannot locate information in a text unless it appears very prominently. Nor can they made inferences that require a comprehensive understanding of the text, even when information is repeated or highlighted in such a way that facilitates its identification. Sixth-grade students are unable to infer information when doing so would require a broad understanding, nor are they able to connect secondary or specific ideas presented in different parts of the text.
In mathematics, third grade students at the lowest performance level are not able to write natural numbers up to 9.999 or carry out polynomial factorization. Sixth-graders at this level are unable to resolve problems that require the interpretation of information or those that involve more than one operation including multiplication or division.