Education in Hispanic America

Education in Hispanic America
All the countries in the region profess to see education as a priority in achieving social and economic progress. Many countries have ambitious aspirational mission and vision statements on their Ministry websites - e.g. Paraguay, where the vision specifically includes references to promoting both ICT and social media for educational purposes.

The table below compares a range of education indicators across Hispanic American countries - the data is drawn from UNESCO Institute for Statistics:

In the table notably high scores are highlighted in green and notably low scores in red.


 * Average years of schooling for adults: a useful measure of the country's starting point for current and future education development. Note the high scores for Panama and Argentina and the very low scores for three Central American countries - Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras.
 * Duration of compulsory education: whilst most countries currently make this 8 - 11 years, note the high scores for Guatemala (starting from a very low adult base) and Peru and the low scores for three Central American countries (Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama and the below average score for Venezuela.
 * Years of primary education: universally six years, except in Colombia.
 * Years of secondary education: again, six years in the majority of countries, but in none of them is more than the first three years compulsory.
 * Primary completion rate: still below 80% in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, but around 90% or above in all other countries.
 * Enrolment rate for secondary education: there are wide variations here, with notably low transition rates (below 40%) in three Central American countries: Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador contrasting with transition by more than two thirds of young people in Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia.
 * Tertiary enrolments: again, there are wide variations, with scores of 10% or below in Guatemala and Paraguay, contrasting with almost half the population involved in tertiary study in Argentina. However, tertiary enrolments cover all education, vocational and professional training beyond the school system; whilst many will be studying at degree level, many others will be undertaking vocational training at intermediate or technician levels.
 * Education spending: there are quite wide variations in education spending, both as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of total government expenditure. Several countries have extensive provision of private schools, colleges and universities and it is not entirely clear from the statistical data how this is accounted for. Note, however, the low scores in both columns for Ecuador, which is not one of the more economically advanced countries and Uruguay, which is one of the most prosperous.  By way of contrast, El Salvador only spends 2.9% of GDP on education, but this amounts to 20% of total govenment expenditure.  Bolivia has notably high scores on both measures.