Education and Inequality in Latin America

Latin America has shown great progress in average education attainments during the past few decades. Most countries are close to achieving universal access to primary education and some of them have the majority of the younger generations entering the secondary level.  However, these same developments in education coverage and access have driven to an important stratification of learning achievements and attainments within the education systems. In spite of the enormous expectations associated with education as the principal mean for social mobility, this region of the world has not been able to transform the education system in a strong mechanism to equalize opportunities. This is partly related to the importance that household social and economic conditions have in determining educational achievements. Most of the time, this inequality is also reflected in a marked segmentation of the quality and efficiency of the education offer.

This paper examines the development of the main education indicators in the past decade among Latin American countries. Data from the countries’ household surveys is used to describe the main attainment indicators (coverage and conclusion by education levels and social groups); and data from some international standardized tests (such as PISA and ICCS) is used to discuss learning achievement inequalities. The document identifies the main challenges Latin American countries have in terms of education development and the reduction of inequality.