Education is one of the cornerstones of development and economic growth, and of reduction of social inequities and improvement of people’s quality of life. Therefore, Uruguay has decided to implement a battery of strategies to strengthen it and improve its quality and relevance.
While it is true that in recent decades the nation has achieved virtually universal access and completion rates in preschool and primary education, it still has some pending tasks, such as reducing the deficit in early childhood care and the high dropout rate of young people in mid-level education.
In Latin America, several governments have increased the number of years of compulsory education through various regulations in recent decades, and virtually all nations have today mandatory education up to mid-level. However, the region is still far from honoring that mandate. The completion rate for higher secondary education in Latin America is just 59% and varies significantly between countries. In particular, only 40% of young people in Uruguay manage to finish high school, only behind Guatemala and Honduras.
Cecilia Llambí, CAF’s education specialist for the southern region, stressed that the organization has focused its support to the Uruguayan government along three priority strategic lines: early childhood and initial education; mid-level education and reducing school dropout; and strengthening the link between education and work.
In all three areas, CAF organizes its support through two instruments:
- Financing education infrastructure under the public-private partnership (PPP) model, in order to reduce the supply gap for early childhood care, to universalize access and completion rate in mid-level education, and to address growing demand for technical and technological education.
- Cooperation and technical assistance to improve the quality and relevance of offerings, and to generate knowledge to scale incipient initiatives in the short and medium term.
Original source: CAF
Published on 28 June 2019
