Good Practices in Basic Education in Latin America

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Good Practices inBasic Education inLatin America

• Alberto Pfeifer
• The Business Council of Latin America
• International Coordinator
• Social Outcomes of Learning
• OECD Conference
• Istanbul, Turkey
• June 28, 2007

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Latin America

• 600 million people
• 20 countries (CEAL Cuba Haiti)
• 21 million km2 (2x Europe)
• GDP 2.26 Trillion (exchange rate)4.5 Trillion
  (purchasing power parity)
• High income and social inequality
• Nicaragua 43.1- Bolivia 60.1 Turkey 38 USA
  40.8 HDI 1 Norway 25.8 176 Sierra Leone 62.9
  Brazil 58, Colombia 58.6, Mexico 49.6

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Gross National Income/Gross National Product
(GNI/GNP), per capita income in nominal terms and
adjusted to purchasing power p60arity (PPP),
Gross Domestic Product in PPP, a measurement of
inequality through the Gini index (the higher the
index the more unequal the income distribution
is), and the Human Development Index (HDI). GNI
statistics World Bank, 2005. GDP statistics come
from the International Monetary Fund, 2006. Gini
index and HDI UN Development Program.
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OECD Istanbul 2007

• What is progress?
• Wealth or quality of life?
• How do we measure happiness?

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Basic Education in Latin America

• Mediocre world standards (PISA)

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Basic Education in Latin America

• Quantity without Quality universal coverage
• Generational lag parents poorly educated
• Public budget is ok rising but expenditure is
  not efficient and inequitable
• Structural and systemic barriers bureaucracy,
  unions, lack of transparency
• Teacher capability formation training
• School management leadership training of
  directors and administrators community
  participation

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PREAL, 2005. Report Card on Basic Education in
Latin America.
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Public education should be more public

• Structural public good poor education causes
  the worst kind of externality
• its cheaper to invest than not to!
• Once in a lifetime investment
• One-generation change perennial residual effect
• Citizens (democracy), Consumers (market), Workers
  (producers), Beings (environment)

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Buenas Prácticas
Basic Education is so much important to be left
solely in the hands of governments Good
practices call for coalitions (PPP) to overcome
barriers raised by bureaucratic inertia, by
vested interests in educational systems and by
the lack of communitarian participation
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What can business do?

• At national and regional scale
• Beyond philanthropy
• No substitute for the State!
• Political and Social pressure set targets
  (national)
• Best Practices what has worked well and can be
  replicated (regional)

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Buenas Prácticas
Good Practices in Basic Education in Latin America
CEAL ILCE (Latin American Institute for
Educational Communication) Public-Private
Partnerships Replicability 200 cases
gt10/country 28 researchers from 10
countries 50 people actively engaged 18
countries x 3 54 bp
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Good Practices in Basic Education in Latin America

• Methodological Note
• Solid and diverse bank of case studies
• Best practices replicable (context adapted)
• Context, Input, Process, Product (Stufflebeam and
  Shinkfield, 1987)
• gt Basic education in schools
• gt Observable effects or consequences
• gt Systematic and replicable

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Buenas Prácticas
Kinds of PPP in Basic Education

• 1. Quality in Basic Education
• 2. Promotion of Equity and Social Justice by
  schooling
• 3. Improving management of schools
• 4. National evaluation systems
• 5. Efficacy with scarce resources
• 6. Formation and actualization of teachers
• 7. Innovation with ICTs in learning
• 8. Social inclusion with non-formal education

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Buenas Prácticas
Educational systems in Latin America are
Closed within themselves Avoid creative dialogue
with the outer world Predominantly
endogamic Refractory to evaluation systems,
particularly external evaluation
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Public education should be more public

• Transparency, Standards, Targets
• Good management
• Stable leadership
• Dialogue and Joint Action with Civil Society
• Free from Unions influence, vested interests,
  political and electoral moods

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Buenas Prácticas
Public Basic Education should be more public and
less governmental. Educational policies cant
be a monopoly of the Ministry of Education and of
teachers unions. Social participation and
societal pressure is increasing. Best practices
in basic education usually bring together
governments (local, national) and other social
actors (businesses, IOs, ONGs, local communities)
working at the same level.
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Public education should be more public

• Alliances between society and governments for
  Basic Education became a historical urgency for
  Latin America

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OECD Istanbul 2007

• What is progress?
• A well educated person can achieve social and
  economic progress by herself
• Wealth or quality of life?
• Wealthier people and higher standards of life are
  positively correlated with more and better
  education
• Happiness???
• Poor kids in good schools do better in life

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Shantytown in Cartagena, Colombia
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Business Initiatives

• CEAL http//ceal.ilce.edu.mx/
• ILCE http//www.ilce.edu.mx/
• PREAL www.preal.org
• Colombia www.fundacionexe.org.co
• Brazil www.todospelaeducacao.org.br
• www.fundacaolemann.org.br/conferencia/default_ing.
  asp
• Mexico ExEb Empresarios por la Educación
  Básica
• (Businessmen for Basic Education)

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THANK YOU!!!