OECD report: Columbia

An OECD report describes the South American country Columbia as being in a state of change; it has made progress in many educational areas. In the last 20 years a duplication of enrolments in early childhood and tertiary education took place.

Another improvement appeared in the reading ability of students which showed one of the best increases among the OECD-countries according to the PISA-test of 2012. But there are still downsides in the Columbian education system. The organization criticizes the low expenses on education and performances of students in comparison with students worldwide: “Columbias educational success will be measured by progress of national standards in comparison to the world!”

There is a big need of improvement since 73% and 56% of the pupils underperform in math and science. Especially students from financially disadvantaged families don’t reach higher educational qualification. Furthermore, the 41% rate of repetition in schools needs to be lowered. However, education minister Gina Parody assures that she plans to increase the efforts of enhancing the education standards by increasing access to schools, by reducing dropout rates and by improving the overall quality of education.

Editorial team (sz)

Sources

Photo credit: Colombia in South America by TUBS / CC BY-SA 3.0
Information source: oecd.org