Good Practices in Basic Education in Latin America

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. OECD Istanbul 2007 • What is progress? • Wealth or quality of life? • How do we measure happiness?

5. Basic Education in Latin America • Mediocre world standards (PISA)

7. 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

8. PREAL, 2005. Report Card on Basic Education in Latin America.

9. Public education should be more public • Structural public good: poor education causes the worst kind of externality • it’s 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)

10. 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

11. 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)

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

13. 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) => Basic education in schools => Observable effects or consequences => Systematic and replicable

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. Buenas Prácticas Public Basic Education should be more public and less governmental. Educational policies can’t be a monopoly of the Ministry of Education and of teacher’s 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.

18. Public education should be morepublic • Alliances between society and governments for Basic Education became a historical urgency for Latin America

19. 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

20. Shantytown in Cartagena, Colombia

21. 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)