Three out of four adolescents in Latin America lack basic mathematical skills

They describe it as a “profound learning crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank (WB) analyzed the results of the PISA report in a joint publication and found that the pandemic had a negative impact on education in the region, so the majority of students from 15 years have not acquired the fundamental skills they need.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an initiative of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), measures what 15-year-old students around the world know and can do.

The triennial test, which launched in 2000, measures not only whether students can reproduce what they have learned but how well they can apply their knowledge in unfamiliar environments, in and out of school.

This week, within the framework of the IDB Annual Meetings in the Dominican Republic, the organization presented the report

in conjunction with the World Bank.

The authors found that three out of four 15-year-olds in the region are unable to demonstrate basic-level mathematics skills, and more than half are unable to demonstrate basic reading proficiency.

“There is a profound learning crisis,” the 76-page report says, “as the majority of 15-year-old students have not acquired the fundamental skills they need.”

Furthermore, educational opportunities are highly unequal, the specialists stated in the report.

“Learning trends are not moving in the right direction, and countries in the region need to address disparities in achievement and equity, and also dedicate more resources to using technology as an educational tool,” they added.

To raise the educational level in the region, the authors describe it as “urgent” to intervene at the secondary level to prioritize the recovery of learning losses and the accelerated acquisition of foundational skills in mathematics.

Although countries in the region obtained somewhat better results in reading and science than in mathematics, half of the students in LAC countries continued to lag behind in these subjects as well.

“The evidence suggests that teaching at the appropriate level and tutoring interventions, possibly using technology tools applied to education, can help,” they say.

On average, OECD countries, which include the largest economies in the world, invest three times more per student than Latin American countries throughout their educational career: $102,612 versus $36,972 per student.

“However, what counts is not just the amount of the investment, but how the money is spent.

In all LAC countries that have data, performance in mathematics is lower than what the level of investment predicts,” says the report published on Monday.

The IDB and the World Bank also recommend focusing support, since certain groups of students need specific support to improve.

In most Latin American countries, the poorest students are more likely to perform poorly, and that proportion has remained unchanged after the pandemic.

“Providing the poorest students with more flexible learning opportunities, access to the internet and digital devices to accelerate their learning, and psychosocial support can help,” the report says.

A third recommendation in the report is to invest in the recovery of reading and mathematics learning for elementary students, since they were among the most severely affected by the pandemic.

Primary students Governments must also promote programs or public policies that reduce dropouts and repetition, especially when it comes to male students, since they are more likely to drop out of school or repeat the year than women.

“Early warning systems have shown positive results in some contexts in the region, and could help identify students at risk and support them with interventions adapted to their needs,” the report says.

Principals in public and poorer schools are twice as likely to report a lack of access to digital resources and devices than principals in private and wealthier schools, the report's authors found.

The 2022 round of PISA is the first international assessment of learning after the pandemic, so it paints a picture of how students were learning while schools were closed.

A total of 14 Latin American countries participated in 2022, a record for the region.