Who are we?

We are a group of university students and young professionals from Latin America who lead and participate in different projects and social initiatives in order to contribute to positive change in our respective countries. We have been participants in the SUSI Programs of 2016, 2017 and 2019, in which we discovered and developed skills such as leadership and teamwork to put them at service of our communities in order to become change makers with the conviction to contribute to the progress and well-being of Latin America from our areas of work encouraging youth to join this cause.

The Issue: Low Quality Education

As a group, the main issue we have identified in the current Latin-American social context is in the area of education. The educational quality in Latin America has been neglected for many years in the region by both the rulers and the citizens. This issue involves facts that cannot be denied such as:

1. There is not enough investment in Early Education (Pre-k and Kindergarten).

2. Education is not valued as a priority by the overall citizenship.

3. Teachers' work is undervalued at a social level given the low salaries and too few incentives to improve their performance.

4. There is a lack of connection between different cultures, and so education must help on connecting those different cultures as indigenous groups, artists, etc. We need more participation of the citizenship to demand better quality of education.

5. There is poor networking among existing social entrepreneurship programs linked to education.

6. There is a gap between the public and private educational schools in terms of infrastructure and teaching quality.

7. Outdated curriculum structure (not proper enough for our current and future challenges, specially in the public system).

8. Latin American countries have scored low in international exams and even many countries in the regions do not even participate in these exams.

We consider providing quality education access and universal coverage for people is the key point to improve other social-related current issues such as environmental crisis, gender inequality, migration, poverty, unemployment, crime, injustice, etc.

Policy Ideas

1. To demand more investment in Early Education.

2. To make awareness campaigns so that the citizens know what is being taught to their children and demand more quality education.

3. To improve the incomes among professors according to their skills as incentive as well as recognizing the important role that they play in society.

4. To establish a local government bureau in charge of linking socio-educational entrepreneurship programs and networking.

5. To found social entrepreneurship initiatives, especially in education.

6. To increase infrastructure, increase the coverage in public education, and improve the quality of training for teachers. Also ensure the access to internet and technological devices to study for all the population.

7. To renovate the curriculum of the primary and middle education, incorporating topics such as: LGTBQ rights, Women's leadership, Financial Education, Environmental Issues, etc. Furthermore, focus the curriculum on Civic Education, Science and Innovation, National and International Cultures.

8. To make mandatory the participation of Latin-American countries in International tests to measure the level of learning of students in order to check where they are in terms of educational performance.

Learn more about the situation with these readings in Spanish

¡BASTA DE HISTORIAS! La obsesión latinoamericana con el pasado y las 12 claves del futuro, de Andrés Oppenheimer: http://www.colsanignacio.org/profesores/12oppen.pdf

Monografia: Comparación de los sistemas educativos latinoamericanos, de Alfonso Vigo Quiñones: https://www.monografias.com/trabajos-pdf5/comparacion-sistemas-educativos-latinoamericanos/comparacion-sistemas-educativos-latinoamericanos.shtml

Situación Educativa de América Latina y el Caribe: Hacia la educación de calidad para todos al 2015, de la UNESCO: http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/FIELD/Santiago/images/SITIED-espanol.pdf

Pruebas PISA: qué dice de la educación en América Latina los malos resultados obtenidos por los países de la región, de Fernanda Paúl de BBC Mundo: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-50685470

El sistema educativo en América Latina, de Ricardo Nassif, Germán W. Rama y Juan Carlos Tedesco, U NESCO - CEPAL - PNUD: https://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/8549/S37019N268.pdf?sequence=1

Articulo “La educación en América Latina enfrenta una crisis silenciosa, que con el tiempo se volverá estridente” del Banco Mundial: https://www.bancomundial.org/es/news/feature/2020/06/01/covid19-coronavirus-educacion-america-latina