CAF and MEDUCA Launch Report: “Teachers and Teaching English in Latin America”
The report was designed with the aim of providing a more comprehensive profile of the number of English teachers in Latin America, and presented recommendations on how to improve the current situation. The document comes as a result of the report previously published by the Inter-American Dialogue in 2017: “Learning English in Latin America.
Educational authorities from Costa Rica, Chile, Panama and Uruguay met online to learn about the results of the report: “Teachers and Learning English in Latin America,” a document prepared by the Inter-American Dialogue and Pearson, which analyzed and showed strengths and areas of improvement in the implementation of English curricula, taking the experience in four Latin American countries as a representative sample.
The findings were presented in November, when local representation met at the CAF offices in Panama City and was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Education and Panama’s Bilingual Program.
The meeting at the Panama office was led by the Directorate of Sustainable Development Projects, North Region of CAF—development bank of Latin America—, which has been collaborating with Panama’s educational authorities for the implementation of the Panama Bilingual program. In February 2019, CAF confirmed its commitment to bilingual training in Panama by approving a USD 125 million operation to fund the implementation, expansion and improvement of the Panama Bilingual Program (PPB) for training and institutional strengthening, in an effort to ensure sustainability of the program.
The report was presented online from Washington D.C. and featured Ariel Fiszbein, director of the Inter-American Dialogue Education Program, Sebastián Rodríguez, Vice President of Pearson Hispanoamerica, Sarah Stanton, associate at the Inter-American Dialogue Education Program, Lucía Acurio, executive president of Propósito Peru and Rosa María Cely, director of the English Undergraduate Program and Bilingualism at the Pan-American University of Colombia.