Education policies to close main gaps in development and human capital training in Uruguay

While it is true that in recent decades the nation has achieved virtually universal access and completion rates in preschool and primary education, it still has some pending tasks, such as reducing the deficit in early childhood care and the high dropout rate of young people in mid-level education. 

In Latin America, several governments have increased the number of years of compulsory education through various regulations in recent decades, and virtually all nations have today mandatory education up to mid-level. However, the region is still far from honoring that mandate. The completion rate for higher secondary education in Latin America is just 59% and varies significantly between countries. In particular, only 40% of young people in Uruguay manage to finish high school, only behind Guatemala and Honduras (CAF, 2018).

Reasons for dropping out vary betweenmen and women. For men, economic reasons weigh heavily, while the main reason for women is pregnancy or care of children or relatives. However, for both men and women, the importance of school-related reasons has increased, which puts the focus back on the quality and relevance of education, according to CAF’s 2016 Economy and Development Report. To address the latter, the region’s education systems have implemented multiple responses, from policies focused on identifying and serving students at increased dropout risk, to reforms that seek to improve the school environment and the quality of curriculum and pedagogy in order to increase the relevance and appeal of education compared to the alternative of entering the labor market.

With regard to early childhood care, the region has responded by increasing the provision of early education and care services, in order to improve access, particularly at the ages of 4 and 5. However, in addition to a persisting significant coverage gap, ensuring a quality service offering remains one of the most important challenges.

Cecilia Llambí, CAF’s education specialist for the southern region, stressed that the organization has focused its support to the Uruguayan government along three priority strategic lines: early childhood and initial education; mid-level education and reducing school dropout; and strengthening the link between education and work.  

In all three areas, CAF organizes its support through two instruments:

• Financing education infrastructure under the public-private partnership (PPP) model, in order to reduce the supply gap for early childhood care, to universalize access and completion rate in mid-level education, and to address growing demand for technical and technological education.
  
  
• Cooperation and technical assistance to improve the quality and relevance of offerings, and to generate knowledge to scale incipient initiatives in the short and medium term.

As part of the efforts undertaken to improve early education, CAF recently approved the financing of the first educational PPP promoted by the Uruguayan government, which aims to build new early childhood and initial education infrastructure, through the design, construction, maintenance and operation of 59 centers. These facilities will be divided into 44 preschools and 15 Child and Family Care Centers (CAIFs), which will be built in 49 different locations.

While this investment will lead to a significant increase in coverage, a positive impact on child development depends not only on providing the infrastructure, but ensuring basic standards of structural and process quality of the services provided. In this sense, together with public institutions such as the Fiscal Studies Center (CEF) and Uruguay’s Children and Adolescents’ Institute (INAU), CAF is sponsoring a study on the efficiency and quality of public spending in early childhood. The initiative seeks to develop a detailed spending data base for CAIF centers and Early Childhood Care Centers (CAPIs), analyze their efficiency and their link to quality of services provided by the various schools and advance on recommendations along the main lines of action.

Finally, CAF is also working with the Canelones municipality and UNICEF on a comprehensive early childhood care project, which will also include nutrition components and emphasize the strengthening of local management. It should be noted that 4 of the 15 CAIF centers included in the aforementioned PPP project are located in the Canelones department.

In youth education initiatives, coordinated actions have been promoted with the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP) to prevent school dropout and promote the reintegration of students into the system. Some of these actions include identifying at-risk students through early warning and support modules in high schools, and reducing the rigidity of the curriculum structure through the design of new alternatives.

In the same vein, CAF has encouraged studies and seminars to improve the implementation of initiatives and reduce school dropout, and has attracted global best practices to organize apprenticeships to advance policy implementation to address this problem in Uruguay.

As for the link between the skills learned in schools and those required in the labor market, Latin American companies generally find difficulties in accessing advanced human capital that allows them to grow at the same rate as their counterparts in more developed economies. In this scenario, Uruguay is no exception. As part of the initiatives put forward in the nation to reverse this situation, CAF is working with the National Institute of Employment and Vocational Training (INEFOP) and the Inter-Agency Commission on Education and Labor to define a technical cooperation proposal to strengthen the technical education and vocational training system. First, a roadmap for the definition and implementation of the national qualifications framework will be developed, and then, the design and pilot implementation of dual learning or “quality learning” proposals will be supported, combining structured training at school and at work, in order to draw lessons that can be scaled as a nationwide policy. This work is a continuation of an initial project supported by CAF for the design and systematization of ANIMA–TEC, a pilot initiative developed by the civil society, with government endorsement, which organized a dual technological high school diploma for vulnerable young people between the ages of 15 and 18. 

In the same vein, the “Education and Work” Seminar was also recently organized in Montevideo, in partnership with UNICEF, the International Labour Organization (ILO), UNESCO, the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI), the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, with a view to contributing to sectoral dialogue, promoting a forum for exchange and providing knowledge to decision-makers, policy leaders and civil society representatives on examples of reforms, policies and programs that have achieved positive results in terms of articulation between adolescent and youth education and training of skills for life and work; from innovations developed in Uruguay, to experiences from other Latin American countries and other regions. 

In addition, noteworthy is that the second project to finance educational infrastructure through a PPP is in the assessment phase, which focuses on the construction, maintenance and operation of 42 educational and sports centers with a focus on technical schools and technology hubs located in 15 of the nation’s 19 departments. 

Finally, cooperation with the Ceibal Plan is being evaluated, aimed at outlining a work proposal in computational thinking, a project that Ceibal is beginning to implement as a pilot project in the country. The proposal includes different actions that seek to measure the first results of the initiative, as well as to identify and quantify actions necessary to scale this pilot proposal. This will produce a strategy that will make it easier to identify the funding required for scalability. It should be mentioned that CAF is already supporting an initiative to develop computational thinking in high schools in Argentina, through the PROGRAM.AR initiative (currently partners of the Ceibal Plan), as part of the credit operation to strengthen entrepreneurial capacity. 

Thus, the institution continues to provide technical and financial assistance for the development of initiatives that increase access to education, improve quality of education at all levels and strengthen the relevance of educational offerings, in order to promote social inclusion of the most vulnerable groups and the productive transformation of Latin America.