Carrying on with the commentaries about that report published at the guardian, I would like to add some more information to confirm that Latin America have not a so failed education system as anybody could think at first glance. When compared with Africa, Asia or Arab States anyone will see that.
In the former post, I wrote about the school enrolment in the fundamental level, now I will give some data from the same report from Unesco about the other levels.
The secondary enrolment ratio is: Sub-saharan Africa 34%; Arab States 65%; L.A. 90%.
The tertiary enrolment ratio is: Sub-saharan Africa 6%; Arab States 22%; L.A. 35%. Developed countries 67%. I would like to clarify to everybody as well that the Unesco report used the data from Gini Index, which measure the inequality in the world is outdated, the most of the data is from 2001 and the newest is from 2005, so L.A. has been improving a lot since then, L.A. has been growing on average 5.5% in the last five years and without inflation which was one of the cause of rising inequalities in the 80` and 90` years. Another research about inequality in L.A. tell that the countries where the inequality more reduce from 2002 to 2006 were: 1º Ecuador, 2º Paraguay, 3º Brazil, 4º Bolivia, but again the datas are outdated, if there were datas from 2010, I sure that many L.A. countries would not been among the 15 most unequals countries of the world anymore. In the UNDP` report on L.A., the chief economist of UNDP for L.A. Luis Calva says that ¨ In order to break the ongoing cycle of inequality it is necessary to implement comprehensive social policies financed with more progressive fiscal arrangements.¨
Another part says that the tax rate in L.A. on average is 17% from GNP, less than half of the countries from OECD, in the USA is 27%. However there are two L. A. countries among the top ten countries with the highest tax rate of the world: Brazil and Argentina. In Brazil the tax rate is around 38%, so in the L.A. powerhouse, there is enough money to implement many good educational policies, it is
necessary good management of the tax money to use efficiently in order that we can see the results in our environment and in the international and national assessment educational tests, beside more investment in research and in the all levels of education. But to make this happen it is necessary that everybody does their part in the education system. I think that the Minas Gerais state has been doing its part, according to INEP` IDEB report, the best basic public education in Brazil is from MG and in my opinion all the Mineiros teachers should be proud of this achievement and keep the good work.
In conclusion, I think that the UNDP` report should have used updated data, the Gini Index is very outdated, if we consider all the growth and better social policies implemented in L.A. in the last six years, but is very good all the reports published by organizations from ONU, thanks to this reports we can have a idea of the world and what the governments are doing to improve the life of their citizens and comparing datas we can have a idea of the real progess among the countries.
