Although in the last ten years the average expenditure per primary and secondary student increased by about 15% in OECD countries, most of their states do not report significant progress in education.
According to a ranking by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), in general, the abilities of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science have not improved.
The latest PISA assessment confirms that Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic – the only countries in the region to appear in its ranking – are far from the average results obtained by the OECD group of nations.
At the presentation of the 2018 Report, PISA Secretary-General Ángel Gurría explained that in relation to the 2015 data, only seven countries have made significant progress in the three areas analyzed, and only one of them is a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Elpais.com reports that, for Andreas Schleicher, director of the PISA program, education “… has not been up to the task. In recent years, ‘the real world and the digital world have integrated and it is clear that the world of education has not responded, it has not changed’.”
The countries of the region that have been taken into account for this ranking show distant results, as Costa Rica remains in a relatively average position, while Panama and the Dominican Republic are in the last places.
In reading, Costa Rica ranked 49th out of 79 countries examined, Panama ranked 71st and the Dominican Republic 76th.
In science, Costa Rica fell to 60th, Panama to 76th and the Dominican Republic to 78th. In the area of maths, Costa Rica ranked 63rd, and Panama and the Dominican Republic remained at 76th and 78th, respectively.
At the global level, the best-evaluated countries were China, Singapore, and Macao, as in all the areas examined they ranked 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
See the full report.
