Overview
- Speakers at CADE Educación, held Aug. 12–13, highlighted national assessment results showing only about one in ten fifth‑year secondary students reach a satisfactory level in reading and mathematics.
- Panelists reported that public education funding roughly doubled since 2015 yet much of the increase went to salaries while infrastructure lagged, leaving about 30% of school buildings at risk of collapse and many rural schools without basic services or working computers.
- Experts said the core problem is weak management and policy instability rather than a lack of money, citing poor execution of projects, frequent ministerial turnover and the need for multi‑year, stable education plans.
- Discussion of artificial intelligence stressed high teacher uptake but low pedagogical integration, with roughly nine in ten teachers using AI tools but only about 8% embedding them into classroom methods, prompting calls for targeted training and ethical guidelines.
- Speakers urged scaling proven local programs, linking teacher career progression to learning outcomes and using public‑private execution models to rebuild infrastructure, and some analysts said focused reforms could recover pre‑pandemic learning levels in about five years.