El Salvador Perspectives

February 16 is the 183rd anniversary of the founding of the University of El Salvador .  The University, known locally as either "the National" or "UES," is the oldest and only public university in El Salvador.  The UES enrolls more than 50,000 students at its central campus in San Salvador, with additional students taking classes at 3 small locations around the country.  Today, however, the university is struggling as the government fails to deliver millions in budgeted funding and usurps university facilities for other purposes.    Throughout much of its 183 years the University has had a precarious existence.  During the turbulent 1970s and the civil war of the 1980s, the school was shut down for years at a time as the military governments saw students and faculty as left-wing agitators. In 1986, the earthquake which hit San Salvador damaged much of the university infrastructure.  Following the civil war, the university gradually got back on its fe...

El Salvador's public school year began on February 6 with  1.2 million students enrolled .  The country has approximately 5100 public schools, and this was the first year since 2020 in which classes returned to being fully in person.  Today we look at the state of education in El Salvador at the start of the 2023 school year. Enrollment The overall number of students enrolled in schools has  declined by 23%  since 2014.  In 2014, there were 1,647,383 students enrolled compared to 1,269,756 in 2022.    Enrollment has declined both because of declining numbers of school age children in the country, but also because of increases in the number of children simply not enrolled in a school.  The percentage of children who are actually enrolled in school has declined in some age ranges, but improved in others.  The following chart shows the percentage of children who are not enrolled in school for any given age.   (Higher numbers are w...

Since the middle of March, schools at all levels in El Salvador have not had in-person classroom learning in order to avoid the spread of the coronavirus in the country.  This will continue for months more as the Ministry of Education has announced that public schools will not have resume in person during this calendar year.   In a country where internet access is not universal, and where most people access any online content only over cell phones, the switch to virtual learning has been a challenge.   A recent article from FocosTV reported that only 1 in 10 Salvadoran households have an internet-connected computer according to government statistics, but 9 of 10 have a cellphone which they now use for access to schooling. Faced with this reality, most public school interaction between teachers and students occurs through WhatsApp, the widely used smartphone app.  25,000 teachers across El Salvador are using the chat application in order to communicate le...

A prime cause for women to face lives in poverty was highlighted by Al Jazeera in an article titled  The 'vicious cycle' driving teen pregnancy in El Salvador .   The article is a lengthy overview of how pregnancy at a young age, whether caused by lack of sexual education, lack of access to contraceptives, abuse or rape, traps young women in a cycle of poverty.   The scope of the problem: Adolescents comprise one in three pregnancies in El Salvador. For girls who do become pregnant, dropping out of school is one of their only options.  "In many cases, school principals say, 'We don't want them here. It will motivate other children to become pregnant,'" said Erika Guevara, a Ciudad Mujer Programmes Coordinator.  According to the United Nations, 60 percent of young girls in El Salvador who become pregnant between the ages of 10 and 17 had already dropped out of school before becoming pregnant. Of those who were in school when they got pregnant, th...

A proposed law was introduced in August  in El Salvador's National Assembly to provide programs in schools concerning responsible sexuality and self-worth in order to combat the problem of teen pregnancy in the county.  The draft law defined the programs' scope as dealing with biological, psychological, social, emotional and ethical issues of sexuality within a framework of human rights, prioritizing the elimination of the culture of violence.  El Salvador's legislators quickly tabled the proposed law    That was a mistake.  The problem of teen (and younger) pregnancy in El Salvador is a serious one .   According to the Ministry of Health, between 2013 and 2017, more than 900 girls between the ages of 10 and 17 gave birth each month -- 30 per day.    Between 2013 and 2015, one out of every three pregnancies in El Salvador involved an adolescent mother. On average, 69 girls or adolescents became pregnant per day in 2015, or one pregn...

El Salvador's public education system falls woefully short of what the country and its children require.   But an innovative school in the rural department of Morazán is showing that a different model of education, focused on problem-solving, empowerment and health can produce dramatically better results. The Center for Integrated Development Amún Shéa in Perquín, Morazán, achieved a score of 7.88 in the 2017 national standardized test of learning and skills, PAES. This is the Salvadoran standardized test for high school students and this score was much higher than the national average.  2017 was the school's first year of participation. From the blog of the school's founder, Ron Brenneman: Amún Shéa is a program of Perkin Educational Opportunities Foundation, PEOF and was created with the aim of supporting the socioeconomic development of northern Morazán through human capacity building, and has adopted a methodology of Problem Based Learning (PBL) throug...

At the end of November, the online periodical El Faro published on its website a wide-ranging investigation titled X-Ray of an Educational System in Ruins.    With data, video, interviews and analysis, El Faro presents a comprehensive look at an educational system which is largely failing to provide the education needed by the country's children. Although annual spending to provide school uniforms, shoes, school supplies and a meager daily meal have helped boost attendance levels in the schools since 2009, the government has made little progress in actually investing in what is taught in those schools.  Yearly testing by the government of high school students shows the lack of academic progress year over year. 84% of school students in the country attend one of the 5136 public schools in El Salvador. Each year the government gives a test to all high school students finishing their final year (the "PAES").   This year's scores were released on November 1...

Statistics from El Salvador's Ministry of Education show that the majority of students in El Salvador who complete sixth grade will not complete high school (bachillerato) .   As reported in La Presna Grafica , only 42.6% of students who were in sixth grade in 2011 were still in school in 2016.   The national class of approximately 135 thousand sixth graders had dropped to 58 thousand still in school.  This drop out rate creates significant challenges for the students to successfully earn a future living and for the country to have an educated work force which can produce economic growth. There are two primary reasons that youth fail to continue school according to officials cited by La Prensa Grafica.  The first is poverty.   Poor students are often forced to leave their schooling in order to work and help support their family.   Rural youth in poor families may be needed to work in the fields.   The second reason is violence and the lack of securi...

The government of El Salvador has announced that it is going to target millions of dollars at the “Ni-Ni” population of El Salvador. “Ni-Ni” refers to those young people who are neither in school nor studying. (Ni estudian, ni trabajan). The program will include job-training and economic support for targeted youth, with a goal of eventually creating employment for 15,000 youth. The government is using funding designated for violence reduction efforts, arguing that the creation of job opportunities for young people is essential for reducing the problem of criminal violence in the country. The Ni-Ni support program is being roundly criticized by conservative ARENA politicians and business interests who assert it is just a populist subsidy which will not generate employment. They would prefer that the government stimulate the economy to create jobs, which they say will provide greater opportunity for youth. El Salvador’s Roman Catholic archbishop, in contrast, has prais...

This week marks the beginning of a new school year for most students in El Salvador.   In an article titled   Education Reform in El Salvador: Progress and Challenges , the Council on Hemispheric Affairs looked at the state of the education system where those students will be learning.   As the COHA article points out, there are many challenges facing education in El Salvador: Today, El Salvador has a population of about 6.1 million. Some 1,470,000 students were enrolled in primary and secondary school in 2014. That El Salvador has a large student population and a significant number of young people not attending school puts considerable pressure on the government to dedicate resources to improve school infrastructure, enrollment rates and security for students. Improving school infrastructure remains a challenge. Students need a comfortable environment conducive to learning, but schools are chronically overcrowded. In rural areas, some children do not attend becau...

The  Ministry of Education  in El Salvador is rolling out a program titled "A Boy, A Girl, A Computer" in the public schools.   The government of El Salvador is receiving from Venezuela 50,000 "Lempitas" notebook computers through the  Alba Foundation  which is funded with Venezuelan oil revenue. From  TeleSur : With the program “One kid, one computer” the Salvadoran government aims at delivering computers to over 2,500 public schools throughout this year. “Today is a historical day for #ElSalvador's Education System. We begin the program: one girl, one boy, one computer,” [president] Sanchez Ceren wrote on his Twitter account....  By the end of the year, the Salvadoran government aims at providing computers to 84,396 students and 1,000 teachers. The program also contemplates providing internet access to all the public schools in the country.  Taiwan and the United Nations Development Program are also helping El Salvador in the impl...

Today on the front page of the Ministry of Education website , the government was featuring for download this popular version of the history of the 1981 Massacre at El Mozote titled El Mozote:  Lucha por la verdad y la justicia  --   El Mozote: The struggle for truth and justice . The book was published by Tutela Legal, the (former) human rights office of the archdiocese of San Salvador, and is illustrated by drawings from the organization for popular education known as Equipo Maiz . It is a small step, and yet an important step, to encourage the telling of the actual history of El Salvador's civil war in its schools.

An   article  on InfoSurHoy.com discusses a security program in El Salvador which sends police and the armed forces to schools in an attempt to keep students and teachers safe from violence: To stem the rising tide of violence washing over the country’s educational institutions, El Salvador’s National Civil Police (PNC) is increasing its focus on bolstering security at schools throughout the Central American nation, beginning with those in areas with the most crime....  The PNC will train an additional 260 officers to join the 130 who already are part of the Safe Schools program. The officers will be trained in police ethics, human rights, protection of constitutional rights, interventions and traffic and road safety. However, the Ministry of Education estimated 1,000 officers are needed to provide adequate protection nationwide. Up to two officers are assigned to a school, depending on its enrollment and number of crimes committed in the area. The program is st...

PBS New Hour aired a   video report this week on a growing epidemic of tooth decay among El Salvador's children. From the transcript of the report: CARL NASMAN: One of the first to notice a decline in dental health was Karen Sokal-Gutierrez, a pediatrician and professor at U.C. Berkeley. She showed us pictures from 30 years ago, when kids had healthy teeth. But just one generation later, the photos look different. DR. KAREN SOKAL-GUTIERREZ: This is a child who has all of the teeth on the bottom rotten and all of the teeth on the top. Years later, when I go into a village and the kid would come flock around us and hug us and smile, that's when I saw, oh, my God, their teeth are all black and rotten. I have never seen this before. What happened? CARL NASMAN: Professor Gutierrez and her team of volunteers work on the ground in El Salvador, training health workers and donating supplies. She estimates that 85 percent of kids in rural areas of El Salvador ...

This week El Salvador's Education ministry discussed an ambitious program aimed eventually to have laptop computers in the hands of 800,000 students in poor rural schools. The computers come from the One Laptop Per Child initiative which was formed to place low cost durable laptop computers in the hands of children to jump start education and learning. The XO computer from OLPC is designed specifically for use by children in poor communities around the world. According to a news report , the government project, called Closing the Knowledge Gap, currently has the computers in the hands of 400 students in five rural schools in Chalatenango. A year from now, the goal is to have the computers in the hands of 78,000 students in 411 schools, and 800,000 students within 4 years. Students can take the rugged little laptop computers home to continue the process of learning with their family. To learn more about this project, you can read this blog entry from a participant in teacher ...

For many Salvadoran families, although the government provides a free public education, the cost of schooling still keeps kids from class. This is so because schools require that students have school uniforms, shoes and school supplies. There may be additional cost if a student needs transportation to get to school. The new FMLN administration in El Salvador is following through on a campaign promise to lower those costs. From an update from CISPES : On August 24, Vice-President and Minister of Education Salvador Sanchez Cerén officially opened the bidding process for some 7 million yards of fabric for the production of school uniforms, as the first step towards implementation of President Mauricio Funes’ plan to distribute two school uniforms, one pair of shoes, and a set of school supplies to every public school student in the country. The program will not only benefit 1,360,000 students, but will also create jobs for small- and medium-sized Salvadoran businesses. Fabric will be...

In a recently published interview , Carlo Scaramella, World Food Program Country Director for El Salvador describes the efforts of that UN agency to work with the government to establish school feeding programs in the country: How many children are benefiting from the WFP school feeding programs within [El Salvador]? The transfer of the school feeding program to the El Salvador Government (Ministry of Education) was completed at the end of 2007 as part of an agreed plan between state authorities and WFP. The plan involved a gradual transfer of funding and operational responsibilities during the final years of WFP program administration. By the end of 2007, WFP handed the last two departments (Morazan and Auachapan) over to the state. Meanwhile, the government was able to ensure the absorption of the school feeding program funding requirements under the regular state budget, providing long term sustainability for the program. Currently, about 750,000 children receive regular school fee...

Friday, June 22, was the Day of the Teacher in El Salvador. La Prensa Grafica has this gallery of photos of Salvadoran teachers at work in the classroom. No group deserves more to be celebrated.

In an earlier post , I noted that the anti-poverty program Red Solidaria has led to a significant increase in school enrollment in the municipalities where the program is in effect. El Faro has published a new article looking at this situation. The Ministry of Education has measured a 19% increase in students in the Red Solidaria municipalities. This increase has left schools desperate for more resources including classrooms, teachers and school desks. So far the government has promised $3 million to provide these needed resources. The El Faro story quotes one school director as noting that the $15 dollar monthly subsidy has "transformed the vision" of some families about the importance of education. If a child misses 4 days of school, the subsidy is cut off. The school systems in El Salvador will need even more resources if they want to continue improving. The percentage of students who entered in the first grade and completed fifth grade increased from 58.1% in 1991 ...

There are some initial indications of some very positive results of Red Solidaria, the Saca government's anti-poverty program. Under the program, poor families in the most poverty-stricken areas of the country receive $15 or $20 per month, provided they make sure children attend school and are enrolled in health clinics. Both the conservative La Prensa Grafica and the left-leaning Diario CoLatino reported the impressive gains in school enrollment in the regions where Red Solidaria is in place. Enrollment has increased 19% over the year before, leaving schools with a shortage of space and teachers.