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NICARAGUA: Universal Primary Education
Still Far Off
By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA (IPS) - Damaris Aguilar had to pull
her daughter out of school this year. "My
oldest child is already in fifth grade; now
we're waiting for the situation to improve
so that she can go on learning," says the
34-year-old Nicaraguan mother of two.
Aguilar works as a domestic in wealthier
neighbourhoods in Managua to support her
family. But the economic crisis affecting
the country has pushed her further into
poverty, and with her income lower than ever
before, she decided that only one of her two
children could continue to attend school.
A single parent, Aguilar has a 12-year-old
girl and an eight-year-old boy. The girl
will be the more useful worker, and sixth
grade books are more expensive, while the
boy is eligible for subsidies and school
meals, so he will continue his studies, she
says.
"I can't afford books and shoes for both of
them," said Aguilar, speaking outside an
educational event where she and her daughter
sell sodas and ice cream.
Hers is not the general case; overall, girls
in Nicaragua do not drop out of school
because of poverty at a higher rate than
boys. Fifty-five percent of girls complete
primary school, compared with only 45
percent of boys, who tend to be taken out of
school earlier by their families so that
they can work.
But her dilemma is an example of something
that concerns experts and authorities alike:
poverty is growing and is affecting school
enrolment and dropout rates.
Preliminary reports indicate that some
700,000 school-age children did not begin
the school year, which started in February.
Nicaragua will not only come to a
standstill, it will slide backwards in the
struggle against poverty and the effort to
fulfil the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
said sociologist and economist Cirilo Otero,
head of the non-governmental Environmental
Policy Initiatives Centre (CIPA).
There are two reasons for that, according to
Otero: the global economic crisis and the
domestic institutional crisis which led to a
sharp decline in international aid to
Nicaragua.
The MDGs are targets adopted in 2000 by the
United Nations member states, to fight
poverty and inequality and bolster human
development worldwide. The Millennium
Declaration is an international agreement on
minimum standards to be attained by 2015.
In Nicaragua, "we are close to the deadline
and a long way from the goals," Otero told
IPS.
He estimates that child malnutrition will
increase from 27 percent of children under
five, the 2006 figure, to 38 percent by
2010.
One out of every five children in this
country suffers from chronic malnutrition,
according to the State of the World's
Children Report for 2008, "Child Survival,"
presented in Managua by the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) in July last year.
According to the UNICEF report, 12 percent
of newborns weighed less than 2.5 kgs, 10
percent of children under five were
moderately or severely underweight, and 20
percent were stunted (had low height for
age). The data was collected during the
2000-2006 period.
"These statistics do not even reflect the
impact of the present world economic crisis,
nor the soaring cost of food since
mid-2008," Otero pointed out.
Malnutrition and a rise in unemployment will
drive thousands of children out of the
classrooms, he said.
Nicaragua needs to reach 100 percent
coverage in primary education by 2015 in
order to meet the second MDG.
In 1998, 75 percent of children were
enrolled in primary school, and in 2006,
according to the most recent report on
Nicaragua’s progress towards the MDGs,
primary school enrolment stood at 80
percent.
But out of every 10 children who started
first grade, only four completed sixth
grade.
Nicaragua has 5.7 million people, 47 percent
of whom are living below the poverty line,
according to official figures (although
independent sources put the poverty rate
much higher). It is the poorest country in
Central America, and one of the poorest in
the Americas.
Last year, the national office of the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO) expressed concern
about the extent to which the country was
falling behind in meeting the second MDG:
achieving universal primary education.
Unless there are drastic changes in the
educational system, it will be very
difficult for Nicaragua to meet this goal by
2015, UNESCO said in a communiqué. To meet
the target, the budget for education would
have to be doubled, it added.
"This goal will never be fulfilled with the
inadequate resources that have been devoted
to education over the past several years. On
the contrary, more children will be left out
of the school system," said economist Adolfo
Acevedo, who advises the Coordinadora Civil
(CC), a coalition of more than 350 civil
society organisations and NGOs, on social
issues.
But instead of being increased, the
education budget was cut by 7.5 million
dollars, leaving the Ministry of Education
with 265 million dollars in its general
purposes budget for this year, when it needs
to spend at least 500 million dollars a year
to even get close to the target of universal
primary education, according to Acevedo.
The government has been cash-starved since
the United States and several European Union
countries cut back their aid because of
allegations of fraud in the November 2008
municipal elections.
"The primary school completion rate to grade
five is the lowest among 19 Latin American
countries," said Acevedo, quoting UNESCO
figures.
In 2004, an estimated 99.7 percent of
Chilean pupils who enrolled in the first
grade of primary school reached fifth grade.
In Costa Rica the proportion was 86.6
percent, in Guatemala 68 percent and in El
Salvador 69.4 percent, while in Nicaragua it
was only 53.4 percent, he said.
Jorge Mendoza of the Education and Human
Development Forum (FEDH) told IPS that
200,000 children did not resume their
studies this year, according to
non-governmental estimates.
A record 1.6 million children enrolled in
public and private primary and secondary
schools in 2008, according to the Education
Ministry, and the FEDH says about 1.4
million children enrolled this February. The
Education Ministry has not yet released
official figures for 2009, saying the school
intake is still being counted.
"This number is on top of an additional
500,000 children who had already dropped out
of the school system, so there are about
700,000 children who are being denied their
right to a primary education," Mendoza said.
The problem persists in spite of government
attempts to encourage primary school
attendance by means of social programmes,
including food vouchers for the poorest
parents and free meals, backpacks with
school supplies and transport subsidies for
more than 250,000 pupils, according to the
Education Ministry.
State education is free and universal in
this country, but not obligatory. Eighty
percent of the school population attends
public schools, according to the government,
where they get free enrolment and tuition
paid for by the state; the rest attend
private schools.
But there are not enough public schools or
teachers' posts to cope with the demand. The
Education Ministry acknowledges a classroom
deficit of 57 percent nationwide. Out of
27,854 existing classrooms, only an
estimated 12,181 are in good condition, and
out of 10,000 teachers needed this year,
only 2,500 have been hired.
As a result, the primary school drop-out
rate will not be halted by social programmes,
in Mendoza's view.
Education Minister Miguel de Castilla
acknowledged the deplorable overall
situation, and blamed it on the neglect of
the education system by rightwing
governments in the past.
"There is a scandalous educational backlog,
with 500,000 children who have dropped out
of school, that we inherited from previous
governments," de Castilla said.
But neither has the present administration
of the leftwing Sandinista National
Liberation Front (FSLN) provided the
necessary resources to fulfil the goal of
universal primary education, Mendoza said.
"We spend five times less on education than
some other countries in the region with
budgets and economies very similar to our
own. That's why we must insist that, in
addition to political will, a way must be
found to structure our budget more
rationally," he said.
A report published in February by the
Central American Governance Institute, a
network of nine regional academic
institutions, says that Central America is
one of the regions that spends the least on
education, investing an average of 60
dollars per capita.
According to the report, the annual outlay
per person on education is 48 dollars in
Guatemala, 63 dollars in El Salvador, and 81
dollars in Honduras, while in Costa Rica it
is 240 dollars, an amount similar to what is
spent in countries like Mexico, Venezuela
and Chile.
Nicaragua comes last, with an annual
expenditure on education of only 42 dollars
per person, the report says.
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