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Colombia Primary Education
The constant efforts to improve the coverage provided
by public
primary schools produced remarkable results. The fact that
90
percent of the children in the appropriate age-groups in
urban
areas and nearly 70 percent of children in rural areas
attended
primary school indicated that further expansion would
require
carefully developed regional strategies rather than a
broadbrush
approach.
This requirement was especially true of the ten-year
old-age-
group, which had not increased in the 1980s and was
projected to
grow by a mere 1 percent during the 1990s. Because many
urban areas
had achieved very high coverage levels, further expansion
of the
primary system was not needed. Substantial differences in
enrollment rates among departments were directly
correlated with
levels of urbanization, although there were also other
intervening
variables: size of age-groups, population growth rates,
and
migratory patterns.
Although quality education was a difficult and
subjective
concept, many indicators suggested that there was
substantial room
for improvement. Rates of attrition had decreased, and
rates of
graduation had improved since the 1960s. The repetition
rate had
also gone down slightly. Nevertheless, only 62 percent of
those
students who entered primary schools in urban areas
finished sixth
grade, and in rural areas the rate was just 18 percent. In
the
departments, the variations were quite large, ranging from
34
percent to 81 percent in urban areas and from 9 percent to
41
percent in rural areas. The grade repetition rates were
uniform by
region but still quite high, ranging from 20 percent in
the first
grade to 7 percent in the fifth. Students in urban areas
completed
an average of 3.7 primary-school grades, whereas those in
rural
zones completed an average of only 1.7 grades.
The low quality of education was one of the reasons for
the
high rates of student attrition and the major reason for
the high
rate of grade repetition. To improve the quality of
education, in
1985 the Plan of Curriculum Revision was approved after
years of
testing. But up until 1988, it had been implemented only
partially
because of administrative and financial problems.
Levels of teacher preparation have improved gradually
since the
1960s. In the 1960s, 11 percent of primary teachers had
only
primary-school education or less; in the 1980s, only 1
percent fell
into this category. In 1960 only 2 percent of primary
teachers had
any postsecondary education. In the 1980s, the
corresponding figure
was 13 percent.
A 1983 law stipulated that 1 percent of the education
budget be
targeted for the purchase of textbooks, but the law was
not
applied. In practice, the availability of materials was a
function
of the goodwill and financial situation of the individual
teacher
and the community in which he or she worked.
Thus, despite relatively better-qualified teachers and
more
classrooms, other ingredients essential for high-quality
teaching
were unavailable. Teacher orientation, teacher assistance,
and
administration of the system had degenerated dramatically,
leaving
many schoolteachers frustrated and demoralized.
Data as of December 1988
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