SEATTLE — The U.N. Development Program’s 2013 Education Index ranks Nicaragua at number 132 — well within the bottom half, and the lowest in Central America. A handful of up-and-coming projects, by bringing education to the rural poor, are looking to change that.
In 2015, The Guardian reported that overwhelming poverty levels were to blame for high dropout rates and a large child labor force. A mix of statistics and interviews backed the claim, revealing an incriminating gap between policy promises and the harsh reality lived by Nicaraguan children.
After Haiti, Nicaragua is the second most impoverished country in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although poverty is a potent force in the country’s urban hubs, conditions are at their worst at the rural peripheries, where meager infrastructure keeps communities enfeebled. In 2009, about 63 percent of Nicaragua’s rural population was living in poverty.
Rural communities also have a larger number of out-of-school children. According to the Education Policy Data Center (EDPC), 60 percent of secondary school-age children living in rural areas were out of school in 2001, compared to 30 percent in urban areas.
The link between rural poverty and education retention hasn’t been lost on the institutions working to improve both. The Global Partnership for Education (GPE), for example, has made note of the disadvantages borne by rural households in its ambitious strategies for development of education in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua is coming up on the tail end of its most recent grant from GPE, a total of $16.7 million that has been disbursed over the past three years. Despite the dismal numbers that currently frame Nicaragua’s education sector, the status reports that have trickled out since 2013 paint a more hopeful picture.
According to a report issued last year, the GPE grant has provided more than 1 million textbooks to lower secondary students. A revamped preschool curriculum was standardized, addressing what has largely been a blind spot in Nicaragua’s education system.
Another grant awarded in 2013, this time by the Tinker Foundation, went to Fabretto Children’s Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates a holistic approach to education in Nicaragua. The funds were specifically allocated to Fabretto’s rural secondary education initiative, the implementation of a program called Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial (SAT).
SAT is designed for underserved rural communities and their schoolchildren, offering an alternative to traditional secondary education that promotes a capability-based, rather than subject-based, learning trajectory. Experiential methods are also emphasized in such a way that lessens the need for materials and resources unavailable to most rural schools.
The results achieved by the grants, both relatively new, will be part of datasets that have yet to be analyzed and released. Even though a little news has come from the Ministry of Education on its own efforts to keep children in school — particularly in rural areas — it is hoped that the work of GPE, Fabretto and other like-minded organizations will contribute to meaningful, wholesale improvements in Nicaragua’s education sector.
– Jo Gurch
Photo: Flickr