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Peru Ranked Last in the World in Quality of Education

(LIP-ir) -- According to a report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) last week, out of 131 countries ranked in the world, Peru was in last place in the quality of its elementary school education and in 130th place in the areas of math and science.

On the other hand, the WEF report recognized Peru for its low inflation rate, ranking it 16th and its interest in and protection of private investments, ranked at 15.

Patricia Salas, President of the National Education Council, was shocked at the WEF results stating that Peru had worked very hard on improving its education system. She stated that an education reform as well as an analysis of methodology was needed to help the situation.

"We are all worried about education but I'd say that we still don't understand what education problems are. It's not a matter of quantity but quality. We can't believe that we can provide a good education just repeating things in texts or things that are on the Internet. To educate well, we have to work on the way in which people produce thoughts," said Salas.

Salas affirmed that the State needed new material and had to change the way teachers were trained. She stated that the educational system had to be completely reformed by redesigning curriculums and changing methodologies. Salas stated that if this was done, benefits could be seen in as early as 5 - 7 years.

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# Carsten Korch says :
9 November, 2007 [ 09:00 ]

Dear Peruvian Government.


It is embarrassing to live in a country like Peru, which has everything, but doesn't understand how to benefit from it, due to lack of interest and investment in the future of this country - EDUCATION.


Please get serious and make a plan that will teach the children of Peru the basics and more, so they can one day be part of a better future in this country.


Bear in mind, you can invest billions in support and help, but it wont change anything if the people who receive it, aren't educated to appreciate and learn from it.


We should be teaching "The question is not what my country can do for me, but what I can do for my country" and avoid telling them that there are people everywhere who will help you if they are poor.


Let's give everyone a proper education, teach them how to think, ask questions, understand democracy and be part of a better future in Peru.


Yours Sincerely


Carsten Korch
Editor-in-Chief

# Cris says :
9 November, 2007 [ 09:36 ]

I completely agree with Mr. Korch.

Education is the foundation for society. An educated population is a far wealthier resource than an uneducated one. Unfortunately, the government can't see past its own pockets.

# Michael says :
9 November, 2007 [ 09:59 ]

Is this ranking for both public and private education?  Or is public education the only thing ranked?

# Paul says :
9 November, 2007 [ 10:58 ]

What's fishy about this story is that out of 194 countries in the world,  the WEF selectively chose to only rank 131, leaving unaccounted for a full third of the globe without providing a rationale as to why.  Whether Peru is really ranked last in the world is debateable, but these organizations that rank and critique always do so from a skewed agenda.  Are the majority of the African countries even considered, where abject poverty is the norm and basic educational infrastructure doesn't even exist?  How can Peru rank below them in quality of elementary school education when those countries don't even have elementary schools?  Something's amiss with this report.

# Carsten Korch says :
9 November, 2007 [ 11:01 ]

Dear Michael

I believe this ranking only concerns the public education.
 
CK

# Carsten Korch says :
9 November, 2007 [ 11:13 ]

Dear Paul

I agree it's a little strange, but one or two years ago another report stated that only Haiti had a worse educational system than in Peru in all of Latin America, so this "news" only tells me, that nothing really has changed.

# Maria says :
9 November, 2007 [ 13:07 ]

Doesn't surprise me considering the trash that call themselves teachers caused a riot throughout Peru after the government suggested that teacher prove they know something by taking a taste.

The government should pass a new law making even more rigorous test than those previously proposed and all the uneducated trash calling themselves "teachers" should be thrown out on their ear.

# Carlos Bugatti says :
9 November, 2007 [ 17:29 ]

Si Maria. Correcto. SUTEP union leaders with Sr. puppet master Humala could care less about the students or teachers and their teaching abilities.

# saddened says :
9 November, 2007 [ 21:35 ]

Methodology aside, whether Peru ranks last or just in the bottom third of education it is an embarrassment and an indictment against the leadership in the country for allowing such a poor quality of eduction to persist.  Peru is experiencing an unprecendented bout of prosperity right now and it is time to invest in the training of teachers, rebuilding of schools, and improvements in curriculum.  Countries can only export so many natural resources, true prosperity will come from an educated workforce that attracts large scale investment from leading companies around the world.  Get serious about your future Peru!

# Douglas Beale says :
10 November, 2007 [ 11:43 ]

I have an idea. Let’s give the really poor kids; you know the ones without electricity…, well let’s give them all computers.

# Douglas Beale says :
10 November, 2007 [ 12:04 ]

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home

# mericorps says :
10 November, 2007 [ 20:56 ]

Dough, You miss some facts, like the laptops have the ability to be adapted to low wattage and can even be fitted with hand cranked generators where 5 minutes of cranking can give them an hour of power.

As far as the Teachers union goes, I would have said that they had the right to strike because the government put the entire burdon of education on their shoulders, the entire responsibility without giving them the money and supplies and means to be successful.  That was the failure of the Peruvian legislature and the Ministry of Education,..however...their actions have shown them to be inept fools and I would not let any teacher who is a member of Humala's union go within a hundred yards of any child I cared about.

If the Ministry of education had any gumption, they would have fired every single teacher who stuck with Sutep when they turned terrorist.

and if the Ministry of Transportation had any gumption, they would take all the dangerous busses and drivers off the road and when the drivers riot in the streets, stage a press conference with some of the tens of thousands of Peruvians who are disabled due to unsafe busses, and throw in some of the thousands of children who are orphaned and let the public decide if they are going to be sympathetic with the bus drivers or with their peruvian victems.

I am not holding my breath for the Peruvian government to learn gumption, they have not even visited some of the areas struck by the earthquake yet.  Some great and dedicated people in a system mired in red tape, kickbacks and mostly..no effeciency and no one caring to fix the problem.

# Douglas says :
11 November, 2007 [ 08:36 ]

The way I read it the crank didn’t work, and was nixed. The program is a joke.  

# mericorps says :
11 November, 2007 [ 17:16 ]

I have a good friend who works for an NGO in Africa and the schools in her village use the crank.  Your information is not accurate.  I have some issues with the program myself, so I am not arguing the pros or the cons of the campaign, just correcting the facts.

They do offer problems if you try to connect to the enternet via satelite, but as far os operating the pc, they function more or less just fine but users are reccomended to save often.

# mericorps says :
11 November, 2007 [ 17:18 ]

I should be more clear, the cranks are not on the PC's but the battery chargers for the rechargable low wattage batteries.

# G.R says :
16 November, 2007 [ 17:11 ]

It is truly sad that Peru's level of education has plummetted to the bottom of the barrel. Peru is home to good chess players and , from what I saw while living there, talented students. The irony is that Peru's education was better in the 1970's. Even though Peru had a military regime, and it was probably one of the poorest countries in the world; The UNI, for instance, exported Dr. Barton Zwiebach - a pioneer in String Theory. On the other hand, nowadays, that the government is saying that the economy is prosper, our education is on the floor. I am a computer scientist in the U.S; I know first hand of the level of education in Peru. I lived there for 14 years before moving to the U.S. I studied in private schools like Champagnat and Peruano-Chino. I have friends who went to Roosevelt. I saw talent in my friends, a desire to learn, to ask questions, to know more. I also saw mediocrity in my teachers. They were good, but they were not the best. Sadly, I pinpointed the reason for this. They loved teaching but they were not well prepared to do it.
It is ridiculous that public schools in Peru do not teach basic calculus before you graduate. It is ridiculous that public schools in Peru do not require you to know another language before you graduate. Peru is a third world country; in order to prosper, they need to globalize. In order to globalize, new students, who will be the driving force of peru's economy in the future, need to know languages other than spanish. It is ridiculous that so many resources are wasted on classes like religion, civics, and physical education when those same resources should be put into the hard sciences, and classes that will be of benefit to the student.
Education in Universities is also a joke, unless you go to an expensive private school. The same UNI that exported a pioneer in String Theory, now has a laughable website. I read scientific journals, but I have never even heard of a peruvian (living in Peru) writing a scientific paper. Where is the research? Where is the innovation? Where is the desire to discover something important?. What is the point of having a hard entrance exam to filter students if those students will be wasted? Why can those students, that mastered basic math and science, learn english and broaden their knowledge by reading of what's going outside of Peru?. I remember that I was working on project at work when one of my old friends from Peru sent me an instant message; he was asking for help on his project. When I told him I was going to help him he sent me a file with the project, asking me to do it for him. I, of course, told him to do it himself. I could give him pointers, but I wouldn' t do his work. I asked him: "Why do you go to school if you don't want to learn", he didn't reply. He went to a good private university in Peru. He is a system's engineer now. Hopefully, he has realized by now that cheating will not get you anything, but, sadly, peruvians have that mentality. I don't like Alan Garcia, but he got it right when he called his own people "acomplejados".

I scolded my friend for trying to cheat, but I tried to understand him and I did. I remembered that Peru's primary and seconday schools, more than teaching schools, are memorization centers. They don't teach theory, they make you memorize everything that it's on the paper. They don't teach you why, they teach you how. And Once you know how, it's very hard to ask why.

Peru needs an educational reform. I believe new prep-schools are doing ok, but they could do much better if they had resources. I think their model should be replicated on the public schools with some tweaks to make it better. Now that peru's economy is improving, their focus should be on the children. An educated nation still makes mistakes, but they learn from them and move on. Once you learn how to move on, you can make more mistakes, or accomplish great things.

# Victor says :
7 December, 2007 [ 15:29 ]

“the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”

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