ECLAC and UNICEF Propose Equality-Oriented Policies for High School Education

On average in Latin America, around 20 % of adolescents from ages 12 to 18-both male and female-do not attend any educational institution. To tackle both the causes and consequences of early desertion and delayed graduation, specific policies must be implemented that focus on human rights and gender equality, according to a study published by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and UNICEF's Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office.

Practically all 11 year olds study in Latin American countries, but by the age of 17 half of them have left the system and just one in every three finishes high school without repeating, says the document Adolescents: The Right to Education and Future Well-being (Spanish only), which analyzes household surveys and special research on education, employment, time-use and health.

The problems of early desertion and grade repetition-two of the main challenges in Latin America's educational systems-are concentrated in lower-income populations, among people of indigenous and African descent, and in rural areas. Just one of every five adolescents from the poorest quintile finishes high school, while four out of five students in the richest quintile graduate.

Male teenagers tend to enter the labor market prematurely (almost a fifth of them drop out due to a lack of interest in the educational system). Female adolescents also leave school because they lack interest-though to a lesser extent-and sometimes they drop out to take on unpaid housekeeping and caretaking jobs (including those related to their own early maternity).

"Adolescents are and will be protagonists in the major social and economic transformations expected in the region over the coming decades, and to do so they need to be able to fully exercise their rights without any kind of discrimination," Alicia Bárcena, ECLAC's Executive Secretary, and Bernt Aasen, UNICEF's Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, state in the document, an extract of which can be found in the Challenges newsletter n.°17, another publication that will be available online starting today.

To achieve this, the officials propose a set of public policies that can contribute to gender equality in young people's opportunities, trajectories and educational results, as well as in the labor market.

The study reveals the contradiction faced by Latin American women who, despite having benefited from greater educational opportunities and significantly increased their amount of schooling, do not enjoy equal conditions with men in the labor market. They still have, in greater proportion to their male peers, jobs that are less productive, temporary, include no contract or social benefits, and pay low salaries. In addition, women make less progress in their careers than men do.

This scenario demands gender-equality policies oriented toward the teaching and learning processes of both men and women, according to ECLAC and UNICEF. Sexist practices in everyday schooling must be eliminated, which means addressing the curriculum and teachers' work in the classroom.

It is indispensable to have policies that address the main factors of educational postponement-among them, poverty, rural life and ethnic origin. Also, specific policies promoting the inclusion and retention of adolescent mothers are needed, as well as policies for a quality high school education that gives real opportunities to students to develop their talent and potential.

In addition, equal conditions are required in the labor market to ensure that both men and women can access it without facing any kind of discrimination.

A successful way of evaluating educational quality is to consider qualitative standards in which rights and equality are the guiding principles and the basis for implementing policy, both institutions emphasized.