Election campaigns sidestepping education

MORE JOBS and less poverty is the refrain of Central American politicians, while they say little or nothing about education, without which there are no jobs nor wealth generation.

The message, which has echoes in Panama, comes from an editorial in CentralAmericaData which goes on:

“Even in Costa Rica, thanks to its education system during the past century reaching development levels higher than those of its neighbors, education is not a priority issue in the election campaign which is in full swing, despite the fact that the Costa Rican public education system is visibly losing more and more students and parents are increasingly opting for private schools and colleges in order to try to secure a decent future for their children.
“The business community should demand more attention to education, without which there is no development. The business community, which is asked to produce more and better jobs, cannot meet this requirement, if it does not have the skilled labor it needs to compete globally.
“In this regard, an evaluation of the education system and its results should be carried out using international standards, the same environment where companies must compete to sell their products and services.
“The Central American business community must demand from governments the implementation of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the OCDE, an essential component of any program of educational improvement. It should also put pressure on political parties and their candidates to include education as the first issue in their government programs.”
Panama is the only Central American country participating in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to measure if students near the end of mandatory education have acquired the knowledge and skills necessary to fully participate in society.
In Panama there have been numerous calls for companies to invest time and money in order to cover the serious limitations of graduates from the public school system.
In Panama the educational problem has already been diagnosed. Martesfinanciero.com reported in 2013 s that the country has at least 14 diagnostic and prognostic documents on education, but "none have managed to be implemented completely to produce students with an optimal or acceptable level of knowledge which allows them to have the skills demanded from the labor market.”