Panama education shortcomings highlighted

The continuing shortcomings of Panama’s education system have been highlighted in a Ministry of Education (Meduca) report on a national test of students in third and sixth grades.

They were measured in three basic subjects: Spanish, mathematics and natural sciences.

Some  30% of the students were shown to be without d basic knowledge in Spanish and mathematics; while 50% of the students when they reach the sixth grade have not been able to develop their scientific skills.

Meduca’s director of Educational Evaluation of  Gina Garcés said that the differences in performance between the tests in 2015-2016  test and the one applied in 2017-2018 are minimal.

She The official cited as an example that the performance of third-grade students in Spanish only reached a positive difference of 2.9 %, which is not significant in terms of learning improvements.

is test was applied on a census basis to 62,195 students who were in the third grade in 2, 940 schools, and to 8, 329 sixth grade students from 419 schools, government and private in both cases.

The evaluation was based on the document Fundamental Rights of Learning of Students, of Meduca, through the key concepts: “what should know, what should be done and with what level of domain”.

 Bocas del Toro and Darién had the lowest levels in the evaluation The results, says Garcés, are an opportunity to improve the education system. In the case of natural sciences, they will have to define a focused action plan to achieve the competency that students require in this subject.

Coming Up
 Meduca expects to have results this year for  Pisa, the international evaluation driven by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)  and s applied every three years which was applied to 6,419 students in 2018.

The test was aimed at 15-year-old students in seventh grade and above. The areas in which they were evaluated were are comprehensive reading, science, and mathematics, with an emphasis on comprehensive reading.

In the test applied in 2009 Panama was in  62nd position, only 3 places from the bottom.