Chile

Education at a Glance

Structure
The Ministry of Education is responsible for pre-primary, primary, and secondary schooling in Chile.
There is division of schools: municipal schools administered by local governments and financed by the
state, private subsidized schools, and private non-subsidized schools. The education system is very much
divided along socioeconomic lines with low income groups concentrated in the municipal schools.

Quality/Performance
Chile stands out as a clear leader according to national and international tests, outperforming its
counterparts in the region on the all-important Programme for International Student Assessment
examination. Improvements in quality have led to increased enrollment and school completion rates.
According to the OECD, the country still lags behind overall in terms of educational achievement in
comparison to established countries (U.S., Japan, Canada, amongst others).

Concerns
Chiles education system is the most segregated between richer and poorer households. There is a
significant amount of inequity in learning outcomes across the socioeconomic echelons. Only 68 percent
of students from the poorest families met the basic proficiency mark in math on the international PISA
exam in 2012, compared to 97 percent of students from the richest families, and the relationship between
socioeconomic status and PISA performance is higher in Chile than any other OECD country. Chile ranks
last in the OECD for the number of resilient studentsthose who come from their countrys poorest 25
percent but still manage to score in the top quarter internationally (only 1.7 percent of Chiles poorest
students).

Outlook
There are significant differences across income groups in access to pre-primary and secondary education
and, more importantly, large gaps in learning outcomes among upper secondary school students.
Attacking inequalities and improving performance in the education system in Chile will require
improving quality at the pre-primary, primary, and secondary levels of the system, and especially at the
municipal schools that poor students attend. Chiles education system and particularly its higher
education system is notoriously unequal. It has high quality private universities, but they are accessible
to a privileged few, while the public system languishes.

Brazil
Education at a Glance

Structure
The Federal Government of Brazil regulates this countrys educational system through the Ministry of
Education. The government provides each area with funding and educational guidelines, and the
individual states are responsible for implementing and enforcement. Brazil is equipped with public and
private sector schools. The private sector schools are of a far superior nature, but are costly, while the
public sector schooling is free of charge.

Quality/Performance
Quality and equity remain a crucial challenge in Brazil, as both are essential to respond to the needs of
the country and for the construction of a knowledge society. The WEF ranked the country as 88th out of a
total 122 countries when it comes to education. In order to reach this most dishonorable position, Brazil
has failed especially in the quality of its math and science teaching, areas in which it is among the 15
worst in the world, coming in 112th Math was already the worst subject among Brazilians, as proven in
the latest Pisa, an exam conducted with students from 65 countries around the globe whose most recent
results were evaluated in 2010. Brazil came in 57th place at the time in this subject area.

Concerns
One of the great obstacles to education remains the discrepancy between private and public institutions.
Public schools are located in poor neighborhoods and lack the resources to improve upon infrastructure.
In addition, teachers working at these public schools often do not possess the knowledge or expertise to
provide students with a high quality education. In Brazil, private schools are the main recipients of
government funding. Thus, the average private school student is significantly more academically
advanced than his counterpart at a public school.

Outlook
Across the country, there are several failures within the education system. According to studies
conducted by the World Bank, many schools waste too many valuable resources and time in the
classroom. Additionally, schools do not adequately develop cognitive skills that are important for
development. Given these challenges, raising education expenditures does not guarantee better student
achievement unless specific reforms are implemented. These changes are perhaps more necessary for
impoverished regions, which concentrate systemic issues. Reforms such as the Brazils National
Education Plan have the government setting its sights on addressing the issues of low PISA scores and
large inequalities in educational access and quality in terms of geography, race and income.