All children learn in Panama
UNICEF Country Office
- Available in:
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UNICEF Panama works to support children’s and adolescents’ right to quality education and to develop to their full potential.
Despite the recent progress in access to education, children and adolescents still face challenges regarding the quality of education and at the same time, some of them -especially the most vulnerable and impoverished- continue to suffer educational exclusion.
These are some of the challenges children and adolescents in Panama face in terms of their right to education:
- Insufficient education services in preschool, middle and secondary school: preschool and secondary education services are limited in rural, peri-urban areas and indigenous communities. For example, around 30% of children lack access to preschool education.
- Adolescents with disabilities suffer widespread educational exclusion: one in every four adolescents with disabilities does not attend school, compared to one in 10 among adolescents without disabilities.
- Overloaded programs, old-school teaching style: education continues to rely on approaches based on memorizing concepts and not on developing competencies and meaningful learning.
- Adolescent girls in indigenous areas are at greater risk of educational exclusion than in the rest of the country: this difference may be associated with cultural patterns that lead to fewer opportunities for school attendance for girls from indigenous communities.
- COVID-19 aggravated previous problems: before the pandemic, 70% of 15-year-old students did not achieve the minimum competencies and it is estimated that this figure could have increased to 90% by 2021.
What are we doing?
We work with local partners and support the government to ensure that children and adolescents in Panama achieve their full potential. Our lines of work include the following:
- Providing technical assistance and supporting capacity building to strengthen early childhood education and increase the quality and coverage of preschool and primary education for children ages 4-8.
- Supporting the generation of evidence for decision-making to reduce educational exclusion, develop an early warning system and actively search for students who have dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out.
- Strengthening capacities to implement flexible educational modalities to improve adolescents’ educational reintegration.
- Providing technical assistance to the government in the implementation of strategies to improve teacher quality.
All our efforts seek to provide more children and adolescents in vulnerable situations with opportunities to learn, develop skills and participate as active citizens, contributing to Panama’s sustainable development.
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1 República de Panamá, Ministerio de Educación y Fondo de las Naciones Unidas para la Infancia, Niñez fuera de la escuela y en riesgo de exclusión educativa en Panamá́, MEDUCA y UNICEF, Ciudad de Panamá, 2019.
2 República de Panamá, Ministerio de Educación y Fondo de las Naciones Unidas para la Infancia, Las dimensiones de la exclusión en Panamá, MEDUCA y UNICEF, Ciudad de Panamá, 2022.