Education for a sustainable future: Analysis of the ......Education for a sustainable future:...

Education for a sustainable future: Analysis of the educational system in Osa and Golfito

San José, Costa Rica July, 2013

M.Sc. Claire MenkeAnthropology, Stanford University

Professor Martin Carnoy, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education, Stanford University

This document is a part of The Osa and Golfito Initiative,

“Education for a sustainable future: Analysis of the educational system in

Osa and Golfito”

M.Sc. Claire Menke Anthropology

Professor Martin Carnoy, Ph.D.

Graduate School of Education

Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Stanford University

This document is part of: Iniciativa Osa y Golfito, INOGO

Stanford, California Julio de 2013

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Citation: Menke, Claire and Martin Carnoy. 2013. Education for a sustainable future: Analysis of the educational system in Osa and Golfito. Stanford, California: INOGO, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, July 2013.

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Contents

Acronyms ................................................................................................................................................ 4

Osa and Golfito Initiative Overview ............................................................................................... 5 What is INOGO .................................................................................................................................................. 5 The INOGO Study Region .............................................................................................................................. 7

Executive summary ............................................................................................................................. 8 General Framework ............................................................................................................................ 9 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................... 9 INOGO METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................................. 9

Findings ................................................................................................................................................. 13 PUBLIC EDUCATION AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL .................................................................................. 13 PUBLIC EDUCATION IN OSA AND GOLFITO .......................................................................................... 19 REGIONAL EDUCATION ............................................................................................................................... 19 TEACHER PREPAREDNESS ...................................................................................................................................... 20 PRESCHOOL .................................................................................................................................................................... 22 PRIMARY EDUCATION ............................................................................................................................................... 24 UPPER-‐LEVEL EDUCATION ..................................................................................................................................... 27 EXISTING REGIONAL RESOURCES ....................................................................................................................... 33

Recommendations and opportunities ........................................................................................ 36 PRESCHOOL .................................................................................................................................................................... 36 PRIMARY EDUCATION ............................................................................................................................................... 36 SECONDARY AND HIGH SCHOOL .......................................................................................................................... 40 GENERAL COMMUNITY ............................................................................................................................................. 44 RESOURCES AND TRAINING ................................................................................................................................... 45

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 46

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................... 47 List of References ............................................................................................................................... 48

Personas entrevistadas ................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Appendices ........................................................................................................................................... 52 Appendix A ...................................................................................................................................................... 52 APPENDIX B .................................................................................................................................................... 53 APPENDIX C .................................................................................................................................................... 56 APPENDIX D .................................................................................................................................................... 57

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Acronyms BID Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo BM Banco Mundial CONESUP Consejo Superior de Educación CCSS Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social DANEA División de Alimentación y Nutrición del Escolar y Adolescente DRE Directores Regionales de Educación FOD Fundación Omar Dengo FONABE Fondo Nacional de Becas GDP Gross Domestic Product IDB Interamerican development Bank INA Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje INEC Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos INOGO Iniciativa Osa y Golfito MAG Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería MEP Ministerio de Educación Pública MINAE Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía MINSA Ministerio de Salud PANEA Programa de Alimentación y Nutrición del Escolar y Adolescente PND Plan Nacional de Desarrollo TEC Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientificl and Cultural Organization UCR Universidad de Costa Rica UNA Universidad Nacional WB World Bank

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Osa and Golfito Initiative Overview

What is INOGO The Osa and Golfito Initiative, “INOGO”, is an international collaborative effort to develop strategies for sustainable human development and environmental stewardship in the Osa and Golfito Cantons of Costa Rica. The effort’s core is a collaboration between people and institutions in the US and Costa Rica, facilitated by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. INOGO is designed to build on the many previous efforts in the region, working hand in hand with Costa Ricans in local communities, in the public and private sector, and with NGOs to create shared visions and long-‐term strategies for a sustainable future for Osa and Golfito. The project integrates the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the region with both its marine and terrestrial ecosystems. In addition to producing new studies and reports, the goal of this initiative is to generate a living process for sustainable development led by Costa Ricans, especially the people from Osa and Golfito. It also aims to provide information and products that will be useful to stakeholders in the region for their ongoing decision-‐making processes. We envision a two-‐phase trajectory for INOGO, Phase 1: Development of Strategies for Action, and Phase 2: Socialization and Implementation. Phase 1 of INOGO features four key components for the study region:

• Synthetic Analyses, written to pull together and interpret existing information, plus fill a few holes, and thus create a baseline for future work;

• Case Studies to address timely issues, where it was clear that local actors needed more information to advocate for community and environmental wellbeing;

• Interactive Co-‐development with stakeholders of scenarios depicting possible alternative futures, a process which in itself has value as it gives leaders the space to think about long-‐term goals alongside potential collaborators

• Design of strategic pathways towards sustainable development. The full INOGO process is described in a document titled “The Osa and Golfito Initiative, INOGO: Building a shared dream”. Listening and consulting with stakeholders An important goal of the INOGO process is to maintain an inclusive, participatory process that engages actors at the local, regional, and national levels. Throughout the initiative, INOGO has

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been working to make sure that the local communities’ concerns, aspirations and needs are heard, in particular those relevant for a more positive future, where families have a chance to improve their quality of life in healthy social and natural surroundings. Phase 1 Products Osa and Golfito Initiative

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The INOGO Study Region The study region of the Osa and Golfito Initiative was defined by ecological boundaries plus the Pan-‐American Highway. We initially considered a focus on the Osa Peninsula, but reflected that the Golfo Dulce logically needed to be included because of its importance to both human and natural processes in the region. Once the Golfo Dulce was included, it became logical to include surrounding communities and as much of its watershed as we could. These ecologically-‐based boundaries include parts of the cantons of Osa and Golfito, and even include portions of some districts. While this provided a significant challenge in some data collection and analysis, we recognize that all boundaries have their own challenges. Our map thus shows the initial boundaries of INOGO: as a living process it is anticipated that these boundaries may change over time.

Boundaries of the territory covered by the Osa and Golfito Initiative, INOGO

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Executive summary This report summarizes the findings and recommendations of INOGO’s educational assessment in 2012 for the Osa and Golfito region. INOGO’s education subgroup was charged with undertaking a prospective evaluation of the region’s current educational strengths and needs, as they could be improved for a sustainable future. The report joins parallel health and institutional assessments as a key component of INOGO’s social diagnostic analysis (Hunt, Menke and Durham, 2013). The key finding from this study is that there exists a need to adapt educational offerings to regional structure, needs, and culture. While there are proactive measures being taken at the national level to improve education, few of these initiatives reach these remote regions. This includes projects focused on everything from installation of computers and internet to providing preschool education to all students under the age of 5, both of which were identified as important voids in the Osa-‐Golfito educational system. It is therefore INOGO’s recommendation that educational activists work within the existing MEP systems to increase community involvement and tailor educational offerings to the local needs. Several problems were highlighted as being of vital concern to the region. At the preschool level, there are few opportunities to participate in national preschool programs. As the following analysis suggests, preschool attendance is positively correlated with high school attendance – another issue plaguing the region – and therefore could be a key component to reduce desertion. It was discovered that dropout rates rise dramatically as students advance through the system, primarily because of the lack of advanced degree relevancy to the available job market. Forty-‐four percent of students who go to high school attend one of the region’s technical high schools (CTPs), most of which offer the same degree paths; a lack of diversity of educational opportunities, combined with a dearth of employment opportunities in the region results in few students seeing the need to continue with their education past the 10th grade. To help ameliorate division between degrees and employment, INOGO recommends several actionable steps. Firstly, the local CTPs should work together to create a streamlined assessment of student needs and career goals. This can then be used to advocate for a greater variety of degrees through the region, more targeted resource allocation, and better job placement programs to assuage regional unemployment woes. Other recommendations include: more comprehensive training programs for teachers, altering educational offerings (primarily in terms of environmental education) to better reflect regional needs and culture, and better capacity building programs for the Juntas Educativas across all levels of education. Additionally, INOGO recommends investigating the possibility of combining small unidocente schools to consolidate resources. INOGO hopes to work with local and national actors to help bring the regional education system up to par with the national programmatic infrastructure.

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General Framework

INTRODUCTION Until recently, Costa Rica enjoyed a long history of relatively high levels of educational accomplishment compared to the rest of Latin America. Today the country is ranked 11th out of the 19 Latin American countries in the Latin Business Chronicle education index (A.M. Personal de Costa Rica, 2013). The index, which measures a series of variables including test preparedness, ranks Uruguay and Argentina as having the highest level of education of the countries measured. This ranking gives the country a new sense of educational urgency, given that its Constitution (1949) places education and culture at the forefront of the nation’s goals. Not only does the constitution dictate (Article 78) that preschool and “General Basic Education” (6 years of primary school) are mandatory for all citizens, it also requires that government expenditure for public education not be less than 6% of the annual Gross Domestic Product, or GDP (MEP, 2010b). Still, there are many indications of the success of this Constitutional mandate. For one thing, today’s average adult citizen has received 8.6 years of education, not including preschool. For another, the number of residents over 15 years of age who have no formal education continues to fall, dropping from 5.4% in 2000 to 3.7% in 2009 (MEP, 2011a). Costa Rican sixth graders also score second only to Cuba in both math and reading among the 17 Latin American countries included in UNESCO’s SERCE test. Within this national context, in 2012 the Iniciativa de Osa y Golfito (INOGO) undertook a study of education in the cantones of Osa and Golfito to help find ways to strengthen educational programs in the region for a sustainable future. This report summarizes key findings from that effort. First we consider the national public education structure, highlighting some of its key strengths and weaknesses. Second, we examine how that national organization manifests itself in the Osa and Golfito region. Third, we discuss a series of recommendations and opportunities based on the regional evaluation, keeping in mind the currently available structure, resources and the needs of public education in the INOGO region. We hope these recommendations will be useful at various levels of government, as well as to local, national and international actors.

INOGO METHODOLOGY The Osa and Golfito Initiative collected information about the state of the education system in the counties of Osa and Golfito from a variety of perspectives – from teachers, students, school

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directors and parents – through two separate surveys. An initial survey of 310 respondents was conducted in March 2012 to determine the community and organizational capacity of the study region. Several questions were asked of parents to provide their opinions on the quality of education and teaching at their local schools. A series of follow-‐up interviews and classroom visits were conducted in 18 primary schools, three rural secondary schools, two night high schools, and four technical high schools throughout the region between August and October 2012. Classroom visits were spontaneous 20-‐minute observations, following a rubric prepared by one of the authors (INOGO, 2012). Following the classroom visits, field team members interviewed teachers of 3rd and 7th grade classes, and also asked questions of 7th graders regarding their desired career fields. School directors were also interviewed to understand the education system from the administrative point of view. A map of all the schools in the study region can be found below (Figures 1 and 2). Both questionnaires can be found in Appendix C and D, at the end of this report. A supplemental analysis was also completed using data acquired from MEP and INEC – the data were analyzed according to infrastructural boundaries, rather than educational districts, as this allowed for easier comparison with results from other INOGO fieldwork. Utilizing the data combed from surveys, interviews with MEP officials and school administrators, and institutional data we drafted list below of recommendations for future development. All of the communities within the study region fall into one of two educational districts – either Coto or Grande de Terraba (see Table 1 for breakdown by community). The majority of the data analysis that follows is also available by these educational district divisions. Table 1: Educational district delineations, including only the communities within the INOGO study region.

Source: Programa Estado de la Nación, 2006.

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Figure 1: Map of schools in the study region, according to education level and school type

Source: GeoAdaptive, 2012 for INOGO

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Figure 2: Map of schools in the study region, including a 3 km surrounding “sphere of influence”

Source: GeoAdaptive, 2012 for INOGO

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Findings PUBLIC EDUCATION AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL The education system of Costa Rica is run by one primary entity -‐-‐ the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) – which is responsible for all public education at the pre-‐primary, primary and secondary levels. The National Learning Institute (INA) is a governmental agency that helps provide technical trainings and employment for persons over 15 years of age. University education in general is largely managed by CONESUP. The structure for formal public education was created in Article 7 of the Fundamental Law of Education (1957), and every level of instruction includes the key subjects of Spanish, social studies, science, mathematics, foreign languages (English, French, Italian, others), Computer Science (lab). Other subjects – agriculture, music, the arts, religious education, physical education, home education/industrial arts, and indigenous studies – are only taught to portions of the student body when the subjects are relevant to the context of the geographic location. Student evaluations are completed in the form of national tests given after the “transition years,” grades 6, 9, and 11. The overall goals of each level of education are as follows: preschool focuses on infantile development and preparation for general basic education (primary); primary school works to create well-‐rounded and educated citizens at a basic level; secondary school (including high school) work to prepare students for an active lifestyle as well to prepare students for post-‐graduation employment (MEP, 2010b). Apart from these standardized goals and messages, educational emphases fluctuate regularly, as each administration chooses different educational foci around which to structure the curriculum for its 4-‐year term (MEP, 2010b). According to the National Development Plan (MIDEPLAN, 2010), under the second Arias administration, MEP was restructured in favor of decentralization, giving more discretionary power to the Regional Education Directors (Directores Regionales de Educación (DRE)) with their better knowledge of local context. While this program of decentralization still holds true for primary schools, rural liceo (local high school, typically in indigenous communities), and public secondary school systems, the technical (vocational) high schools report directly to central offices of MEP without going through their respective DRE (Rigoberto Corrales, Jefe del Departamento de III y Educación Diversificada, personal communication). The current administrational organization of the MEP is as follows: the Central Offices (ministers, vice-‐ministers, directors, regional advisors, and personal administrators) oversee the twenty-‐seven Regional Directors’ (DRE) offices. The office of the regional director is staffed by the directors, educational center supervisors, pedagogical advisors, and personal assistants. These few DREs monitor and oversee the 4,502 educational centers within 161 districts, including the school directors, teachers, students, parents and Boards of Education (or Juntas de Educación, integrated by parents) (MEP, 2011b).

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According to a report completed in 2008 conducted by the World Bank and the Inter-‐American Development Bank (WB-‐IDB, 2008), there were approximately 68,000 teachers in the Costa Rican education system in 2006, and approximately 1,083,586 students in 2011 (MEP, 2011a: 389). Thanks largely to universal access to primary education and the social safety net of the national healthcare system CCSS (Gaffikin, 2013), which covers 88.8% of Costa Rican citizens, a full 90% of all school-‐age youth attend public pre-‐primary, primary and secondary level schools (see Table 2 for the breakdown of attendance by grade level). With such governmental support of education, the average amount of total schooling has continually increased since at least 2000 – now all adults have attended an average of 8.63 years of school. School attendance in rural schools is slightly lower than in urban areas (MEP, 2011c). Of the 76,123 students who attend university, only 50% of university students attend a public university (MEP, 2011a; WB-‐IDB, 2008). Table 2: National percentage of school attendance by age group

Source: MEP, 2011c: 119.

Preschool is sometimes available for children 3-‐6 years of age, though this service varies geographically. More than 131,000 Costa Rican children age 6 and under have limited access to early childhood development services (Gómez et al, 2011). Nationwide, 98% of the poorest two-‐year olds have no access to educational services, 94% of poor three year olds lack services, and 75% of impoverished four-‐year olds do not have access to supplemental support (Gómez et al, 2011). Primary school begins at age six – the six years of primary school and the 3 years of basic secondary school that follow are mandated by national law. The decision to enter a technical or an academic high school (Ciclo IV, colegio) is determined by the student after the first three years of secondary school (Ciclo III) – currently the majority of students are electing to enroll in technical high schools (Figure 3).

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Figure 3: Percent attendance of academic, technical or professional training programs at the high school level

Source: MEP, 2011a. Although the government provides free tuition in public upper secondary school (bachillerato level), a substation proportion of students do not graduate from that level in the poorer regions of the country. The dropout rate has been a national concern since at least 2006 (WB-‐IDB, 2008), and reducing desertion has now been a focus of two educational administrations. Only approximately 20% of students are able to complete secondary school without repeating a grade (Programa Estado de la Nación, 2006). Despite substantial dropout rates from secondary

Academic secondary Technical secondary Professional Training (INA)

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school1, particularly in rural areas such as the INOGO region, in 2011 more than 40 percent of university age students attended tertiary institutions—one of the highest rates in Latin America. A comparison of the educational attainment levels in 1996 and 2006 can be seen in Table 3, below. Rural students have lower attainment levels than their urban counterparts by 20-‐30% -‐-‐ and the most impoverished individuals lagged behind by upwards of 60% in some cases. The constitution states that the government will provide free university education for qualified students unable to pay for it, though people who do not pass the entrance exams are not able to access this opportunity.

Table 3: Educational attainment by level and expected year of completed education, 1996-‐2006

Source: WB-‐IDB, 2008: 40.

Though the educational spending as a percentage of GDP is still high when compared to other countries of similar GDP, Costa Rica’s spending per student is roughly that of comparable countries, about $1,500 US per students in both primary and secondary levels (WB-‐IDB, 2008). In 2009, 1.14 billion colones per student (approximately $1.91 million USD based on 2009 conversion estimates) were put toward public education, representing 30.5% of the national budget allotted for social improvement (MEP, 2011a: 411; see Table 4)

1 Seventh and tenth grades are the most critical points of desertion in the Costa Rican education system. Seventh grade is problematic because the current program lacks a good and clear transition from primary to secondary school. Tenth grade, the year when students begin to specialize in either a vocation or academic pursuit, is when students are said to discover a lack of pertinence of their education to available employment, causing disillusionment and distrust in the educational system (Programa Estado de la Nación, 2006).

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Table 4: Public spending on education

Fuente: MEP, 2011a: 411. According to the World Bank and IDB (2008), the government’s goal today is to be more efficient with the funds currently available as well as to increase funding for education without sacrificing fiscal stability. Accomplishing this goal will involve shifting some money from teacher salaries (see Table 4 and Figure 4), which in primary schools is relatively high (nearly 4/5ths of total educational expenditure), to line items such as infrastructural improvement and service increases (WB-‐IDB, 2008). In comparison with private schools, 99.3% of which are considered to be “buen estado” (“well maintained”), only 61.8% of rural public high schools receive enough support (Programa Estado de la Nación, 2006). Currently only 13% of public primary schools and 55% of secondary schools have a library, and owning a textbook is a large expense for many families that rely on public education (WB-‐ IDB, 2008). MEP’s Departamento

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de Bibliotecas Escolares y Centros de Recursos para el Aprendizaje is trying to change that model by emphasizing the creation of “learning centers” – a combination of library and computer lab – that will cultivate a “culture of use” that will help students become accustomed to technology and learning. The ultimate goal of this project is to reduce desertion rates by getting students excited about learning opportunities (MEP, 2010a). That being said, in 2002 MEP considered only 3 of 10 classrooms adequate to meet basic teaching requirement needs. On the matter of barriers to education, MEP provides a number of services to reduce the barriers to education, especially in rural areas. Many of these programs, as well as some national educational initiatives are delineated in the boxes included in Appendix B. One example is the School Lunch Program (PANEA). Orchestrated by the Food and Nutrition Division for School Children and Adolescents (DANEA), it operates with the objectives of reducing malnutrition by providing students with nutritional meals at school, and facilitating attendance at schools for families in poverty (Gómez et al., 2011). Studies have shown that access to nutrition and health services, especially for impoverished students who are already at a disadvantage, can improve academic performance and increase retention rates (Gómez et al., 2011). The program currently exists in 4,109 primary schools, which accounts for roughly 98% of all public primary schools in the country; fewer secondary schools provide this resource (WB-‐IDB, 2008). While the federal government does provide the majority of the funding for this initiative, community contributions keep the program afloat. The contributions predominantly take the form of labor and goods, though those who can pay are asked to portion a part of their salary to PANEA. Unfortunately, the funds are not always allocated appropriately, and there are large inefficiencies in the system that reduces its functionality on the national level (Gómez et al., 2011).

One program that has been met with resounding success is MEP’s partnership with the Omar Dengo Foundation (FOD) to bring computer literacy to all students in Costa Rica. The Program of Educational Informatics (FOD, 2002) began in 1988 with the goal of using digital technology to further learning in both primary and secondary public schools – to help develop logical-‐mathematical thinking and problem-‐solving abilities by expanding the instruction of basic curricula. More than 1 million students participated in the program between 1989 and 1999. Teacher trainings have been constructed as a collaboration between UCR, UNA, MIT, Harvard, and University of Rio Grande del Sur in Brazil, and they provide continuous training for professional development. MEP-‐FOD provide the funding for this project (see Figure 4), but communities are still responsible for constructing the infrastructure necessary for the program to function, including classrooms, wiring, air conditioning, furniture and security systems. This program also provides funding for schools with a student body of between 81 and 1200 students to receive an educational informatics library, which includes basic equipment for between 10 and 19 multimedia stations. Schools with between 10 and 80 students (only multi-‐and single-‐teacher schools) also receive computers for classrooms. Recent evaluations of the project show that schools with high levels of absenteeism have seen a reduction in that value since this program has been implemented.

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Figure 4: Financing for the Informatics Education Program through MEP and Omar Dengo Foundation

Source: MEP, 2011c: 93.

While in theory the central government allocates a sufficient level of funding to the education system of Costa Rica, inefficiencies in use reduce the educational potential of the country. This effect is felt especially strongly in more rural areas – including in INOGO’s study areas in the counties of Osa and Golfito.

PUBLIC EDUCATION IN OSA AND GOLFITO With this background at the national level, we turn now to consider the state of public education in the INOGO region.

REGIONAL EDUCATION

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As also found by other INOGO field teams (Hunt, Menke, & Durham, 2013), an important asset of the Osa and Golfito region is its relatively extensive educational system. In the perceptions of community members, the majority of youth in the region complete the colegio level of schooling and the teachers are all licensed, some with as many as 32 years of teaching experience. Observations and interviews by the INOGO field team confirm that there is generally good communication among all levels of education within the schools – directors, supervisors, and instructors. However, there is a lack of uniform methodology in lesson application for each grade level, which creates inconsistency in instruction quality and sometimes quantity of schooling hours. The presence of administrative structural stability indicates that the support network necessary for improvements in instructional consistency already exists and therefore will not be a major barrier.

TEACHER PREPAREDNESS Costa Rica, as a whole, has high levels of teacher preparedness and knowledge when compared to other countries in Latin America. A University of Pennsylvania/Stanford study of Costa Rican schools in 2007 (Carnoy et al. 2007) found that although the mathematics content and pedagogical content knowledge of Costa Rican 3rd grade (primary school) and 7th grade (colegio) teachers was not very high by developed country standards, it was higher than for teachers in neighboring Panama. However, the average of teachers in the INOGO region falls within the lower end of Costa Rica’s instructional quality range. This could be due in part to the highly variable resources available at these schools, and in part because of a lack of parental support in promoting the merits of receiving an education. Though funding and resources may not always be available for more advanced methods of instruction, the teaching staff of the region does exhibit several strong assets – the high number of years of experience in the teaching force, personal attachment to the region, and licensing training. Additionally, the perception amongst community members gathered from the initial INOGO survey is that most teachers are relatively good at their jobs, though it varies considerably by district. Figure 5 denotes the perceived quality of instructors based on district – most teachers are considered “Buena/Good” or “Regular/Passable”. Figure 5: Community perception of teacher quality, by district (n=298)

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Source: Durham et al., 2013

The INOGO team was not able to measure teacher content and pedagogical content knowledge in the study region to compare it with teachers in the rest of Costa Rica. However, the teachers interviewed in both primary schools and secondary schools were all licenciados (college graduates). In primary schools, almost all were graduates of a private university (UISIL), whereas some teachers in the secondary schools were graduates or more prestigious public universities (e.g. UNA). All of the teachers interviewed in the region, save one, were licenciados, having received training at either public or private universities. The only teacher who did not have a college degree was one mathematics teacher listed as being “MT2,” a determination that indicates extensive experience with the field of instruction. The level of training for Costa Rican teachers is much higher than in other Central American countries where most teachers receive their degrees from lower quality escuelas normales. Our classroom observations did suggest, however, that teachers in Osa and Golfito schools do not have sufficient levels of content knowledge necessary to compensate for the weak preparation students bring to school. Teachers are often required to teach multiple grade levels simultaneously – something they are not specifically trained to do. According to maps constructed by GeoAdaptive using MEP data (see Figure 1 and Figure 2), there are 54 single-‐teacher schools (unidocente) and 9 two-‐teacher schools (biodocente). MEP does provide more training for these teachers, but they are often more focused on curricula integration rather than classroom management and leadership skills. According to our surveys, it seems as though most teachers in the Osa and Golfito region do not attend these trainings. Interviews revealed that many of the teachers found them irrelevant to their teaching needs – they mostly adjust curricula rather than provide technical support or advanced training for specific educational needs.

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MEP also holds monthly planning and evaluation meetings that are rarely attended by teachers in the region, often due to financial inability to participate. During the year 2010, 8,859 teachers have taken advantage of MEP teacher trainings, most of which were to help teachers integrate new government-‐mandated curricula changes into their current lesson structure – 397 from the DRE of Coto and 276 from Grande de Terraba (MEP, 2011b). Another benefit to the INOGO region’s education system is that most teachers in our sample originated from region itself – many were from the communities of Golfito, Rio Claro or Paso Canoas. Being from the region, teachers are more likely to be attuned to regional issues and to infrastructural obstacles that may impede optimal instruction. Additionally, the level of personal attachment to the region increases job longevity and stability – because the Osa and Golfito region is their home, they are less likely to seek job opportunities elsewhere, thereby creating a more stable instructor base.

PRESCHOOL Preschool, which Article 78 of the Constitution of Costa Rica (1949) states is compulsory (MEP, 2010b), is only available to a fraction of the students within the INOGO study region. While mandatory, Table 5 shows that only an average of 19.2% of primary school students across all infrastructural districts within the study region had received preschool instruction. Based on conversations with Señora Anabelle Venegas of the Ministry of Public Education (MEP), the distribution of preschool education is determined by the regional education director or DRE (Venegas, A. 2013. Personal communication). Because of the dispersed nature of the population in the majority of the study region, the directors of Coto and Grande de Terraba have elected to provide a team of trained teachers who rotate amongst schools – teaching in each of their assigned schools 1-‐2 times per week. Which schools are chosen, and how they are chosen was not made clear to the INOGO team. Table 5: Preschool availability and attendance, by infrastructural district

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Fuente: MEP, 2010b.

Data from the 2011 national census (INEC, 2011) and from MEP (MEP, 2013) show a nearly linear correlation between attendance in preschool and participation in high school (Figure 6) in the region. Figure 6: Correlation between attendance in preschool and participation in high school, by infrastructural district (R2=0.57)

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Fuentes: INEC, 2011; MEP, 2013.

With high school attendance and dropout rates being a national concern and educational priority, this result suggests a possible preventative measure.

PRIMARY EDUCATION Primary school, also compulsory for all citizens of Costa Rica, is the most attended level of schooling and also the level to receive the most funding. Fewer than 50% of citizens of Puntarenas who begin primary school matriculate after 6 years (97,031 incomplete, 90,117 complete), which is lower than the national standard. Table 6 shows a breakdown of the number of schools and students by infrastructural district (MEP, 2011a). Table 6: Primary school availability and attendance, by infrastructural district

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Fuentes: INEC, 2011; MEP, 2011; MEP, 2013.

As can be seen in Figure 7, primary schools in the region are considered by parents to be the best level of schooling in terms of quality – they rated it higher than the overall education system available to communities (Figure 8). (The perception of the education system was calculated by averaging the quality of primary education, secondary school level education, and teacher instruction, as quoted by community members.) Figure 7: Community perception of primary education quality, by district (n=302)


Figure 8: The perception of the quality of the regional education system, by district (n=297)

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Due to government assistance and high availability, primary schools also have high completion rates – in only one case was there a school with a dropout rate higher than 0% (at 1%), and this was due to issues of economic status and distance of travel to the school. According to MEP officials and local perception, 100% of students the Osa and Golfito region graduated from primary school. While all students in the region have access to and attend primary school, the differences in infrastructural and educational quality can vary depending on available resources for each school. Primary education is considered to be of high quality with high completion rates. Important differences came to light in the quality of education being provided, specifically by the unidocente (single-‐teacher) schools in many rural areas within the study region. These schools, in the simplest sense, lack the number of students needed to request additional resources. They are often attended by between 4 and 8 students, and because of the baseline classroom sizes that regulate distribution of funds, therefore currently lack the resources to support more advanced learning. MEP is working to improve computer and library access for all students across the country. But currently, many single-‐teacher schools lack not only material resources such as desks and textbooks, but also teaching resources. One teacher may teach up to 6 grade levels in one classroom, a challenging teaching environment in which teachers must divide their attention between many students at different grade levels. MEP does provide trainings for unidocente teachers in curriculum development, but has yet to build capacity in classroom management techniques.

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UPPER-‐LEVEL EDUCATION Most children in the INOGO region complete the initial secondary level (Ciclo III). Schools are available in Golfito and Puerto Jimenez for students to continue on to the bachillerato level, but school attendance drops off substantially at that level (Ciclo IV), and relatively few students in the INOGO region go on to attend university. Twice as many students in the Brunca2 region do not complete secondary school as complete either technical or academic high school – as many as 85% of people aged 15-‐24 years in the Brunca region have not completed secondary school (IAE, 2011). As can be seen in Figure 9, community members noted that most students attend colegio (in red), but few finish their bachillerato (in green) and even fewer attend university (in purple). Survey respondents said these low rates are due both to attendance cost as well as issues of transportation. Figure 9: Community perception of the percentage of students that participate in the regional education system (n=297)


In actuality, only about 21% of students in the region who attend primary school advance and attend high school (Ciclo IV). 2 The Brunca region is the southernmost socioeconomic district in Costa Rica. It includes districts within the Puntarenas province (Osa, Golfito, Corredores, Coto Brus and Buenos Aires) and the San José province (Pérez Zeledón).

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Figure 10: Number of students in high school, by infrastructural district (n=17)

Sources: INEC, 2011; MEP, 2013.

Among high school students, 44% (n=2,643) attend a technical high school (CTP), 29% attend a liceo rural, and only 6% (n=343) attend an academic school (Figure 11). A large fraction of students (29%; n=1,724) attend night school as a means to complete their high school degrees. Figure 11: Percentage of students attending high school, by education type (n=5,987)

Sources: INEC, 2011; MEP, 2013.

One of the main issues that plagues secondary school education in the INOGO region is the extreme variation in quality between the different secondary education offerings: colegios técnicos (technical or vocational high school), liceos rurales (rural high school, predominantly

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exist in indigenous communities) and colegios académicos (academic high schools, more graduates pursue university degrees). According to our interviewees, students that graduate from technical high schools are generally better prepared after their 6 years of study and specialization in a field and therefore earn higher wages than their academic counterparts (see Figure 12). For that reason the popularity of technical degrees has increased dramatically in the last twenty years (see Figure 13). The Technological Institute of Costa Rica (TEC) has proposed the creation of a new university site in the Osa Peninsula to accommodate this growing demand for technical degrees3. Figure 12: Graph of the average income based on highest level of education

Fuente: MEP, 2011a Figure 13: Number of students attending academic and technical high schools, 1990-2010

3 http://www.elpais.cr/frontend/noticia_detalle/1/79165

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Fuente: MEP, 2011a That said, the issue of degree relevancy still exists. Currently, the technical specialties taught in the vocational secondary schools (CTPs) are selected by interviewing students in the 9th grade, interviewing local businesses/industry members, studying the resources that the colegio has in place to teach those specialties, and submitting the decision to the central MEP office to be the final judge of which programs the CTPs should offer. This has resulted in very similar programs being taught in the CTPs of the region – namely tourism, secretarial skills, and informatics. In the CTPs within the districts of Golfito and Guayacará, one CTP also teaches mechanics, and another, agro-‐industry (see Table 7 for the tracks taught at CTP Golfito). As the system works now, students are supposedly the directors of their own education. Yet, they may lack sufficient knowledge of how industries will develop in the future in order to make smart decisions about what degrees they should pursue based on employment availability now and in the future. Unfortunately, according to local CTP administrators the region is also experiencing a period of high unemployment, which decreases motivation to attend higher levels of school. Between 7.38% and 15.87% of people in the Brunca region are without employment (IAE, 2011). Table 7: Alumni information from CTP Golfito, collected one year after graduation. Note that most students continue their studies, or do neither work nor study. Those that do not work nor

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study are called “NiNis” in Costa Rica – “Ni trabaja, ni estudia,” a more common determination for students of this generation.

Fuente: Cambronero, 2012 Throughout the study region, dropout rates rise as level of education increases – upwards of 50% of students reportedly do not graduate from some secondary schools, according to INOGO interviews (see Table 8 for national statistics, Table 9 for regional statistics). Discussions with various school directors revealed that the CTP in Palmar Norte has between a 7 and 25% desertion rate, though one source in the area said on average only 3.5% of students do not complete the coursework for secondary school. An additional set of exams is required to receive a bachillerato, or high school diploma. Because of the expense of this set of exams, many students may complete the required coursework, but not actually receive their diploma. In the table above (Table 7), the majority of students who are still studying are waiting to take the bachillerato exam. The general opinion among INOGO respondents was that the opportunity cost of forgoing a job to go to school is too high – students are not guaranteed employment or additional income with their degree, and so many regard it as not worth the invested time. Table 8: Primary and secondary failure rates cost estimate, Costa Rica 2000-‐2005 (by percent)

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Source: WB-‐IDB, 2008: 43 Table 9: High school dropout rates, by infrastructural district

Fuente: MEP, 2013.

Recognizing that grade repetition and dropouts are a high cost to secondary education, MEP developed the ProEDUCA program to “help secondary education reduce student dropout.” A study conducted by the World Bank and the Inter-‐American Development Bank (WB-‐IDB, 2008) estimates that repetition and dropout rates cost the government at least 0.5% of Costa Rica’s GDP annually. The first phase of the ProEDUCA program is to conduct research to determine the reasons behind the dropout rate by examining 100 schools, and building feedback networks between them. From their initial diagnosis, MEP determined that it was important to: 1) increase and improve teacher training while simultaneously creating a network for teachers to discuss methodological improvements with each other; 2) improve technology and resources available; and 3) improve the existing infrastructure (MEP-‐ProEDUCA, 2010). The program argues that any strategies used to reduce repetition and dropout rates should work to improve the quality of the education through improved environments – environments that inform

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students of the advantages of education while simultaneously increasing funding to show how seriously the government views education. The secondary school that offers night courses in Golfito created a list of suggestions to keep students from dropping out of school:

1. Train students on study skills so they can better organize their time and get more knowledge out of their educational experience.

2. Better utilize faculty meetings to develop instructor skills, such as improving communication with students regarding other academic and career opportunities to motivate them to stay in school.

3. Encourage use of technological resources to make lessons more interactive and engaging.

4. Use social networks to publicize the achievements of the school, teachers and students, and to help maintain an alumni connection to the institution.

The school also suggested designing programs of complementary degrees at different technical schools in the area, so that not all schools offer the same programs.

EXISTING REGIONAL RESOURCES Since the INOGO region is one of the poorest in Costa Rica, a main educational challenge is to compensate for the relatively weak academic preparation students bring to schools with increased resources and more appropriately trained teachers. The cost of equipping young scholars according to national standards can be a barrier to school attendance. A 2012 survey by the Ministry of Economics calculated that it could cost between 80,495 colones ($164) and 101,463 colones ($206.50) to fully prepare a student for the start of the school year – the most expensive line item being the uniform (A.M. Personal de Costa Rica, 2013). For low-‐income families, this price tag may determine a students’ ability to attend school. Many interviewees commented on the poor quality of classrooms and general infrastructure, suggesting that most buildings are deteriorating. Because of the government’s recent emphasis on retention in secondary schools, it has reduced the funds for infrastructural maintenance by about $1 billion per year. The Inter-‐American Development Bank has recently taken note of this and loaned the Costa Rican government $167 million dollars to improve the physical state of its educational system4.

4 http://www.iadb.org/en/news/news-releases/2012-11-09/educational-infrastructure-in-costa-rica,10195.html

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Many classroom discipline issues have arisen because of large class sizes in the urban centers of the INOGO study region. The average number of students in a classroom is supposedly 25, though interviewers witnessed classes of between five (in rural schools) and 34 (in urban schools) students. The large class size, and mixture of special needs and regular students, divides instructor attention and makes it harder for him or her to control the learning environment. Because of that, INOGO interviewers noted that students seemed to take advantage of the situation, meandering out of class at will, talking with other students in class or friends passing by, and generally disrespecting the teacher. Also of note is that one interviewer stated that it did not seem as though instructors were interested in imposing disciplinary action on their students to gain control. In addition, special needs children are often treated as secondary to the students on grade level. Because they are in the minority in terms of numbers, observers noted that teachers tended to overlook them and interviewers said they often saw special needs children doing absolutely nothing while the teachers spent quality time working with the other students. According to statistics from the region, an average of 33.1% of students in primary school receive some assistance for special needs (refer to Table 8). In addition to the general decline of physical structures and disciplinary issues, many schools are also lacking the technological investments that are necessary to keep students up to speed with the rest of the country, let alone with the world. Generally speaking, only schools in city centers have access to computer labs or libraries. While the majority of students in the INOGO region had the necessary pencils and notebooks for basic lessons, the schools surveyed were struggling to provide teachers with computers. Some of the high schools have computer labs, and in the more urban primary schools there are computers available. Some schools have one computer for the director that all members of the staff share. Only an estimated 50% of secondary schools have libraries with books in Spanish5, but most lack a corresponding computer laboratory. According to the (MEP, 2011c), in 2009 more than 337,000 books were distributed to over 900 libraries across the country. Unfortunately, none of those resources reached the INOGO region. Generally, students do not have access to their own textbooks, but there have been donations to some schools from La Nación (Rodríguez 2013), Santillana, Trampolín, and Fundación Corcovado. There are also libraries in the primary schools of Golfito and Río Claro, though there is no place for the students to sit and read. Primary schools also often have inspiring murals, pictures and material on the walls to promote positive perceptions of education. Transportation, often a major barrier to education in these rural school systems, is provided for colegio students who live farther than 3km from school. Unfortunately, this privilege does not extend to primary students, though it is expected that primary schools are located within walking distance of every student. Of the colegios visited, only the Liceo Rural de Sierpe does not provide free transport for students, and every other interviewee commented on how good the service is where it is available. MEP provides a grant from FONABE (Fondo Nacional de

5 Puerto Jiménez has a library, but the books are largely donations from tourists and many are in English.

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Becas) to help install transit systems in rural areas. The Student Transportation Program has given more than 16,531,000 colones to help more than 76,710 students get to school (MEP, 2011b). The program is a partnership between FONABE and the parent club (Junta Educativa) of each school – regional treasurers in the schools are responsible for overseeing the distribution of these funds.

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Recommendations and opportunities The main opportunities for educational improvement found during INOGO’s investigations involve working within MEP’s existing structure to increase community involvement and tailor educational offerings to the needs of the of Osa and Golfito region. As shown above, many national initiatives are technically available to the study region, but because of the region’s remote location and highly dispersed population, many of these resources have not reached the area. Through conversations with community members and school directors, it seems as though many people do not understand the process by which they can access these resources. There are many existing structures in place – through MEP on a national level, and through administrative communication networks on the local level – and so it is a matter of working within these existing systems to leverage improved trainings and curricula, and inflow of resources, as well as working with the community to help them believe in the larger goal. Below is a compiled list of suggestions on how to best allocate the existing resources to capitalize on the structures in place that arose from community members’ requests, interviews, observations and data analysis. INOGO has also provided some concrete recommendations for local and national actors, as well as some recommendations for possible areas of collaboration with international partners.

PRESCHOOL It is highly desirable to have a more detailed study be conducted to determine the cause of low preschool attendance rates in the region, as well as to consider what measures could be taken to improve availability and access to these courses. Establishing preschool as a truly integral part of mandatory education could help establish a culture of learning that extends the lifespan of a child’s education at least through the terminus of high school.

PRIMARY EDUCATION The four main recommendations that resulted from our analysis of primary education are as follows:

1. Strengthen education generally, and environmental education in particular, with more emphasis on interactive activities in nature;

2. Develop, within the umbrella of environmental education, a marine education program for all levels of primary school (as requested by Escuela San Jose de Golfito);

3. Increase the amount and quality English language instruction, perhaps most efficiently by helping the JumpStart Program find stable sources of funding and volunteers;

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4. Study the feasibility and need of consolidating many one teacher and two teacher schools in the region into INOGO-‐dubbed “super schools.”

As approximately 25% of the population of the districts of Golfito, Puerto Jiménez, Guaycará and Pavón are under fifteen years of age, changes made at the primary and secondary school levels are very important to changing the future of the region (IAE, 2011). One of the most useful ways to make education stimulating and relevant for the region’s youth would be to engage them more fully in interactive activities that use the natural environment as a teaching tool. INOGO found a few teachers who use examples from the local environment, though most lacked the training necessary to achieve this integration in interdisciplinary lesson plans. The region’s unique organisms and ecosystems provide teachers a special opportunity to use environmental themes, especially marine and rain forest themes, and examples for everything from civics to chemistry to argumentative writing skills. Similar interdisciplinary programs, such as the “Aula al Aire Libre” in the Reserva Los Coyotes near San Jose, provide good examples of combining environmental education regarding natural resource use with social sciences to explain the relationship between humans and their surrounding natural environment to produce more well-‐rounded students (Hernández C, 2011). Philanthropic funders or even local businesses could collaborate with local schools, the Ministry of Education, and even with the local NGOs to make this a reality. As part of this outdoor environmental effort, we recommend a greater commitment to marine education. According to the National Report on Education, 77% of schools nationally (mostly rural) receive agricultural education lessons twice a week throughout primary education (MEP, 2010b). In certain areas within the INOGO study region this curriculum is still applicable, but in much of the region there is limited agricultural practice. In its place, the Escuela San Jose de Golfito has suggested the implementation of a marine education program for each level of the primary school curriculum. Golfito, just like many other communities in the region, is located on the edge of a marine ecosystem and a large part of its economy relies on utilizing resources within that ecosystem. It is important that the students learn how to use marine resources without depleting them so as to preserve their livelihood for future generations. Not only does MEP already have an established National Marine Education Program, but the Programa Bandera Azul also has an education component to supplement its certification efforts. There is a potential opportunity to work with these two institutions to implement a marine education program suited to the Osa and Golfito region that could be taught as part of a greater emphasis on active environmental education at all levels of schooling. In many consultations, it was expressed that without strong skills in English, job opportunities in the region are limited. Joining the many voices asking for opportunities to improve English education in the region, INOGO also recommends increased English language instruction in the region. Companies requiring English, especially in computer technical support or tourism, are one of the main sources of employment in Costa Rica. Because of the prevalence of tourism opportunities in the region, improved English instruction could be key in improving job access for students. Project JumpStart, a joint effort between Peace Corps, CRUSA and Costa Rica Multilingüe, provides immersive English summer school courses for seventh grade students

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across Costa Rica. The goal of this program is to increase English proficiency for young Costa Ricans. JumpStart ran a successful pilot program in Puerto Jiménez in the summer of 2012 that taught English to 14 students, 10 of whom had never received instruction in English before, and all of whom reportedly felt better prepared to enter high school after going through the program. Nationally, 53 communities have received the program, graduating 267 students (127 were new to English) and involving more than 1,400 teachers in the education process. JumpStart’s current goal is to secure enough scholarships for co-‐teachers to receive a stipend, and to provide official training credits for participating teachers. As the demand has increased for the program, JumpStart hopes to open more classrooms around the country and to improve the training program for teachers so they can continue the program without the help of the co-‐teachers (JumpStart, 2013). We believe that improving English proficiency in the INOGO study region will help provide more employment opportunities both within the tourism sector and also in industries that exist outside of the region. Another recommendation from our observations is to explore the feasibility of consolidating smaller schools with few resources with and into larger schools as a means to merge resources and improve education for all students. Understandably, this is a sensitive proposition, and so it must be understood the goal of INOGO is to retain teacher jobs while simultaneously improving the educational quality for all members of the community. Presently the many small single teacher schools scattered throughout the region receive limited resources and support from local, regional, and state governments because of the small number of students each school serves. The travel time between these smaller schools has recently decreased thanks to the paving of many roadways in the region (Figure 14) – currently in the 20km stretch between La Palma and Puerto Jiménez (travel time of approximately 30 minutes), there are five single teacher, two dual teacher and two multi-‐level schools. As infrastructure improves, the need for smaller, under-‐supported schools decreases. If these single-‐teacher schools were combined into larger schools the efficiency of programmatic support and donations would likely increase (both of funds and tangible resources), thereby building more support for the regional education system. This consolidation of funds and resources could help to build better libraries and computer labs that can serve more students in the region that are not currently available to students in multi-‐grade schools.

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Figure 14: Concentrations of unidocente and biodocente schools between La Palma and Puerto Jiménez

Souce: GeoAdaptive, 2012, for INOGO

There are several barriers that must be reduced in order to make this possible. Firstly, all teachers must be assured of their job security. Job retention can fall under several categories –

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transferring to the consolidated school, creating after-‐school programs for youth, teaching night school classes for interested adults, and establishing before-‐school courses to bring less advantaged students up to speed. Engaging after-‐school programs could help reduce delinquency amongst minors – a cause for concern in the region (see also Hunt, Menke, & Durha

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