Secondary education in Latin America: between diversification and segmentation

• In Event: Movement in the Latin American Educational Terrain - Trends and Analysis on the Regional Discourse

Proposal

The paper presents the results of a two-phase study on the diversification of the offer of secondary education and educational segmentation in Latin America developed between 2019 and 2021. The study counted on the support of ECLAC, IIEP UNESCO Buenos Aires and UNICEF Lacro. The first phase integrated the analysis of quantitative indicators in 13 countries of the region with the study of the institutional structures and models of secondary school in six countries: Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico and Uruguay. The second phase investigated the schooling experience of adolescents and young people in diversified structures. Interviews and focus groups were conducted in the same six countries to an intentional sample of adolescents regarding access, trajectory, and temporary or permanent dropout. They included inquiries about the schooling experience during pandemic.
The study methodology combined the quantitative analysis of the main educational indicators on the evolution of secondary education with the qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with officials and researchers (4 per country) and students (an intentional sample of 452 adolescents, between 70 and 100 in each country). By comparing the information, we present a matrix on the diversification of secondary education and its relationship with educational segmentation.
The study shows that expanding the legal framework is a necessary but not sufficient condition to guarantee the universalization of secondary education. The data collected show notable progress in countries with extended compulsory education: 78% of the theoretical group access secondary school, 80% complete the lower section and 59% the upper section. However, it is a continuous but incomplete expansion in terms of access and completion.
Data also indicates pending challenges regarding access and completion and the weight of the socio-economic condition, particularly in rural areas, on the distribution of the offer and the school experience. Despite the advances in the last decade, the distance between the lower and upper quintiles concerning the completion of secondary education reflects the inequality in the opportunities that adolescents and young people have in almost all the region's countries.
The voice of the students gives an account of the perception of conditions that can turn into inequalities: on the one hand, differentials in private schools, availability and accessibility in rural areas and intensification of the segmentation of school offer according to institutional models; on the other hand, different material conditions, discordant study regimes between primary and secondary and within secondary education, selection and tracking devices and lack of relevance, in some cases, of pedagogical and organizational proposals.
These differential conditions and their potential barrier or obstacle effect are probably related to the form adopted by compulsory school policies in the region: extension with diversification. However, their deployment shows mechanisms that segment but sustain, mainly because they install an opportunity. Thus, it was also possible to identify school support points between the laws, the regulations and the students' perceptions.

Author

• Felicitas M Acosta, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento