Cuba Leads Education in Latin America, Says Unesco Report

Cuba is the country in Latin America and the Caribbean with the largest index in the Development of Education (IDE), says Unesco World Report 2013-2014 released in Paris.

The IDE is a composite indicator that enables an overall evaluation of the education system in terms of quality, early childhood, elementary, youth, adult literacy and gender parity.

In the report Education for All (EFA), the Cuba IDE is 0.983, even higher than the United States.

This document entitled “Teaching and Learning: Achieving quality education for all” also places Cuba among the nations that most progress has had in achieving the EFA goals, although already in 1999 it had a high compliance of these indicators.

The study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization says globally, Cuba is the country with most of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) devoted to education, with 13 percent.

The Unesco report aims to assess progress in achieving the EFA goals agreed in 2000 in Dakar for 2015. Despite progress in the last decade, it is clear that globally these goals will not be met, so education should occupy a central place in the development agenda beyond 2015, concludes the paper.

At present there are still 57 million children and 69 million adolescents out of school and the number of illiterate adults reached 774 million.