Honduras
Where violence and poverty outshine education.
7/10
children live in a home classified by UNICEF as below the poverty line (Forbes, 2019).
3/4
children leave school between the ages of 12 and 18 (Forbes, 2019).
2.5
is the number of years most children are behind in Science, Math and Languages compared to their wealthier peers (Bos et al., 2016).
Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and one of the most violent in the world. There’s little place for education, let alone 21st-century learning. Education is a privilege, not a priority and it faces two main problems:
- Access & Retainment: Although primary education in Latin America is becoming universal, Honduras has one of the lowest enrollment and highest drop out rates. This is due to the need to bring income and the increased levels of violence, which make the passage to school dangerous (Adelman & Székely, 2016, Sekiya& Ashida, 2017).
- Quality: According to UNESCO’s LLECE (Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education), Latin American student’s academic performance is significantly below established standards in language, math, and science. However, performance is largely affected by the family’s income. Honduras has one of the highest gaps in performance between the wealthy and the poor, with poor students being 8-11 times more likely to score in the lowest achievement band (UNESCO 2016).
There are national and international efforts to address the enrollment and retainment issue in the Honduran public school system. However, there are fewer initiatives that address the quality and timeliness of the national curriculum.
The Inventor's Playground 