Why do Latin America and the Caribbean have low learning levels?

If learning were a disease, we would be talking about a global pandemic

 

Understanding The Learning Crisis: Where Are Students with Learning Gaps Located?

By Mercedes Mateo

iadb Blog

The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) published the results of PISA 2022 in December last year.  Those results showed a global crisis in learning.

What happened in Latin America and the Caribbean?  We saw that three out of four 15-year-old students lack basic skills in mathematics, and almost half do not understand what they read.

We partnered with the World Bank to publish the report Learning Can’t Wait: Lessons for Latin America and the Caribbean from PISA 2022.  We sought to better understand the reasons behind this learning crisis in the region.

And, just as with child mortality, we know where and why.

Where? 

Also, in low—and middle-income countries, on average, 15-year-old students in the region lag five years behind the average student in OECD countries.  If we compare Latin American and Caribbean countries with those above the OECD average, the gap is 12 years of learning compared to Singapore, which leads the PISA rankings.

We not only know where the learning crisis is located and in which countries these learning challenges exist, but we also know who the lagging students are within countries.

There is an enormous inequality in learning by socioeconomic status: 88% of low-income students underperform in mathematics, compared to 55% of the wealthiest students.  That’s a difference of more than 30 percentage points between the two groups.

Why do Latin America and the Caribbean have low learning levels? 

We not only know where, but we know why: 

1. First, we are not investing enough in education.  Our countries invest, on average, three times less in education than OECD countries. 
2. There is also a relationship between investment and learning.  With the current level of investment, we could improve learning outcomes.  Therefore, there is room for efficiency.  The countries in the region are below the trend line, which means they could achieve better learning results for every dollar they invest. 
3. Third, there is a distribution problem and an equity issue. The teacher is the main input an education system has to achieve learning.  And what we see is that this main input is unequally distributed.  The highest-quality teachers are systematically in schools where the highest-income students attend.

Three keys to overcome the education crisis: solutions that work

Just as in the case of child mortality, we know where; we understand why. And we also know the solutions that work.

 

1. Measure more and better.  Measuring learning means knowing where we stand and providing a sense of purpose and direction.  It indicates where we want to be in the coming years. 

2. Investing more.  Countries in the region need to invest more. 

3. Investing better.  Investing better means generating efficiencies and spending better on the one hand.  On the other hand, it means investing in programs that we know are effective and can improve learning. 

Examples of solutions that work to enhance learning

• Early literacy programs.  We know, for instance, that if we offer good literacy programs to young children from an early age, we can improve their reading skills by 30%.  “Let’s All Learn to Read” is one such solution. 
• Intercultural bilingual education.  We also know that when we culturally contextualize the learning of mathematics, indigenous children develop 50% stronger math skills. 
• Remote tutoring.  We also know that when we provide personalized support to the most vulnerable, lagging students through highly cost-effective remote tutoring, we can accelerate their learning by 30%. 
• School feeding programs.  We also know that offering school meals to students increases their participation in school.  We see a 9% improvement in school attendance. 
• Education management and information systems.  Finally, having management and information systems is crucial.  They not only help us generate efficiencies but are also essential to ensure equity.  This data allows us to distribute resources more equitably in education systems to compensate for student differences.  

We know the magnitude of the problem.  We have studied it in depth.  We know where the problem lies and why we are facing this challenge.  And we also know the effective solutions.  We have done it before; we can do it again.  The main challenge is how to transform the region’s education systems at scale.  Because learning can’t wait, these generations of children and youth cannot wait.

Source

Bahamas: US tax treaty 'hasn't created Armageddon'

By NEIL HARTNELL
Tribune Business Editor:


THE Bahamas' Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with the United States "hasn't created the kind of Armageddon" many feared when this nation signed that treaty back in 2002, a senior Ministry of Finance official said yesterday, adding that the number of requests submitted by Washington had not been "exorbitant".

Rowena Bethel, in-house legal adviser at the ministry, told a Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) luncheon yesterday that the Bahamas' first-ever TIEA, which took effect with the US for criminal tax matters from January 1, 2004, onwards, and New Year's Day 2006 for civil matters, had "been a fairly smooth process to date".

Responding to questions from STEP members as to how the US TIEA had worked and been administered in practice, Mrs Bethel said the Bahamas' "long-standing relationship" with Washington in many areas had ensured the tax information exchange process had been relatively hassle-free.

"I'm not aware that there have been any issues in terms of processing of requests from the US, and that speaks in the Bahamas' favour," Mrs Bethel said. "It hasn't been an exorbitant number of requests, to my knowledge.

"We have a long-standing relationship, and it [the US TIEA] hasn't created the kind of Armageddon spoken about" when the Bahamas signed the agreement back in 2002.

The Bahamas' experience in responding to US requests for assistance under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) had served it well in dealing with TIEA requests, she suggested, as the processes involved had their similarities.

Referring to the wider TIEA network the Bahamas had signed up to, Mrs Bethel added: "What we're looking at is the new norm, and operating within the scope of the new norm, recognising certain obligations have to be met, and the parameters to work within."

Analysing the TIEAs' likely impact on the Bahamas financial services industry going forward, Mrs Bethel said this nation was "very good at adjusting", as it had shown throughout its history, and the key was its response to the new international financial services regulatory climate and whether it "takes advantage of the opportunities" now presenting themselves.

"It's a foregone conclusion that things have changes, and in many ways they've changed irreversibly," she told STEP members. "It's important to see how we can benefit from the new opportunities that have emerged from these changes.

"What is important is building a strategy to ensure the Bahamas remains a viable and competitive centre."

Moving forward, Mrs Bethel said the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development's (OECD) 'Peer Review' programme, which would assess the Bahamas and 90 other nations on their compliance with global standards for tax transparency and information exchange, was they key consideration this nation had to be aware of.

The review would take place in two phases, the first of which would assess whether the Bahamas had the legal, administrative and regulatory framework to achieve the desired standards. The latter would assess whether this nation was effectively implementing them, and exchanging tax information in an effective manner.

Asked why several TIEAs, including those the Bahamas had agreed with the UK, France and the Netherlands, included a provision that made information exchange on criminal tax matters retroactive to January 1, 2004, Mrs Bethel replied that based on the OECD model agreement, the earliest tax year for which information could be shared was the one that began on that date.

She added: "The Bahamas hasn't done anything outside the standard, except set a floor in terms of how far back it goes in providing assistance in criminal tax matters."

March 17, 2010

tribune242

Bahamas Blog International

Bahamas: Time for income tax?

By Scott Armstrong ~ Guardian Business Editor ~ scott@nasguard.com

twitter.com/guardianbiz:



While the news was being digested that The Bahamas was now back on the the international tax white list, one well-known financier called for the government to look again at the nation's tax structure.

Paul Moss, managing director of the financial services company Dominion Management Services Ltd, welcomed the news that The Bahamas had signed the 12 Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) he warned that it would only be a question of time before the G20 and the OECD wanted more.

He said: "While the government should be congratulated for having acted appropriately to have the Bahamas removed off the grey list, it is a momentary victory as it will not be long before the OECD coming knocking again with more demands.

"When you give them an inch they take the proverbial mile and this is why I have called for the Bahamas to change its tax structure so that we could avoid these kinds of demands. We ought to now become proactive by introducing income tax with a low flat rate so we are no longer accused of being a tax heaven which makes us at the whim of the OECD.

"I am tired of saying it but sometimes you must repeat until our leaders get it. Only when we become a taxed jurisdiction (income tax) would we be left lone.

"Now is the perfect opportunity for us to engage in this dialog and seek to sign double taxation agreement with every country in the world if necessary.

"This is serious business and we cannot afford to continue to be reactionary in this regard. I now call on the professionals in private practice and the government to sit and maturely map out a new tax regime which will also have the desired affect of bring more money to the treasury as we as making it more equitable for the poor".



Thursday March 11, 2010

thenassauguardian

Bahamas Blog International

Obama's Nobel Prize: The stupidity of political bigotry

By Sir Ronald Sanders:


Barack Obama did not ask for the Nobel Peace Prize and he was probably the most shocked person to learn that it had been awarded to him.

He certainly made no secret of his surprise at the news. And, he was dignified and humble in publicly saying that he didn't feel that he deserved to be "in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honoured by this prize - men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace".

In selecting Obama, the Nobel Prize Committee said: "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future". Few, except Obama's bitterest antagonists in the US Republican Party and right wing groups would deny that statement.

The Committee also justified awarding the Prize to Obama by saying it "attached special importance to Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons". That, too, is true. Obama could not be any clearer on this issue.

I part company with the Committee in its prospective explanation that "as President (Obama) created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play". This latter assertion is left to be seen.

From a Caribbean standpoint, his desire for multilateral diplomacy - rather than the enforcement of a US position - is yet to be tested and will be judged on the readiness of his administration to include Caribbean governments directly in: addressing the economic development needs of the area through bilateral assistance and the mobilization of resources from the international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank; reviewing US policy on the deportation of criminals; reassessing and re-modeling the anti-drug trafficking programme in the area; and fashioning machinery that will allow Caribbean financial services to continue to compete in the global market place, particularly in relation to US businesses. On this, judgment of Obama's willingness to engage even the smallest of nations in multilateral decision-making has to be withheld.

But, whatever reservations may be harboured by non-Americans about the early award of the Peace Prize to Obama, two things cannot be denied. First, the Nobel Prize Committee is right in its assessment that Obama has captured the world's attention and given people of many nations cause to hope for a better future. And, second, he has been awarded the prize without seeking it.

In this regard, Barack Obama is far above reproach. His declaration that he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of the notable persons who preceded him also marked him as a special human being.

Every citizen of the United States of America should have rejoiced in the selection of one of their own for the Prize, especially coming after a period in which its government's policies and practices estranged the US from most of the rest of the world and created deep resentment of Americans as a nation. Americans of every stripe should have been delighted that their country had returned to a place of global honour.

And, it is worth saying that while the period before Obama was particularly awful under the administration of George W Bush, the previous Bill Clinton government was not without its flaws.

Any who would question my observation of the Clinton government should look at the number of routine air strikes in Afghanistan that killed many innocent people and spurred deep resentment.

For the Caribbean, the dislocation of banana farmers from their preferential market in the European Union was a direct result of the Clinton administration's decision to act in the World Trade Organization for US multinational companies that were banana plantation owners in Latin America as well as financial contributors to the Clinton presidential campaign. It was also under the Clinton administration that the US took a hawkish position in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that blacklisted several Caribbean jurisdictions over financial services. Many never recovered.

There is no doubt that no one person in US history has done more to improve global attitudes to the US than Barack Obama. The American people purged themselves when the majority of them elected him President for the content of his character above the colour of his skin, and for recognizing that he had a quality in his reasoning and his aspirations that was inspiring and believable.

But, instead of applauding Obama's appreciation by a prestigious body that has honoured human achievement and ambition for over a century, Republicans and right-wing groups in the United States denigrated it.

Fox News called the Nobel Prize "tainted" and one commentator wallowed in the gutter to ask if the Prize Committee was pursuing "a policy of affirmative action" - in other words Obama got the Prize because he is black. The ridiculousness of the last comment is evidenced by the people who have won the Peace Prize in modern times. For the most part, they are not white and at least three of them are black - Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King.

These same groups cheered, celebrated, and rejoiced when their own country lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics simply because Obama joined the effort to convince the Olympic Committee to choose Chicago. How sick is that?

As a non-American, wary of the tendency for big powers to overlook the human value of small countries and their tendency to marginalise weak nations in pursuit of their own interests, I have to hope that, in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama so early in his Presidency, the objective of the Committee was to hold him to the values that he has espoused and encourage him to live up to them.

But, those Americans who maligned this unsought honour to one of their own should be ashamed of their deplorable behaviour. The awful spectacle to the world of their bigotry on this particular issue lost them respect and was nothing short of stupid.

caribbean360

Bahamas Caribbean Blog International

Saint Vincent speaks out at UN debate on efforts to clamp down on tax havens

29 September 2009 – The efforts of major and industrialized economies to crack down on so-called tax havens are just an excuse to spread the blame for the global financial crisis on small nations’ legitimate attempts at development, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines told the General Assembly today.

Camillo M. Gonsalves, the Caribbean archipelago’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, told the sixth day of the Assembly’s high-level segment that is country faces “being stigmatized out of our transition into financial services” by the Group of Twenty (G20) major economies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and what he called “other non-inclusive bodies.”

Speaking at UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Gonsalves said the crackdown on tax havens were actually “a pathetic effort to cast a wide and indiscriminate net of blame across a swath of legitimate and well-regulated countries’ development efforts.

“We note the irony of these paternalistic prescriptions from the same countries that are unable to stem corruption and mismanagement within their own borders, where corporations recklessly squander trillions of dollars and a single buccaneer investor can make $50 billion disappear into thin air – an amount greater than the combined annual budget expenditures of the entire CARICOM [Caribbean Community] sub-region,” he said.

Mr. Gonsalves took aim at the G20 for describing itself last week, at a summit in the United States city of Pittsburgh, as the premier forum for international economic cooperation.

“Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is not a member of the G20, nor were we consulted on its ascension to the ranks of arbiters of our economic fate… The G20 faces a serious legitimacy problem: aside from being non-inclusive and unofficial, many of the countries at that table represent the champions of the financial and economic orthodoxies that led the world down the rabbit-hole to its current economic malaise.”

The Permanent Representative also cast doubt on recent reports from some observers that the economy is returning to normal.

“The invisible hand of the market is still clasped firmly around the throats of poor people and the developing countries of the world. We see none of the so-called ‘green shoots’ that populate the fantasies of discredited economic cheerleaders.

“Indeed, the seeds sown by this crisis may produce the strange and bitter fruit of increased poverty, suffering and social and political upheaval. The crisis itself, with its disproportionate impact on the poor, will only widen and deepen the yawning gap between developed and developing countries.”

UN News

Bahamas Caribbean Blog International

News Tracker: past stories on this issue:

Dominican Republic calls for tax on tax havens to fund UN humanitarian goals

Bahamas Financial Services Board: Exit sparks offshore exodus fears

By INDERIA SAUNDERS ~ Guardian Business Reporter ~ inderia@nasguard.com:

The head of the Bahamas Financial Services Board (BFSB) is moving to allay concerns that The Bahamas will see a mass exodus of offshore banks on the heels of the pending exit of BNP Paribas.

It's a response sparked by that bank's decision to withdraw before the end of 2010 from countries gray listed by the OECD and viewed as "tax havens".

"It's a time of change and there will always be some amount of unsettlement in an industry of our size," Executive Director Wendy Warren told Guardian Business. "It's important to emphasize that government will maintain continuous dialogue with the industry... in the coming months The Bahamas will meet standards in a judicious matter."

Warren said she was unaware of any more banks that were preparing to follow in BNP's footsteps, asserting that it was mostly understood throughout the sector that The Bahamas is just months away from moving off the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) gray list.

A minimum number of 12 tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) are required by a jurisdiction to satisfy the standard set by the OECD, which has now put pressure on "tax havens" for greater disclosures.

The Bahamas' current placing on the gray list is a primary reason why BNP CEO Pascal Dulau said the company has made the decision to exit the country.

"Despite its excellent financial performance in the current economic crisis, BNP Paribas has conducted a global review of its network in the context of the ongoing changes in the world financial system and G20 initiatives," said Dulau.

"In the light of this review, BNP Paribas has taken the decision to withdraw before the end of 2010 from countries grey listed by the OECD and viewed as tax havens.

"This includes The Bahamas."

According to Dulau, the bank was currently deciding the better of two options — either selling part of the business or transferring it to another jurisdiction. He did say, however, that the company had no fixed schedule for departure, saying it would depend largely on if they are able to "fix everything" before the end of 2010.

"In its exit strategy, BNP Paribas (Bahamas) Limited will preserve in the best manner the interest of its clients and 40 local staff members," he said. "As always, it is BNP Paribas' objective to act in this critical period as a responsible local and international player."

Dulau said there was no possibility to reverse the decision, even after The Bahamas moved off the gray list. Some local analysts indicate, however, that there is more to BNP's exit than the OECD's pressure.

September 28, 2009

thenassauguardian

Bahamas Caribbean Blog International