Teacher Policies in Central America & DR

This post is also available in: Spanish

Evidence suggests that schools in Central America and the Dominican Republic do not provide the education that children and youth need. Despite the importance of teachers for learning, in most countries the systems of recruitment, training, retention and support of teachers, in addition to their management and monitoring systems, still have serious shortcomings.

Given this reality, the Inter-American Dialogue – with support from the Institutional Capacity Strengthening Thematic Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank, created with contributions from the government of the People’s Republic of China – is leading a project designed to generate informed discussion about teacher policies in the region. In collaboration with national partners, the project has produced four monitoring reports that systematically describe the state and scope of teacher policies in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.

On Wednesday, March 4th, the Dialogue, in collaboration with the IDB and national partners, organized a high-level seminar where the authors of the reports presented their main findings and recommendations. In addition, our special guest Pablo Cevallos Estarellas, former Vice Minister of Education of Ecuador, shared lessons on education reforms in Ecuador in recent years. The seminar took place in Panama City and was attended by members of civil society, officials from the Ministries of Education, academics, and other experts from Central America and the Dominican Republic.

We are pleased to share with our readers a video and photos of the seminar. To see the four monitoring reports, the presentations of each of the panelists, and other details of this important project, click here.