Honduran educational system

I’ve been meaning to blog about the educational system here in Honduras for quite some time so I’m finally getting to it. I had to do a little research on this topic for my Spanish class when we were still in Santa Lucia so that’s why I have some percentages and other data.

Apparently, Honduras’ educational system is the worst one in Central America. There are many problems including lack of resources and schools, lots of teacher strikes, poor teacher training and really no system of teacher accountability. By that I mean the teachers can do whatever they want in their classroom…they can chat with peers and drink coffee all day if they want and there is really no one who will tell them they can’t do that. I’m not saying all teachers in Honduras spend their days drinking coffee and chatting...of course, there are some very good teachers but there are some pretty bad ones too. A lot of teachers are teachers only because it was a good financial decision for them (steady pay, lots of time off, etc). According to one source, Honduras’ rate of illiteracy is 18.3% of the total population, 80% in the rural areas. Many Honduras never finish elementary school and much fewer finish high school.

Schools are divided up into a “ciclo básico” which consists of grades 1-6, a “ciclo común” which consists of 7-9 and then “bachillerato” which is like our high school but with a vocational focus and is from 2 to 3 years. People we’ve talked with have said somewhere around 65% graduate from the “ciclo báico” (through 6th grade) but official statistics are more around 85%. I’ve heard that teachers pass students onto the next grade even if they completely failed so their “numbers” don’t look bad. There will be kids in the 4th grade, for example, that still can’t read but keep getting passed to the next grade.

Schools in the aldeas (village) often times have even more issues to deal with. Teachers of these schools usually don’t live in the aldea and show up only Tuesday-Thursday to teach so they don’t have to travel during the weekend. Some schools only have one teacher for all the grades (think one-room school house back in the days in the US). Due to the remoteness of some of these schools, the teacher(s)/school receive basically no supervision.

Teacher strikes are problems for every school here. The government pays the salaries of teachers, defines their benefits, etc. so when the teachers aren’t getting what they need, they strike, often times for weeks or months at a time. In 2006, students were in school for only 140 days instead of the required 200. The other problem is that school only lasts for about 5 hours. You either go in the morning or afternoon. So it’s common to see kids running around at any hour of the day and impossible to tell if that kid goes to school or not. Very different from US schools where kids are in school from 8ish to 3 or 3:30 and where it’s odd to see any child over the age of 6 running around between those hours.

There has been a big surge in private education in the last several decades. However, there is a lot of disagreement over whether private education is actually better quality than public or not.

Teachers here, for the most part, do not use much creativity in their teaching methodologies. Students are taught by copying what is written on the board into a notebook. Not much work is done to develop creativity, self-esteem, team-work, critical thinking, etc.

Again, please remember that these observations are my own, made from talking with other volunteers that have worked in schools and from our training sessions. Needless to say, there’s a lot of work to be done!