Education in Guatemala

The official language of instruction is Spanish as mandated by the Education Law in 1965 when Spanish became the official language of Guatemala. However, Article 76 of the Constitution mandates bilingual education for regions with a predominantly indigenous population.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) finds that Guatemala is fulfilling only 60.5% of what it should be fulfilling for the right to education based on the country's level of income. HRMI breaks down the right to education by looking at the rights to both primary education and secondary education. While taking into consideration Guatemala's income level, the nation is achieving 74.9% of what should be possible based on its resources (income) for primary education but only 46.2% for secondary education. 83.3% of the population age 15 and over is literate.

Issues

In Guatemala, people 4 years of schooling in 2011 on average, 16.7% of the population are illiterate, with illiteracy rates up to more than 60% in the indigenous population. Indigenous people make up about 42% of the population in Guatemala and mostly reside in poor rural areas with little access to post-primary education. Compared to non-indigenous students who average 5.7 years of schooling, Indigenous students are at a disadvantage with an average of 2.5 years of schooling. Indigenous students achieve lower than non-indigenous (ladino) students in schooling possibly due to greater poverty and lack of indigenous language involvement in public schooling.

Education resources and Indigenous disadvantage

Indigenous student achievement is lower than non-indigenous student achievement. Indigenous parents have less schooling and lower socioeconomic status contributing to a poor education environment: schools with fewer educational materials, poor school infrastructure, and low quality educators. Indigenous students across Guatemala start schooling about 0.5 years later than ladino students. Already with disadvantaged backgrounds, indigenous students attend schools with fewer resources and perform worse on exams than non-indigenous students across Guatemala.

The recruitment and retaining of quality teachers poses a large problem in rural areas of Guatemala. Apart from the meagre pay, most teachers come from larger towns, where they have been able to receive higher education and, faced with a daily commute of a few hours to reach rural areas, many seek employment in the larger towns first. Indigenous students in rural schools therefore have lower teacher expectations which affects their achievement in school. The lack of curriculum guides or teaching materials in rural schools also hamper efforts to improve education standards in those areas.

The current state of education in Guatemala is significantly under-funded. Many classrooms nationwide, especially in rural Guatemala, do not meet minimum standards for classroom space, teaching materials, classroom equipment and furniture, and water/sanitation.

School attendance

With more than half the population of Guatemalans living below the poverty line, it is hard for children going to school, especially indigenous children, to afford the rising cost of uniforms, books, supplies and transportation — none of which are supplied by the government. This is exacerbated by the fact that, for poorer students, time spent in school could be time better spent working to sustain the family. It is especially hard for children living in rural areas to attend primary school. Most drop out due to the lack of access and largely inadequate facilities.

Indigenous students drop out starting at age 12 which is the transition age between primary and secondary level schools mostly due to economic constraints and demand for labor work. For indigenous males, the need to work for financial stability is the most frequent case for dropping out or not enrolling in school. Indigenous students are more likely to work instead of or while attending school. Poverty is thus the main deterrent to schooling for indigenous students—poverty and rural residence increases the likelihood of school incompletion and non enrollment.

Gender inequality in education is common — male literacy and school enrollment exceeds female rates in all aspects. Out of the 2 million children who do not attend school in Guatemala, the majority are indigenous girls living in rural areas. Most families subscribe to patriarchal traditions that tie women to a domestic role and the majority would rather send a son than a daughter to school if they could afford it. Mayan females are the least likely to enroll, start school late, and drop out the earliest compared to Mayan males and ladino males and females. Only 39% of indigenous females are literate compared to 68% of Mayan males, 87% Ladino males, and 77% Ladino women. Expectation of marriage and domestic duties for females, contributes to low investment in education—indigenous females marry younger than non-indigenous females and only 3% of married females enroll in school.

Guatemala's spending on education is one of the lowest in the world. In 2021, the country spent 3.1 percent of its GDP on education. By the late 2000s, the majority of Guatemalan schools had grid-supplied electricity, allowing for the use of electrical lighting, heating, and computers and the provision of running water for drinking and sanitation. However compared to other countries in Latin America, Guatemalan schools score mid-pack on measures such as the supply of potable water, and near the bottom on others such as the number of bathrooms. Research has found that lack of infrastructure such as adequate potable water, sewage services, or electricity and lack of educational materials such as textbooks in Guatemalan schools can have significant negative impacts on student performance.

Primary education has been compulsory in Guatemala since 1985, yet the populace has one of the lowest rates of cumulative education in Latin America. Educators in Guatemalan public schools often use teaching methods that do not account for the nearly 40% of students hailing from indigenous backgrounds who are non-native Spanish speakers. Monolingual Spanish instruction is used in linguistically diverse classrooms as there are about 20 Mayan languages in Guatemala. This is reflected in high rates of repetition of grades, for instance up to 30% in first grade. Compared to native Spanish speaking ladino students, Indigenous students often enter school without Spanish fluency and due to the language gap, achieve lower than other students. Research shows that bilingual education for indigenous students reduced grade repetition and dropout rates.