UNESCO praises Cuba's education efforts
News from Cuba | Tuesday, 1 March 2011
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognized Cuba’s efforts to prioritize the education sector.
The 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, an annual publication in Paris, notes that Cuba devoted 13,8% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to education in 2008, whereas other countries of the region spent only around five per cent in the same period.
It adds that, in that same year, the “Yes, I can” Cuban literacy program was already implemented in 12 Latin American countries, and it has continued its expansion towards other regions of the world.
According to Prensa Latina news agency, this project has joined other more comprehensive strategies that aim at attaining universal literacy among the adult population in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela.
The document points out that Cuba has the highest percentage of students with top grades, and the lowest amount of students with results below one or lower.
It also explains that more than 50 per cent of students attained level-four marks, a percentage three times higher than that of Argentina and Chile.
In 2006, Cuba received UNESCO’s King Sejong Literacy Prize for promoting the “Yes, I can” initiative, according to the website of the Granma newspaper that year. (ACN).
