Panamanians, at a literacy meeting in Colombia

Teachers from Panama joined a literacy meeting held in Cali, Colombia.

With this gathering, they aim to make visible, strengthen and improve education in Latin America.

This was a conversation initiated by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in the hands of the Juntos Aprendemos program, where they recounted through experiences, experiences and real testimonies the development that is the implementation Let’s all learn to reada program that provides tools for learning to read and write at an early age for children.

Panamanian teachers were the protagonists conversation and demonstrated the success of the implementation of Aprendamos Todos a Leer, with the support of the Ministry of Education of Panama (MEDUCA), which enabled large-scale progress and success stories in strengthening the literacy of children and rural girls.

“It is the teacher who goes further to use the resources as his great company and ally in the classroom, recognizing that it is the book’s job to accompany them to give magic to the implementation of the program,” said Libertad Rivera, author of ATAL and a teacher in Panama City.

The program responds to a Latin American problem in which 51% of elementary school students have poor reading performance.

In the population with the lowest socioeconomic level, this figure reaches 71%, while the average of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is 23%, which is a big disadvantage, since education is the social and economic engine of development and reading is the main basis of learning, which must be considered a fundamental right for all children in the region.

According to studies conducted by UNESCO, 40% of students from Latin America and the Caribbean At the end of the third grade in the first level of education, they cannot understand or read the text presented to them according to standardized tests.

The purpose of implementing Aprendamos Todos a Leer is to increase literacy rates by expanding the program to different countries on the continent.

In 2020, the program reached 60,000 students in Panama, and due to the pandemic, it had to adapt to be able to implement distance education interventions.

By 2022 in Panama, Aprendamos Todos a Leer has reached all official schools in the country, impacting 310,000 students and 16,000 teachers from preschool to third grade.