The Minister of Education, Jaime Perczyk, presented the results of the Learn 2021 tests, carried out in 19,638 primary schools throughout the country, which demonstrated the great difficulty that students have in understanding what they read and stability in mathematics after the COVID-19 pandemic. coronavirus. The official attributed the drop in performance to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the “defunding of the education system” by the previous government.

According to the results of the evaluations, 56% of the sixth grade students reached the approval levels (satisfactory and advanced) in Language, while the remaining 44% had problems with reading comprehension, which represents almost twice as many. the figure for 2018, which stood at 24.7%. Among the 44% who had reading comprehension problems, 22.3% were below the basic level proposed by the curriculum and 21.7% obtained a basic level.

“We see some problems that are a consequence of the pandemic, but they have a history,” Perczyk said, adding: “The 2019 UNESCO studies already indicated that Argentina had language problems, what the pandemic did was enhance them.”

The 2021 test allows us to systematize and value diverse information about the situation of the educational system in Argentina. These are the comparative results of the performance in Language 2013-2021. pic.twitter.com/LVtikK2y5k

– Ministry of Education of the Argentine Nation (@EducacionAR) June 21, 2022

In turn, he indicated that “we came from four years of definancing of the educational system,” which was another factor that influenced the negative results of the exams. “The social conditions of the boys, the educational financing, the training of the teachers, the number of hours and days of class are the factors that are associated in all the literature with the performance of the boys (in the schools),” explained the Minister of Education.

Meanwhile, learning in mathematics was more stable. 23.1% of the students were below the basic level in Mathematics and 22.1% reached the basic level, while 54.8% achieved the expected approval levels (satisfactory and advanced).

In this discipline, the main difference is found in the distribution of students by level of performance according to the management sector: 27.2% of the students who attend public schools were below the basic level, while in private schools the figure was 11.6%.

Regarding the results, the Minister of Education indicated that reversing the situation “takes a long time, a lot of work, a lot of investment,” and estimated that the learning recovery time “does not fall below three years.”