SCHOOL EFFICIENCY IN RURAL GUATEMALA

This paper addresses the issues concerning the ability of the educational sector in Guatemala to meet its basic objective of providing primary education to children in rural areas. We report on data collected in seven villages in rural Guatemala on over 2000 children. Measures of school efficiency in these villages indicate that although increasingly large numbers of children are enrolling in school, promotion, repetition, and drop-out rates continue to be high and that girls are at a greater disadvantage than boys in this population. Complex interrelationships among the schooling variables point to the need for policy decisions to incorporate family, community and school level inputs.