Índice de calidad de la educación

Abstract

The Education Quality Index calculation is based on a methodology proposed in previous work, which uses principal components analysis to group and qualify each of the variables related to the education system. By performing the calculation, we find that there is a large gap between the values obtained in the central regions of the country and those in the periphery, concentrating the highest scores in Antioquia, Valle del Cauca and Bogotá; and the lowest in Guainía, Vichada and Vaupés. Over time, the rating of each department has not changed much and, in general, the values obtained at a country level show a low quality in the education system. Primarily, we find that the main weakness of the country (in 30 of the 33 regions considered), is a poor quality or availability of a base structure for the system, in other words, the resources like infrastructure, provision of schools or teachers plant are insufficient. From this, we conclude that Colombia needs real effective controls to monitor the allocation of resources to the education system and to verify that they are used to achieve the goals set by government policies; which should promote projects in the peripheral zone and not just in the center of the country, focusing on improving the quality of the institutions.