Education in Guatemala is free and compulsory for six years. Guatemala has a five-tier system of education starting with primary school, followed by secondary school and tertiary education, depending on the level of technical training. 83.3% of the population age 15 and over is literate. The official language of instruction is Spanish as mandated by the Education Law in 1965 when Spanish became the official language of Guatemala.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) finds that Guatemala is fulfilling only 60.5% of what it should be fulfilling for the right to education based on the country's level of income. HRMI breaks down the right to education by looking at the rights to both primary education and secondary education. While taking into consideration Guatemala's income level, the nation is achieving 74.9% of what should be possible based on its resources (income) for primary education but only 46.2% for secondary education.
Issues
In Guatemala, students had 4 years of schooling in 2011 on average, 16.7% of the population are illiterate, with illiteracy rates up to more than 60% in the indigenous population. Indigenous people make up about 42% of the population in Guatemala and mostly reside in poor rural areas with little access to post-primary education. Compared to non-indigenous students who average 5.7 years of schooling, Indigenous students are at a disadvantage with an average of 2.5 years of schooling. Indigenous students achieve lower than non-indigenous (ladino) students in schooling possibly due to greater poverty and lack of indigenous language involvement in public schooling.
Education resources and Indigenous disadvantage
Indigenous student achievement is lower than non-indigenous student achievement. Indigenous parents have less schooling and lower socioeconomic status contributing to a poor education environment: schools with fewer educational materials, poor school infrastructure, and low quality educators. Indigenous students across Guatemala start schooling about 0.5 years later than ladino students. Already with disadvantaged backgrounds, indigenous students attend schools with fewer resources and perform worse on exams than non-indigenous students across Guatemala.
The recruitment and retaining of quality teachers poses a large problem in rural areas of Guatemala. Apart from the meagre pay, most teachers come from larger towns, where they have been able to receive higher education and, faced with a daily commute of a few hours to reach rural areas, many seek employment in the larger towns first. Indigenous students in rural schools therefore have lower teacher expectations which affects their achievement in school. The lack of curriculum guides or teaching materials in rural schools also hamper efforts to improve education standards in those areas.
The current state of education in Guatemala is significantly under-funded. Many classrooms nationwide, especially in rural Guatemala, do not meet minimum standards for classroom space, teaching materials, classroom equipment and furniture, and water/sanitation.
School attendance
With more than half the population of Guatemalans living below the poverty line, it is hard for children going to school, especially indigenous children, to afford the rising cost of uniforms, books, supplies and transportation — none of which are supplied by the government. This is exacerbated by the fact that, for poorer students, time spent in school could be time better spent working to sustain the family. It is especially hard for children living in rural areas to attend primary school. Most drop out due to the lack of access and largely inadequate facilities.
Indigenous students drop out starting at age 12 which is the transition age between primary and secondary level schools mostly due to economic constraints and demand for labor work. For indigenous males, the need to work for financial stability is the most frequent case for dropping out or not enrolling in school. Indigenous students are more likely to work instead of or while attending school. Poverty is thus the main deterrent to schooling for indigenous students—poverty and rural residence increases the likelihood of school incompletion and non enrollment.