however in spite of the recent efforts public expenditure on education remains considerably below the oecd average and below the equivalent expenditure in other latin american countries in international comparison public expenditure appears to be particularly low in public general upper secondary programmes this relatively low level of spending translates into inadequate spending on teacher and school leader salaries and on learning materials and challenges to meet the demand for preprimary education places while there have been considerable efforts to increase the salaries of public teachers in recent years the relative salaries of public teachers remain low