Across Central American countries, a variety of patterns is observed. As shown in Figure 4a, the dropout rate in Costa Rica during LS ages fell by 11 percentage points across cohorts, dropout during the transition ages between LS and US remained practically the same, and dropout during US ages increased by 4 points.<sup>9</sup> Therefore, for secondary education as a whole, there was a decline in dropout by 6 percentage points. Panama in the same figure follows a less similar pattern, with a slight reduction in dropout during LS ages, small changes during transition, and a small increase during US ages. The result is a practically unchanged overall secondary dropout rate between cohorts.

The trajectories of the same two cohorts for El Salvador are shown in Figure 4b. Here, dropout during LS ages and during transition remained practically the same, but there is a considerable increase in dropout at US ages of 10 percentage points, which results in an increase from to 30 to 39 points in the overall dropout rate of youth of secondary school age. In Guatemala and Honduras, the overall secondary dropout rate declined, as greater declines at LS ages and transition compensated for increases at US ages. In Nicaragua, overall secondary dropout remained practically constant, although with a pattern opposite to that observed in the other five countries. In Nicaragua, LS and transition dropout both increased slightly, but the effect was counterbalanced by a reduction in dropout at US ages of 3 percentage points.

Table 1 summarizes the results for the latest cohort for Central America, and allows characterizing the different country patterns currently observed. In Costa Rica, Panama, and El Salvador, the majority of secondary dropout occurs during US ages. In Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua somewhat similar proportions drop out during LS and US ages. In these last three countries, the emerging US dropout challenge is combined with still significant shares of youth leaving school prematurely during LS. In these same countries, it is important to note that about 20 percent of the younger cohort (those born 1994-1996) was out of school by the age of transition to LS, meaning that primary dropout, and in some cases even initial participation, also remain a challenge in these countries.

A similar analysis can be performed separately for each gender. Figure 5 summarizes the change in attendance at each stage for males and females separately, and shows that dropout is slightly lower for females than for males during LS, with the exceptions of Guatemala and El Salvador. In the transition between LS and US, female dropout is also lower in Costa Rica and Panama, while in the other four countries practically the same rate is observed for both genders. For dropout during US, a somewhat different picture emerges. In Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras dropout rates across gender are basically equivalent, while in Panama and El Salvador female dropout rates are higher. Nicaragua is the only country where male US dropout is considerably higher, with a 5 percentage point difference between the two.

**1.5 Between and within country differences in school enrollment**

Cohort analysis such as that presented above helps to clarify the dynamic aspects of dropout that underlie the long-term changes shown in Figure 3. In order to complete the picture in terms of differences across and within countries, we also describe current levels of enrollment at different

> 9 In this section, enrollment and dropout are considered from the perspective of what schooling level a child _should_ be attending given their age – the issue of overage is examined in Section 1.6 below.

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