America had reached a first phase of evolution where the average individual had attained basic education. According to the data, a second benchmark was reached in 1993, when the cohort turning 18 completed on average 9.2 years of school, which is equivalent to having completed LS in the education systems of most countries in the region. The value of the last point to the right in the figure shows that the cohort turning 18 in 2013 completed 11.5 years of schooling on average, short of the 12 years that would correspond to completing US. This indicates that across Latin America, the “average” individual age 18-22 has actually obtained some US education, but dropped out before graduating.

The overall trend in Latin America helps to place Central America in context, and to identify the diversity within the sub-region. From this long-term perspective, there are clear differences between Costa Rica and Panama on the one hand, and Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua on the other, with El Salvador somewhere in between. Figure 3a shows that Panama and Costa Rica reached the first benchmark of average primary completion around 15 years earlier than the Latin America average. Costa Rica levelled off with Latin America by reaching the second stage also in 1993, but has recently lost some ground—18 year olds in 2013 had attained an average of only 10.9 years of education. Panama reached the second stage of LS completion around 20 years before the Latin America average, but subsequently levelled off to the point that the latest cohort registers the same average years of schooling as the average for the region. El Salvador shows the opposite pattern, lagging behind the Latin America average by about 10 years in reaching the first two benchmarks, and then increasing faster and almost catching up, to the extent that the latest cohort reaching US exit age falls short only about 0.6 years of schooling with respect to the region –with an average of 10.9 years completed, the same as Costa Rica. Thus, for Costa Rica, Panama, and El Salvador, the US dropout phenomenon is clearly a central challenge.

Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua also face this challenge, but additionally, they are still struggling with the issue of LS completion. As shown in Figure 3b, Guatemala and Honduras reached average primary school completion about 30 and 25 years after the Latin America average, respectively, and have just entered the second phase where the average individual of US exit age completes LS. Nicaragua reached the first benchmark more quickly (10 years later than the Latin America average), but also only recently reached the second benchmark of average LS completion.

For every country, national averages mask large within-country disparities, which will be explored in the subsequent sections. The picture that emerges is one of a sub-region facing new challenges of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, while still dealing with unresolved issues from the past.

# **1.4 Patterns of secondary dropout**

By following a similar cohort approach, Bentaouet-Kattan and Székely (2015) have shown that higher enrollment and completion rates at the primary and LS levels in Latin America have implied higher dropout rates at the US level. In Figures 4a and 4b, we use the same approach as those authors by following the enrollment trajectories of two cohorts, the first born 1980-1982 and the second born 1994-1996.<sup>8</sup>

> 8 See Appendix Table A.3 for a complementary measure of dropout, specifically looking at the educational attainment of 25-29 year olds in each country’s most recent household survey.

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