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Education in Guatemala

  • Filed Under:
  • photo
  • education
  • Americas

In Guatemala, only two of every five children finish sixth grade and just 19 percent of all high school-aged youth are in school. More than a third of Guatemalans are between 15 and 29 years old. And the majority are disenfranchised and marginalized, deprived of the tools and the opportunities to grow into productive, healthy, responsible citizens.

From developing the first education standards, to providing entry job training skills for youth, to empowering women, the USAID education efforts in Guatemala contribute to building peace after conflict, and transforming discrimination into opportunity and poverty into prosperity for youth and their families.

A teacher works on an exercise during teacher training workshops that are part of the activities to incorporate education standards for the first time in Guatemala’s school system. The USAID Research and Education Standards project was instrumental in the process to develop and institute education standards in Guatemala’s Ministry of Education. Photo credit: Hugo González, ACME Producciones for USAID, 2007 A teacher works with a K’iche’ Maya student at her school in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Quiché, Guatemala. During the Peace Accord implementation between 1997 and 2004, USAID pioneered girls’ education in the Western Highland region of Guatemala where the gender gap in school attendance and primary school completion was wide. The result of USAID work with the Ministry of Education has been a significant increase in enrollment and graduation of girls in all of Guatemala over the last 15 years. Photo credit: Hugo González, Acme Producciones for USAID, 2006. K’iche’ Maya children at their desks in school in Santa Cruz del Quiché, Quiché, Guatemala. The school participates in USAID Education projects. Photo credit: Hugo González, ACME Producciones for USAID, 2006. Participants in the USAID Youth Leadership and Employability Skills (CADI-Joven) project (part of the USAID Peace Program 1997-2004) are proud of their newly-acquired bread baking skills. The youth learned life skills, vocational skills and job search techniques at two-week camps held at a university regional campus that was converted from a military base after the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. The camps were historic for several reasons, including the fact that they brought together youth from Ladino and Maya cultures and rural and urban areas for the first time. Photo credit: Luis Córdova, 2003. A young student poses for the camera at his school in Santa Cruz del Quiché in Quiché, Guatemala. The boy’s school is supported by USAID education projects designed to work with the Ministry of Education on education quality, particularly for rural, indigenous students like this one for whom public education has been difficult to attain due to barriers such as poverty and historic discrimination of indigenous populations. Photo Credit: Hugo González, ACME Producciones for USAID, 2006. K’iche’ Maya women dressed in their ceremonial hüipil blouses are accompanied by school children holding up banners to thank USAID Alianzas project and implementing partner, COED, for the textbooks that were provided to their school by the community education alliance. Learning resources such as books, maps and libraries are scarce in Guatemala, particularly in rural indigenous communities. Quiché, Guatemala. Photo credit: J Berninger. 2008.
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