Analysis: Why Uruguay’s students are doing so well during the coronavirus pandemic

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Two weeks after Claudia’s first day of school last March, she was already not allowed to attend – the school was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. But that wasn’t so bad for the first-grader from Uruguay: she learned the alphabet via audio tutorials. She enjoyed digital math lessons so much that she solved extra problems.

Video conferences three times a week helped her get to know her teachers and classmates better. And guided by her physical education teacher, Claudia, seven, completed gymnastics exercises in her room.

Claudia is not a wealthy private student; she attends a public school in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo. She received her tablet computer from the state – just like all the other students in the small country between Argentina and Brazil.

Uruguay has been focusing on digital education and equal access for all for years. The country’s education system was thus better prepared for the coronavirus crisis than most countries in the region – and than many in the richer West.

While teachers in the West sometimes didn’t check in with their students for weeks, they were in constant contact in Uruguay. Instead of blurry scans and faulty Internet links with untraceable content, Uruguay had digital textbooks with science experiments, homework in quiz or game form, interactive video links, personalized exercises, and chats for queries.

More than a decade ago, the country – one of six in the world – implemented the One Laptop per Child policy. Uruguay has also installed free Internet in public places in rural areas and established Plan Ceibal, a state agency for digital education. “Overall, we had a well-functioning last school year,” says Fiorella Haim, manager at Plan Ceibal.

Uruguay is thus the big, small exception in a region with disastrous forecasts. Unicef estimates that 2020 was a lost school year for millions of students in Latin America. Around a third of the children would have learned hardly anything, and more than three million will probably stay away from school forever. And in 2021, experts expect another year of lockdowns and school closures.

“Every child should have a laptop and internet”

“Children, especially those from poor backgrounds, are the biggest losers of this crisis. Their dream of a better future has already been destroyed,” says Brazilian education expert and former World Bank director of education Claudia Costin. Moreover, she says, the education crisis has exacerbated the already extreme inequality on the continent.

Private schools and their clientele cushioned the school closures much better. She has even observed the phenomenon of the “illegal school.” Wealthy upper-middle-class parents hiring private teachers for their children – while poor children in public schools wouldn’t even have access to computers or the Internet at home.

In Uruguay, 85 percent of all students attend public schools. “When all teaching shifted to digital last March, we were able to be flexible,” says Haim, Plan Ceibal’s manager. The agency has been training teachers for years and operates a central platform with digital textbooks to upload assignments and content.

At the start of the pandemic, Plan Ceibal expanded the capacity of its servers virtually “overnight.” In addition, the country has since provided each student with 50 gigabytes of free Internet per month. “Ninety-eight percent of students have used digital education regularly,” Haim says. Poorer children in rural areas have also joined in, he adds. “We don’t know exactly how, but they did it.”

The experts agree: a laptop alone does little; a holistic approach is needed. Above all, the Uruguay example shows that digital teaching content is important. That’s why Plan Ceibal also promotes the development of innovative software.

The agency bought the digital book EduCiencias, which can be used to learn science playfully. The whole thing looks like a comic book, with a cat helping with physics experiments, for example. “We want digital lessons to be fun and motivate kids,” says developer Federico Bello, “so we work with educators and psychologists.”

Bello left his job at the Central Bank of Uruguay in 2018 to found the startup Edu Editorial with two friends. Right now, they’re working on a new platform called Boki, which aims to help teachers create more exciting digital presentations. “Frontal teaching can be combined with experiments, animations, videos, interactive games, and competitions,” Bello says.

He and his colleagues are also developing an app to help students better deal with emotional issues, reduce stress and anxiety, he adds. Edu Editorial’s products have already been exported to Peru, Chile, and Mexico. This year, the founders plan to conquer the Arab market.

Bello doesn’t understand why, even in rich countries like the ones in Europe, some children don’t have access to a computer and the Internet. He thinks it’s a kind of children’s right in a digital world. “Every child should have a laptop and Internet,” he says, “we’ve managed to do that.”

With a population of 3.5 million, Uruguay is much smaller and less poor than most countries in the region. But it is far from being a rich country; globally, it ranks in the lower middle. “It’s a question of priority and will,” says Miguel Brechner, a digital learning expert who founded Plan Ceibal in 2007.

“Our president at the time, Tabaré Vázquez Rosas, had a great vision. He wanted every child to be able to become anything.” Plan Ceibal costs US$100 per student per year – including laptops, teaching materials, teacher training, and Internet connectivity in schools. The student’s parents actually save money because they have to buy fewer textbooks and other learning materials.

Brechner now advises countries and international organizations on education issues. Today, if someone still asks him whether laptops and the Internet are really needed for every student, he asks back, “Do we really need electricity or hot water?” By no means does he want to replace teachers with technology, he said. “But we can’t continue as we did before the pandemic,” Brechner says, “We live in the 21st century and have 19th-century schools.”

Costin, a Brazilian education expert, says that overall it is very good, as is the German school system. “But when you’re very good at something, there’s often a risk that you become a little sluggish, that the will and the power to innovate suffer.”

Uruguay, he said, has created something good virtually out of nothing. This does not mean that other countries should become like Uruguay. The country ranks second in the Pisa (standard of living) comparison for Latin America. However, the region performs poorly in a global comparison. Not everything is perfect. But there is something to be learned from Uruguay’s successes: “The future must be a hybrid of online and offline education so that we are better prepared for future crises.”

For Margarete Sachs-Israel, Unicef education expert in Latin America, Uruguay is also such a great example of success because the country reopened schools early in the crisis. There is no substitute for classroom instruction and contact with teachers and classmates. “School closures affect not only learning but also children’s health and safety,” she says. Many children in Latin America rely on school lunches, she adds, and domestic violence and child labor have increased sharply during the crisis.

Uruguay initially reopened less-attended schools in rural areas, she says, to reach vulnerable students in particular and gain experience with protection concepts and reduce fear of the virus among parents and teachers. The fact that many countries around the world are simply keeping schools closed, putting the crisis on the backs of children, infuriates Sachs-Israel. “We now know from studies that there are hygiene concepts that work for schools.”

Claudia, the elementary school student from Montevideo, also went back to school after just four months, unlike most other children in Latin America. Her tablet is an integral part of her lessons there, too. Amelia says she particularly likes the many virtual buttons. The seven-year-old also already has an idea of what she wants to do later – a job where she can push even more buttons: “Spaceship pilot.”