Four in every ten grade six students in Argentina struggle with mathematics, an Education Ministry report revealed Thursday.
The "Aprender 2018" survey looked at the learning experiences of 574,000 students in 19,600 schools across the country. In other words, the study reached 94 percent of all public and private schools in the country's 24 national districts.
While there was a slight improvement in students' comprehension of texts and in the area of Language generally, the overall picture of children's performance in Mathematics indicated that "the challenges persist: 42.6 percent of students sit in the lowest levels of performance (basic or below basic)", the report warned.
Seventy-five percent of students showed "satisfactory or advanced" performance in Language.
The report also found that schools reported high levels of compliance with the Integral Sexual Education (ESI) curriculum, with 98 percent affirming the same and 99 percent reporting sufficient access to educational material for sexual education.
While seven of every 10 teachers had received sexual education training, only 37 percent of classrooms had touched on the issue of sexual abuse, the report found.
Eight in every 10 students answered the survey, an eight percent improvement on 2016's participation rates.
The study also suggested a slight reduction in the gap between th performance of students at private vs. Public schools.
"There is an improvement in the results obtained in schools from both sectors, and a reduction in the gab between schools with the highest and lowest averages in each section", the report added.
In terms of the gender gap, female students showed higher levels of satisfactory and advanced skills in Language (five percent more than boys) while boys performed better in Mathematics (two percent better than girls).
-TIMES/PERFIL
Comments