Libro Blanco Vol I en Ingles

More documents

Recommendations

Info

TOWARDS A NATIONAL INNOVATION STRATEGY FOR COMPETITIVENESSVOLUME 1II.1 TWO LAGS IN EDUCATIONThere is currently a universal consensus in Chile on the urgency for a profound education reform. Chileneeds to improve its levels of human capital in order to face the challenges set by a future characterized bycompetition and centred on knowledge and innovation as fundamental tools for creating value, both in the areasin which we possess comparative advantages as well as in those that can be developed through acquiredcompetitive advantages.The next chapter will delve into an analysis of the social benefits arising from having a more educatedand skilled population–since part of the acquired knowledge will always be disseminated through the socialfabric– and also into the lack of adequate incentives for the private sector alone to bring the human capital upto the levels that the country needs, all of which justifies the complementary public measures in the creation ofwhat we have defined as one of the fundamental pillars for the competitiveness of the country.This allows us to concentrate here on diagnosing the problem, which starts by establishing two lags inwhich Chile has manifest insufficiencies when compared to countries that can serve as benchmarks: the as yetlow coverage of pre-school and third level education, and the deficient quality of education at all levels, whichhas been widely recognised by national and international studies, especially the PISA evaluations 15 .Insufficient coverage: While it is true that schooling in Chile has been increasing at an average rate of 6%since 1975, this is still not enough considering the challenges facing the country in the future. Given its level ofdevelopment, Chile should have reached 11 years of average schooling by the year 2000 16 , but it only reached 10years, and even though the projections suggest an increase towards 2010, this impetus is not enough to closethe lags with respect to our most direct competitors. This means that it is necessary to take steps to improveour level in order to reach 14 years of average schooling when the country reaches the US$25,000 per capitaincome level, in accordance with the trend shown by the countries with which Chile should naturally compare15 The PISA evaluation is a study coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which every threeyears evaluates the knowledge and skills of 15 year old students in Reading Comprehension, Mathematics and Science of OECDcountries. After its first implementation in the year 2000, the OECD opened up the opportunity of participating in the study to non-OECD countries. It was first implemented in Chile in the year 2001 and was repeated in 2006. The average number of participatingcountries is 40.16 11 years of schooling is obtained from the data in Figure 3.33
TOWARDS A NATIONAL INNOVATION STRATEGY FOR COMPETITIVENESSVOLUME 1itself. [See Figure 3]Furthermore, if the experience of countries that have made significant leaps in their growth rates in thelast 30 years is analyzed, it is clear that the rate at which our schooling has increased is low in relation to thosenations. For example, South Korea, in a period of 30 years, went from an average of 6.6 to 10.8 years ofeducation of the population, with an average growth rate of nearly 11% in the level of schooling. Additionally,South Korea had a per capita income below Chile in 1975, while in the year 2000 it surpassed Chile by 50%. Infact, in the 1975-2000 period, the per capita income of Chile grew at an average rate of 20% every 5 years whileSouth Korea did so at a rate of 36%.The picture is quite similar in third level education, which is one of the key aspects for thecompetitiveness of a country. First, the corresponding enrolment levels (43%) fall well below the rates for thebenchmark countries (which even reach 80%) [See Figure 4]. Moreover, between 1991 and 2004, the rate ofincrease of enrolment in third level education, while far above the historical rate, was still considerably belowthe rates of that same group [See Figure 5].The fact that the rates in which both schooling and per capita income have grown in those countriesexceeds ours is a clear sign that if we do not increase the speed at which we are creating human capital, we willcontinue to systematically lag behind, thus losing our competitiveness in the world. As such, Chile should setitself the challenge of speeding up its progress and eliminating these lags between now and the year 2020, inorder to reach a third level education enrolment rate approaching 80% by then, a level comparable to that ofcountries like South Korea, Lithuania and Latvia today.Low quality: the performance of Chile in international tests that measure knowledge and abilities inmathematics, science and reading comprehension is well below that of most of the countries that take part inthese evaluations, revealing a relatively poor performance: countries with a similar per capita income to Chile,such as Latvia and Malaysia, obtain far higher results. The data from Figure 6 show that Chile is placed far belowthe trend curve in all the tests analyzed and that, given our level of development, the result in all tests shouldbe at least 30% higher.The above is nothing new. Various international institutions such as the OECD, the World Bank, theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Economic Forum have emphasized the importance of improvingthe human capital of Chile to attain greater rates of long-run growth. Improving the quality of education is anurgent challenge, since it is the only way for Chile to reduce the lags that separate it from its competitors aswell as its goal of taking the definitive leap to development.34
Page 6 and 7: TOWARDS A NATIONAL INNOVATION STRAT
Page 11: TOWARDS A NATIONAL INNOVATION STRAT
Page 83 and 84:
TOWARDS A NATIONAL INNOVATION STRAT
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
also mean an uncomfortable position
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142:
Page 143 and 144:
Page 145 and 146:
Page 147 and 148:
Page 149 and 150:
Page 151 and 152:
Page 153 and 154:
Page 155 and 156:
Page 157 and 158:
Page 159:
show all

Libro Blanco Vol I en Ingles

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?