Through this review we have sought to further understanding of the state of preprimary,
primary, and secondary numeracy education in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
Research on the opportunities available to students in the region presents a troubling
picture. Young people are not being properly prepared for the numeracy requirements of an
increasingly interconnected world economy. Culprits include weak curricula, inadequate
learning materials, and teachers’ lack of proficiency in mathematics and the natural
sciences. Classrooms are characterized by the rote memorization of routine computational
operations and the regurgitation of facts, and teachers provide students with little or even
erroneous evaluative feedback. While teachers show evidence of important deficits in their
own numeracy skills, they are frequently unable to associate this weakness with their
students’ low levels of achievement. On international assessments of educational
achievement, students from the region consistently perform below students in East Asia and
in the industrialized countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD). Based on a literature review of effective numeracy education
methods, as well as insights from a series of promising approaches observed in LAC, we
propose a framework for future efforts to improve numeracy education in the region.