Belize Learning Poverty Brief July 2021 LEARNING POVERTY: A WORLD BANK-UIS INDICA- LEARNING POVERTY IN BELIZE TOR TO HIGHLIGHT THE LEARNING CRISIS • Learning Poverty. 76 percent of children in Belize at All children should be able to read by age 10. Reading is a late primary age today are not pro cient in reading, gateway for learning as the child progresses through school— adjusted for the out-of-school children. and conversely, an inability to read constrains opportunities for further learning. Reading pro ciency is also critical for • Learning Deprivation. Large-scale learning assess- foundational learning in other subjects. ments of students in Belize indicate that 75 percent do not achieve the MPL at the end of primary school, In low- and middle-income countries, more than half the proxied by data from grade 4 in 2001. children cannot read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school. This learning crisis threatens coun- • Schooling Deprivation. In Belize, 6 percent of primary tries’ e orts to build human capital and achieve the Sustain- school-aged children are not enrolled in school. These able Development Goals (SDGs), undermining sustainable children are excluded from learning in school. growth and poverty reduction. Tackling the learning crisis in the foreseeable future requires For countries with very low Schooling Deprivation, the share rapid progress at a scale that has not been seen yet. To gal- of children with Learning Deprivation will be very close to vanize action on this crisis, we introduced the concept of the reported Learning Poverty. Learning Poverty (LP), a measure constructed jointly by the Notes: The LP number for Belize is calculated using the Global Learning Assessment World Bank and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). Database (GLAD) harmonization based on PIRLS and the MPL threshold used was level Low (400 points). The LP numbers are too old to be included in Global and Regional WHAT IS LEARNING POVERTY? aggregates. For more details, please consult the GLAD and Learning Poverty repositories in GitHub. Learning Poverty means being unable to read and understand a short, age-appropriate text by age 10. All foundational skills BENCHMARKING BELIZE’S LEARNING POVERTY are important, but we focus on reading because: (i) read- ing pro ciency is an easily understood measure of learning; Learning Poverty in Belize is 25.6 percentage points higher (ii) reading is a student’s gateway to learning in every other than the average for the Latin America and Caribbean re- area; and, (iii) reading pro ciency can serve as a proxy for gion and 44.1 percentage points higher than the average for foundational learning in other subjects. upper middle income countries. The Learning Poverty indicator allows us to illustrate The latest available Learning Poverty data for Belize is pro- progress toward SDG 4’s broader goal to ensure inclusive duced using assessment data from 2001. This data is consid- and equitable quality education for all. It particularly high- ered too old to be included in the latest Global and Regional lights progress towards SDG 4.1.1b, which speci es that all Aggregates and any benchmark should be interpreted as an children at the end of primary reach at least a minimum illustration. pro ciency level (MPL) in reading. Figure 1. Learning Poverty and components HOW IS LEARNING POVERTY MEASURED? The indicator combines the share of primary-aged children out-of-school who are Schooling Deprived (SD), and the share of pupils below a minimum pro ciency in reading, who are Learning Deprived (LD). By combining schooling and learning, the indicator brings into focus both “more school- ing”, which by itself serves a variety of critical functions, as well as “better learning,” which is important to ensure that time spent in school translates into acquisition of skills and capabilities. LP = SD + [(1 − SD) × LD] where, LP is Learning Poverty; LD , Learning Deprivation, is share of children at the end of primary below minimum pro ciency, as de ned by the Global Alliance to Monitor Learning (GAML) in the context of the SDG 4.1.1b monitoring; SD , Schooling Deprivation, is the share of primary-aged children who are out-of-school, and is linked to SDG 4.1.4. All out-of-school children are implicitly assumed to be below minimum pro ciency. Source: UIS and World Bank as of May 2021. The data used to calculate Learning Poverty has been made Notes: (1) Yellow circle represents Belize; (2) Gray circles represent other countries; and, (3) possible thanks to the work of the Global Alliance to Moni- Vertical lines re ect the averages of Belize’s region and income group. tor Learning led by UIS, which established minimum pro- ciency levels that enable countries to benchmark learning across di erent cross-national and national assessments. Belize Learning Poverty Brief July 2021 HOW DOES BELIZE’S GENDER GAP COMPARE GLOB- PRIMARY EDUCATION EXPENDITURE ALLY? Primary education expenditure per child of primary educa- As in most countries, Learning Poverty is higher for boys tion age in Belize is USD 1,402 (PPP), which is 50.7% below than for girls in Belize. the average for the Latin America and Caribbean region and This result is a composition of two e ects. First, the share of 34.5% below the average for upper middle income countries. out-of-school children is lower for boys (6.3%) than for girls (6.7%). Figure 3. Expenditure per child of primary school age Second, boys are less likely to achieve minimum pro ciency at the end of primary school (78.2%) than girls (71.5%) in Belize. Table 1 shows sex disaggregation for Learning Poverty and Human Capital Index (HCI) education components when- ever available. Table 1. Sex Disaggregation Indicators and Components Boys Girls All Source: UIS and World Bank as of May 2021. Note: Primary education expenditure per child Learning Poverty 79.6 73.4 76.4 is calculated as total expenditure on primary education divided by total number of children Learning Deprivation 78.2 71.5 74.8 of primary school age. Data for Belize is from 2018. Schooling Deprivation 6.3 6.7 6.5 Human Capital Index NA NA NA Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling NA NA NA DATA AND DATA GAPS ON LEARNING AND SCHOOL- ING IN BELIZE Source: UIS and World Bank for LP, LD and SD as of May 2021; EdStats/WDI (World Development Indicators) for HCI and LAYS (Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling); The Belize administers a National Large-Scale Assessment (NLSA) Full Learning Poverty database is available for download at the Development Data Hub. at the end of primary school, according to UIS SDG 4.1.1b monitoring. If this NLSA is mapped against the SDG 4 Global Pro ciency Framework using policy linking, student link- Figure 2. Gender Gap - Learning Poverty by Sex ing or item linking, it may be possible to monitor Learning Poverty with it in the future. Belize participated in the following published cross-national learning assessments in recent years: PIRLS (2001). Belize has not participated in the World Bank’s LeAP diagnos- tic exercise to analyze its assessment system. To get started, contact the LeAP team. The out-of-school adjustment in Learning Poverty relies on enrollment data. Our preferred de nition is the adjusted net primary enrollment rate (ANER) as reported by UIS. This data relies both on the population census and EMIS (Educa- tion Management Information System). We use enrollment data for the year closest to the assessment year. In the case of Belize, ANER based on EMIS data is for 2001. Notes: The de nition of NLSA does not include National Exams; LeAP: Learning Assess- Source: UIS and World Bank as of May 2021. Notes: (1) - Yellow circle represents Belize; and, ment Platform (LeAP-team@worldbank.org). PIRLS: Progress in International Reading (2) The closer a country is to the dotted line the smaller its LP gender gap. Literacy Study. For questions related to the data in the brief, contact the EduAnalytics team (eduanalytics@worldbank.org). POINT OF CONTACT Belize: Ingrid Bjerke Latin America and Caribbean: Maria Jose Vargas Mancera #LearningPoverty Disclaimer: The numbers in this brief are based on data harmonization e orts by UIS and the World Bank to increase cross-country comparability of learning data. Therefore, numbers may be di erent from o cial statistics reported by governments. Such di erences are due to their di erent purposes, which can be global comparison or meeting national de nitions.