Brechas regionales y provinciales de desarrollo educativo en Argentina: Disparidades crecientes en la última década (2000-2009)

Abstract

El presente trabajo parte del problema de las desigualdades territoriales del desarrollo argentino y busca aportar una nueva forma de dimensionar las brechas regionales y provinciales en materia de resultados educativos. La aplicación de la metodología propuesta nos arroja un balance preocupante para los años 2000. Luego de una década atravesada por el crecimiento económico y la recomposición de los indicadores sociales post-crisis de 2001-2002, las disparidades territoriales en el campo de la educación, lejos de achicarse, parecen haberse ampliado, lo cual sugiere que las mejoras no se habrían distribuido de forma equitativa a lo largo del territorio.

The problem of regional inequalities in development is a topic of interest both internationally and specifi cally in Argentina. This research seeks to contribute to the extensive debate on the issue by providing a new way to measure and quantify the sub-national gaps of Argentine development in the fi eld of education. This objective is based on the implementation of a (relatively simple and hence improvable) methodology for the production and aggregation of educational performance indicators at regional and provincial levels. In line with the literature, we have considered measurements of coverage (enrollment) and quality and achievement aspects of the education system. As usual in this type of exercises, the greater restriction when choosing the variables to be used is given by the problems of availability of information. Certain indicators that exist at the national level are not always available under a provincial categorization or for different moments in time. Regarding this last point, given that information about the different variables is not always available for the same years, we opted to take the data around certain periods: fi rst, around 1999-2001 (or more compactly, circa 2000) and, secondly, in the 2009-2010 biennium (or circa 2009). At the same time, taking into account the absence of updated information about net enrollment rates at the provincial level, we decided to use gross enrollment rates and over-age rates as alternative and complementary measures to give an approximate idea of that dimension (later, we will return on this point). As for the nature of the indicators used, our intention has been to prioritize the use of outcome variables (results) over those which refer to inputs of the education fi eld (expenditure, teachers, etc.). This does not mean that we ignore the information that accounts for the resources allocated to the area (a section of the article is dedicated to the topic), but we prefer to focus the diagnosis of educational development according to its purposes and not necessarily to its means, i.e. the inputs applied to achieve those. Regarding the method of calculation of development gaps, the procedure proposed consists of three stages. Thus, to achieve the regional/provincial gap in the fi eld of education, we fi rst obtained particular gaps for each indicator and then, through standardization and aggregation processes, a synthetic measure is fi nally derived1. In the fi rst step we obtain the distance between the indicator for each region/province and its value at the national level. This procedure yields an identifi cation of those jurisdictions that are in a better or worse position relative to the whole country. It should be noted that the notion of positive or negative gap should be adjusted according to the nature of the variable in question. For example, if we are considering the illiteracy or over-age rates, a provincial value lower than the national one should be computed as a positive gap (the province is better than the country’s aggregate), so it is necessary to invert the sign of the difference between both measures. The opposite occurs for gross enrollment rates or educational quality indicators, where a positive difference between the provincial and national value actually corresponds to a positive gap of the province. The second stage consists in standardizing the gaps obtained after the fi rst step, since they respond to heterogeneous units. In this way, we seek to reach a standardized measure which can then be added into a compound (or synthetic) gap. Here the process follows this calculation, Standardized GAPi = [(GAPi – Average GAP) / GAP SD] . 10 That is, to the initial regional/provincial gap we subtract the average of the gaps obtained in the fi rst stage and the result is divided by the standard deviation of the original gaps. Then, it is multiplied by ten, solely for a better visual presentation. Finally, the third step involves the aggregation of the standardized gaps of each indicator in a synthetic gap of educational development. As we do not have data about net enrollment rates for both periods of time, but gross enrollment rates and over-age rates are available, the fi rst thing we do is to combine (average) the standardized gaps of the latter variables and then we average the results with the normalized gaps of the other education indicators (note that this is equivalent to applying a weighting of 0.10 to the gaps of gross enrollment and over-age, while the others will be assigned a weight of 0.20). In this way, we can say that we have something like two gaps of “net” enrollment rate (one for each level of education), since the respective gross enrollment values are being netted, to some extent, according to the problem of over-age2. Going to the results, the application of the proposed methodology shows us a striking and worrying situation for the 2000s, which adds a new dimension to the historical expansion of socioeconomic inequalities and internal inequities in Argentine educational system. In the framework of a decade crossed by economic growth and the restructuring of social indicators post-crisis of 2001- 2002, regional disparities in education, far from being reduced, seem to have been expanded, which suggests that the improvements have not been equitably distributed throughout the country. In turn, this coincides with a period where several indicators of spending and investment (especially public) showed an uptrend and also certain policies taken tended to soften (although partially) the differences in educational investment among provinces. Again, all this carries the debate to the territorial orientation of these resources, as well as on its actual magnitude and effectiveness in view to improve the situation of the country, its regions and provinces in terms of educational performance. Note that the problems pointed out about the state of education in Argentina occur while the relationship between (aggregate) public expenditure in education and Argentina’s GDP has grown in recent years, being one of the highest in Latin America. This suggests that it would not be strictly a problem of scarcity of resources, but that the distribution and effi ciency of such investment should be treated more carefully, mainly targeting goals that go beyond the inclusion of students in the system, such as quality, content, hours, repetition and dropout rates, etc. (all aspects that currently obstruct the achievement of higher and better educational levels). It is clear, then, that to combat the internal gaps of educational development in Argentina we need to advance in parallel on other interrelated aspects, since there are several phenomena that underlie such disparities. A matter of concern is that, beyond the regional and provincial inequalities analyzed in this paper, the Argentine educational system tends to regenerate the socioeconomic differences of the population. In this regard, we have pointed out that the provincial gaps hide deep differences within each jurisdiction, both about the resources and quality of public and private education as well as the disparities in access to each type of school. To the extent that these and those sources of territorial inequalities are not faced with the required intensity, the objective of equality of opportunities will be increasingly far away.