Primary education provides learning and educational activities typically designed to provide students with fundamental skills in reading, writing and mathematics (i.e. literacy and numeracy) and establish a solid foundation for learning and understanding core areas of knowledge and personal development, preparing for lower secondary education. It focuses on learning at a basic level of complexity with little, if any, specialisation (ISCED level 1).
UIS. International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED 2011. Montreal: UIS, 2012.
Slightly more than twenty million repeaters in primary education in Latin American countries (some 30 per cent of enrolments) implies that the annual cost of poor quality, in terms of repetition alone, is close to US$3.3 billion (Schiefelbein, 1991b), given that the average cost per primary school pupil is nearly US$161 (Schiefelbein, 1992: 28).
Schiefelbein, Ernesto. Redefining basic education for Latin America: lessons to be learned from the Colombian Escuela Nueva. Fundamentals of Educational Planning 42. Paris: UNESCO-IIEP, 1992.