Latin America and the Caribbean in PISA 2015 : How Do Poor and Rich Students Perform?

Abstract

In the countries of the region, poor students perform two and a half years of schooling (80 points) below their richest peers in science. Something similar occurs in mathematics and reading. In the OECD and Singapore, this gap is even wider, reaching almost four years of schooling. Colombia (92 points) and Peru (89 points) have the widest gaps, equivalent to three years of schooling. In Mexico, the gap is smaller (58 points), though rich students perform more poorly in Mexico than in almost any other country in the region. The top-performing groups are wealthy students in Uruguay (480 points), Colombia (478), and Chile (477). No group of wealthy students in the region far surpasses the score of poor students in Singapore (474), the country with the best test score.