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Panama has a total area of 30,420 square miles and, as of 1998, a population of 2.77 million. The four largest cities are Panama City, San Miguelito, Colón, and David. The country is located between Costa Rica in Central America and Colombia in South America. The Spaniards first arrived in Panama in 1501, and Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean when he visited the country in 1513. In 1821 P…
The 1972 constitution, which, has been revised several times, establishes compulsory (and free) education between the ages of six to fifteen (article 91). While recognizing the right to private education, it grants the State the prerogative to supervise the curriculum and to intervene in private schools in order to help fulfill cultural and social goals and promote the best human, intellectual, mo…
The school year runs from April to December, and Spanish is the language of instruction. The duration of compulsory education is 11 years, including preschool education from four to five years of age. Panama has a high rate of literacy, exceeding 93 percent of the total population in the year 2000, though a high percentage of the indigenous people (four times as much as the national average) were …
Students can attend school after attaining the age of three. Parents can choose from either public or private kindergartens but must pay fees. Preprimary school is not obligatory; it includes, and besides kindergartens, daycare centers. Some of the most well known preprimary centers are run by the Methodist affiliated Instituto Panamericano and by the Roman Catholic La Salle and Javier schools. Th…
The ciclo común (ages 12 to 15) is equivalent to the American junior high school. In 1996 the number of students who attended the first level of education rose to 371,250. In 1997, over 31 percent of the education budget was earmarked for preprimary and primary education. After completing the common cycle, students take an exam that allows them to enter a secondary school or academic cycle …
The first Panamanian University (the Royal and Pontifical University of San Javier) offered a curriculum heavily dependent on religion and theology. But this situation did not last long because the Jesuits, who founded the University in 1749, were expelled from Panama by royal order in 1767. The next institution of higher learning was the College of Istmo, founded in 1824 and closed in 1903, as Pa…
The overseeing body, the Ministry of Education, is divided into directorates that not only supervise primary and secondary programs but also regulate educationally related activities in the fields of adult and vocational studies, fine arts, planning, and teacher training programs. The Ministry has a complex bureaucratic structure that includes directorates for supervising vocational, literacy, adu…
Panama boasts the best literacy rate in Central America (90 percent in the late 1990s). Adult education serves those who could not finish primary or secondary school and/or those who are functionally illiterate. It provides training by offering vocational courses. Panama's aggressive adult education programs are offered in over five hundred centers, including penitentiaries. Courses for wor…
Normal schools for secondary teachers started when Panama was becoming an independent country (1903).
The 1970s educational reforms yielded positive results as literacy rates increased, the dropout rate decreased and more educational opportunities became available in the rural areas where many students were exposed to agricultural technology and the business market. In the 1980s and 1990s the forces of reform took a back seat as conservative politics dominated the country. In the immediate future,…
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