ERIC Number: ED176938
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1978-Nov
Reference Count: N/A
Education and Migration and Their Relationship to the Occupational Opportunities of Rural People in Highland Ecuador. Working Paper 237.
Preston, Rosemary A.
The level of education generally available in rural Ecuador does not permit the rural child the same educational and occupational opportunities as those of a town child. The lack of secondary education opportunities is one reason for this, but inadequacies in the primary schools are a more formidable obstacle. Rural schools rarely offer more than four primary grades, the teachers generally have less training than their city counterparts, and several grades are usually taught by a single teacher. Moreover, at present major government planning policies "see no need to further educate the rural labour force". For a rural resident, the first step to upward mobility is to procure a non-agricultural job, and to do this, he must migrate to an urban area. Of the five case study areas examined in this report, 61 percent of those with five years or more of school experience left their rural communities. Even though they were the best educated from the countryside, these people could only aspire to the worst jobs in town. Manpower requirement predictions for 1980 indicate that people with no more than primary education will be unqualified for anything other than unskilled occupations or farming. Because of their place of birth and abode, half the working population of Ecuador will be relegated to the lowest levels of the occupational ladder. This trend will continue as long as education provision of rural areas is so far behind that of towns. (DS)
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Ecuador