Beyond Space: Infrastructure and its Role in Quality of Learning

The relevance of infrastructure in the learning process transcends the provision of a mere space with certain features to help teachers and students meet daily for teaching-learning interaction. The school space plays a much more active role in this learning process, as it motivates students to stay in school, participate with no discrimination based on ethnicity, social background or gender, and the very characteristics of the space can be lessons on how to be responsible with the planet.

There is much empirical evidence in the literature that shows the direct relationship between school infrastructure and student performance, and that investments in educational infrastructure contribute to improving the quality of education.

But the challenges in terms of school access still remain. In Latin America, there are 14 million children and young people who do not attend school, many of them because there is no school near their community. In addition, as a result of the closure of schools due to the pandemic, many have not yet been able to go back because their schools cannot guarantee a safe return. About 30% of students attending school do not have access to drinking water or well-equipped toilets. This is especially true for students from low-income families.

In order for infrastructure to play its role in the learning process, at its most basic level, i.e. to guarantee safe conditions for students and teachers, and to influence the comprehensive development of children and young people and quality of their learning, it is essential to guarantee an adequate process of planning and design of infrastructure projects as these are critical phases that define the success and sustainability of a school building.

Additional costs, poor quality, high operating costs, and failure to meet contractual deadlines are the result of poorly planned projects with poor executive documentation and lack of consistency in establishing eligibility requirements.

As part of the support offered by CAF to the region based on its Education Agenda, two complementary work guides have been prepared, which identify key elements from a technical point of view in the formulation of an educational infrastructure project, from architecture (construction models) to planning and management, using references of international standards and good practices.