• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 06 / 23 / 2011

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UNESCO confirms high standard of writing in Cuba. THE Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE) on the quality of education of orthographic and calligraphic standards, which assessed third and sixth grade children in 16 countries of the region, put Cuba at between first and third place in all parameters, according to a recent UNESCO report.

The SERCE study, which began in 2008 and ended December 2010, took various aspects into account; for example, that the handwriting allowed the person it was directed to easy access to its content. In this test, Cuban children stood out with 80%. They were followed by children from Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador and Peru, where only six out of every 10 third-grade pupils could differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters.

The orthographic test measured errors in writing, incorrectly spelled words or departure from standards, and revealed that pupils in Cuba, Paraguay and Uruguay had faults in one out of 20 words, as opposed to children in other countries of the region with one in 10.

In terms of text construction, Cuban, Chilean, Ecuadorian and Uruguayan children exceeded the regional average in coherent writing without calligraphic problems; two out of three pupils had no errors, while the regional average was one in two. "It can be said that Cuba has very high results in written texts, taking into consideration moreover that the percentage of blank or illegible texts was less than 1% in both grades," the report highlights.

Translated by Granma International