The 2025 school year began on Monday, January 27, weighed down by issues that have worsened over the past four years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among them are a sharp decline in education quality and a drop in school enrollment, warns Juliana, an education specialist and researcher who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from the Sandinista regime.
Learning loss refers to both the inability to acquire new knowledge and skills and the deterioration of previously learned ones, according to the World Bank (WB). Beyond students’ absence from classrooms, the ineffectiveness of distance learning programs in ensuring educational continuity further accelerated this decline.
Juliana notes that learning loss has persisted because the Ministry of Education (Mined), under the control of the Ortega-Murillo regime, has failed to design or implement academic recovery plans. “We need strategies to help children overcome fundamental learning challenges,” she explains.
According to the WB, post-pandemic learning loss has been particularly severe in middle- and low-income countries, many of them in Latin America. In Nicaragua, 79% of children cannot read and understand age-appropriate texts by the end of primary school, according to a 2024 report by the WB and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. These organizations describe Nicaragua’s learning poverty as “unacceptably high.”
Recibe nuestro boletín semanal
Reading proficiency is critical for understanding all other academic subjects. “The inability to read with comprehension limits learning in all areas, including math and science,” the report states.
Political Indoctrination Worsens Learning Poverty

The lack of promotion of critical thinking and the imposition of political ideologies worsen the learning deficit in Nicaragua. Divergentes | Taken from the Ministry of Education
Without access to quality education that mitigates learning poverty, children and adolescents will struggle to pursue professional careers and secure well-paying jobs, Juliana explains. Each year this issue remains unaddressed, it only worsens, she warns.
Jaime Saavedra, the WB’s Global Director for Education, stated in the report that failing to reverse academic setbacks among children will have “devastating repercussions” on their future productivity, earnings, and well-being.
Juliana highlights that this crisis is exacerbated by the political indoctrination imposed by the Ortega-Murillo regime in classrooms. The lack of encouragement for critical thinking, the imposition of political ideologies, inadequate teacher training, insufficient investment in technology, and outdated curricula are some of the factors that have further degraded education quality in the country.
“Schools are forced to politically indoctrinate children, and teachers who refuse to comply face sanctions. Additionally, some families do not want their children to be exposed to such indoctrination, but they have no alternative,” she adds.
Although the Ortega-Murillo regime has reduced national academic assessments to conceal the deficiencies in education, Nicaraguan students lack the minimum competencies required for their grade levels, according to the WB report.
The last time the government conducted a National Large-Scale Assessment (NLSA) for primary schools was 10 years ago. Since then, Mined has drastically altered academic evaluation methods, requiring teachers to pass students regardless of their actual performance, learning progress, or even attendance.
“This is a strategy to manipulate education statistics to make the country appear to be in better shape than it really is. Many teachers complain that they are being forced to pass students even if they haven’t learned anything. This is part of the ‘no one gets left behind’ policy. The current evaluation system does not measure real learning,” she explains.
Juliana notes that since Mined’s assessments do not measure actual learning, there is no way to determine how far behind students have fallen since the pandemic. Without this information, it is impossible to implement effective educational recovery measures.
School Enrollment Has Declined

Divergentes | Taken from the Ministry of Education.
The 2025 school year also begins with a historical issue that has worsened due to the health crisis: declining school enrollment.
“Nicaragua had been stuck at the same net school enrollment rate since 2006, but we have now regressed even further. There is a serious problem with access to education,” says Juliana.
Following the health crisis, hundreds of children dropped out of school and never returned. The steady progress in school enrollment was lost, she notes. And due to the absence of Mined programs to reintegrate these children, they have been unable to return.
“For a child who loses a school year, it is very difficult to catch up or return as if nothing happened, because there are no programs to support their reintegration into the education system,” she adds.
According to UNICEF, three out of five children worldwide who lost a school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic live in Latin America and the Caribbean, accounting for nearly 60% of all affected children globally.
Nicaragua had shown slow progress in school enrollment over the past decade. In 2015, initial enrollment stood at 1,501,518 students out of 1,833,072 school-aged children, leaving 331,554 out of the system, according to the National Institute of Information (Inide). Enrollment increased until 2017, reaching 1,747,026 students, but then declined, dropping to 1,667,560 by 2022, according to Inide.
Notably, Mined’s Interactive Education Map reported 1,753,132 students enrolled in 2022. Since then, neither Mined nor Inide has released data on the number of enrolled students or the school-age population. In 2022, 179,418 children were out of the education system.
Currently, enrollment figures are only disclosed through Vice President Rosario Murillo’s official media addresses.
Regime Attempts to Conceal Enrollment Decline
Despite a clear downward trend in school enrollment, the Ortega-Murillo regime claims that the 2025 school year achieved “100.1% of the projected enrollment goal,” according to the state-run El 19 Digital.
This figure represents 1,806,518 individuals enrolled at all educational levels and modalities. However, this number includes adults attending primary and secondary school, a tactic used to disguise the declining enrollment among children, Juliana warns.
“This is entirely a cover-up. Education statistics are not compiled rigorously, and indicators are constantly manipulated. Including adults in school enrollment figures is a deliberate attempt to hide a reality we all know: there has been a significant decline in student enrollment,” the researcher explains.
Mined also does not provide data on the net enrollment rate, which reflects the number of children attending school at the appropriate grade level for their age. Instead, it only reports the gross enrollment rate, which includes all enrolled students regardless of age or grade level.
“Enrollment data is misleading because it doesn’t show how many children are in the correct grade for their age, how many enroll on time, or how many are falling behind,” Juliana states.
Cost of Living Limits Access to Education
Rising living costs pose another challenge for families trying to send their children to school. As of December 2024, the basic food basket reached a value of 20,259.81 córdobas—2.5 times the minimum wage for state employees, which stood at only 8,334.52 córdobas per month as of October 2024.
Although education is free in Nicaragua, school attendance entails expenses such as transportation, school supplies, and uniforms. Children from low-income families are more likely to miss school entirely or fall behind academically.
“If parents do not have money for these expenses, children will likely not attend school. Education comes with a range of costs that fall directly on families, making it even harder during an economic crisis,” she notes.
This year, the Ministry of Education (Mined) implemented the Presidential School Grant for the first time, providing 2,000 córdobas to preschool, first-, and second-grade students.
While this represents financial assistance for families, it is insufficient to ensure the continuity of children’s education, as it does not address the structural issues that lead to their exclusion from the education system, explains Juliana.
This grant helps families secure the initial enrollment of young children, but the factors that hinder their ability to remain in school throughout the year remain unaddressed. Additionally, students who do not qualify for the grant continue to face the same challenges.
The researcher warns that the lack of policies to reduce learning poverty and expand school coverage is “a tragedy for the country,” as Nicaragua is currently experiencing a demographic dividend that will end in approximately ten years.
The demographic dividend refers to a period when a country has a larger working and productive population compared to the economically dependent population. This has helped many countries improve their economic and social development, but it only works if young people have access to quality education that allows them to secure high-quality jobs.
“This will have a devastating impact on the country, which will become evident when the population ages without savings, without contributions to social security, and without having had access to quality education and employment,” warns the specialist.
“This will have a devastating impact on the country, which will become evident when the population ages without savings, without social security contributions, and without having had access to quality education and employment,” warns the specialist.