The education system in Uruguay has made good progress in pre-primary and basic education. Universal access has been reached in primary education. In addition, access to pre-primary education is good for children aged four and five, with coverage rates considerably above the average for the Latin America region. However, the completion rates of lower and upper secondary education remain unsatisfactory. The proportion of 15‐24 year-olds who have completed secondary school is one of the lowest in the region and has shown little improvement over the past decades compared to other countries of the region (29.7% in 2010 compared to 22.4% in 1990). Uruguay also has very high repetition rates in regional and international comparison, leading to a high number of overage students. Nevertheless, the repetition rate in public primary schools has decreased since 2002 and had almost halved by 2013. Also, student achievement in international assessments has decreased but remains above the regional average. A major concern is the significant proportion of students underperforming in secondary education. In PISA 2012, 55.8% of students demonstrated low levels of mathematics proficiency compared to 23.0% on average in the OECD.