The non-governmental organization reAcción Paraguay, based in Ciudad del Este, presented the first Educational Investment Ranking (RIE), a tool that evaluates how the 17 departmental capitals and Asunción used resources allocated to school infrastructure between 2020 and 2025. The result is alarming: no municipality achieved a perfect score, and the best performance did not reach 50 points out of 100. The overall average was just 14.2 points.
According to the executive director of reAcción Paraguay, David Riveros García, the goal of the ranking is not to point out an ideal municipality, but to highlight how resources were invested and identify what can be improved year after year. The study analyzed public contracts, official data from the Ministry of Education and Sciences (MEC), records from the National Directorate of Public Procurement (DNCP), and citizen verification processes involving students, technicians, and representatives from different parties and political movements.
One of the most critical points of the report is the disregard for priorities previously established by the MEC and educational communities. “Each year, the MEC allocates workdays for its supervisors and directors to prepare the prioritization list with participation from the educational community and municipalities. However, in the end, municipalities do not respect this list,” the document states.
The report also highlights the insufficiency of resources for educational infrastructure. According to the survey, “at the national level, resources for educational infrastructure depend almost entirely on the sale of the energy surplus from Itaipú to Brazil” and warns that “with the plans of the government of Santiago Peña to install the first major Artificial Intelligence hub in Latin America, resources for education will be considerably reduced.”
Data from the MEC used in the analysis indicate that more than 6,600 educational institutions have at least one critical need, affecting hundreds of thousands of students with problems in classrooms, restrooms, and other educational spaces.
reAcción Paraguay used artificial intelligence to process large volumes of information but incorporated citizen participation and plural political control in data validation. “We use the ranking as an opportunity for future candidates to learn how the public procurement process works and how resources for education should be invested,” said Riveros García. He added that the adopted methodology defends the results against accusations of data manipulation for or against certain municipalities, and that everything is verifiable.
The launch of the Educational Investment Ranking comes at a strategic moment, on the eve of the 2026 municipal elections, when new authorities responsible for managing public funds allocated to education will be chosen. The tool is available in the FOCO application, a platform that allows monitoring educational investments, viewing public data, and reporting irregularities related to infrastructure and school meals.