Panama  still lags in English language skills

PANAMA continues  to trail the region in English language proficiency and  sits  49^th     in an

Education First  (EF) survey of 80 non-native English speaking countries.

Panama showed no relevant improvement in learning English for adults and has one of the weakest proficiency profiles in the region, according to the EF English First Proficiency Index (EF EPI) 2017.

The Netherlands (Holland), remains as leader of the survey.

The measurement is used by thousands of schools, companies and governments, where large-scale tests were previously prohibitively expensive.

The EF EPI was launched in the United Kingdom, where Sebastian Faulks, CEB, spoke about English as a key asset for global commitment and shared prosperity.

"In today's global economy, the advantages of learning English transcend borders," said Minh N. Tran, director of Research at EF. The EP EPI 2017 classifies 80 countries and territories on the basis of data from more than one million adults who took the EF Standard English Test (EF SET), the first free standardized English test in the world. The EF SET provides language students with access to a high quality English test model.

In the region, Argentina continues to lead Latin America in the position #25 despite having dropped five positions. Mexico also dropped one position (# 44) against the previous year.

Colombia, Guatemala and Panama improved to get out of the Very Low Domain band, but despite significant education spending in Latin America, the region still has low world averages. The gap between men and women in the region is lower compared to other regions and is not statistically significant.