According to the World Bank, Cuba is the only country in the entire Latin America and Caribbean region to have a high quality education system.

The World Bank emphasized "the poor quality of Latin American and the Caribbean teachers," as the main obstacle to the advancement of education across the region.

It notes that "today, no Latin American school system, with the possible exception of that of Cuba, has the high standards, strong academic talent, high or at least adequate salaries and high degree of professional autonomy that characterizes the world's most effective educational systems, such as those of Finland, Singapore, Shanghai (China), the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada."

The World Bank had lauded the Cuban Educational system in a previous report:

Cuba is internationally recognized for its success in the fields of education and health, with social services that exceeds those of most developing countries and, in certain sectors, are comparable to those of the developed nations. Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the establishment of a communist one-party government, the country has created a social system that ensures universal access to education and health services, provided by the state. This model has helped Cuba to achieve universal literacy, eradicate certain diseases and provide universal access to safe drinking water and basic public sanitation. Cuba now has one of the region's lowest infant mortality rates and longest life expectancies. A review of social indicators in Cuba reveals an almost continuous improvement from 1960 to 1980. Several major indices, such as life expectancy and infant mortality rates, have continued to improve even during the country's economic crisis of the 1990s [...]. Today, the social performance of Cuba is one of the best in the developing world, a fact well documented by many international bodies including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Program for Development and other UN agencies as well as the World Bank. [...] Cuba outperforms both Latin American and Caribbean as well as many other middle-income countries in the most important indices of education, public health and hygiene.

The World Bank points out that the development of good education systems is vital to the future of Latin America and the Caribbean.

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