Some of the bigger cities San Pedro as example, with a university and a lot of schools, public and private.
Private schools and university scores high in reading and writing, but still it wonders myself, when i am eating in the chinese restaurant at the other site of the street that schoolkids still need to help eachother with reading and writing.
Than we have the public schools, the ones who live in the neighbourhood and can walk to school, and if there is no family reason for not going to school (or something wrong with clothes shoes or hair), will fill the classes, mostly later than planned, but that is common.
If the kids live further away, than it is the financial situation if you are able to get into the bus to goto school.
Than we have the problems with the words they speak, for one unknown reason the dominicans like to "eat" the last letter of a word, changing the R for a L (like a chinese) and more, result IF they can write a word they write it incompletely, and a teacher who is happy that finally somebody is able to write something, won't correct it.
Than the books they use at school , specially in the first grades are very good books, high quality, but for somebody who just can read/write a little it more than their name, ABSOLUTELY to difficult, to read and/or to understand, like giving university books to kids in kindergarten.
But it looks good when you have a lot of books, at least you can say that you are not poor, and can showoff that, and everyday those books (needed and unneeded) are carried to school.
ANd than the afterschool, when in the western world a kid comes home and does not understand a line in a book, he asks his mother or father.
Problem here is that more than xx% of the parents only know how to read/write their own name, not really helpful, and the same result for the neighbours.
The interest of a child to learn to read/write is therefore in a lot of cases absolutely zero.
So if they state that 87% can read/write, that number looks good, we show the world how good we are, and that is important, that we cannot read the statement is something else but somebody told me that it was written somewhere.
Education is a problem in this country, Novellas are more important than social information or news, channel5 is the best (till they stop with the novellas), so my idea for a free, basic school on television, to teach the basics of how to read and write, won't be a good idea.