Paths in Education by Paula Lago

A country designs its education system to equip its population with the skills they will need to access decent employment and to exert their rights as citizens. But what happens when barely half of a country’s young population manages to complete mandatory education —the very foundation designed to be accessible to all?
In Uruguay, this has been a persistent challenge for at least 30 years. Despite being a beacon of democracy, human rights, and social progress in its region, this remains a structural issue that has yet to be addressed effectively.
While key statistics are frequently reported in mass media, a crucial gap remains. Who are these people? Why don’t they manage to finish? What barriers do they face in secondary education? How can the country respond to reverse this situation?
To uncover this, this project combines quantitative data visualization, explaining the problem in a scrollytelling format, with qualitative data visualization. The author undertook the data collection of the stories of eight young adults who faced some of the system's barriers and visualized their educational trajectories. The resulting work aims to persuade readers through a dual rational/emotional approach and elicit empathy —while also advocating for more personalized public policies that recognize students’ diverse realities. Because in the end, paths can be as diverse as the people who navigate them.