In Latvia, education is often treated as the most realistic “escape path” from intergenerational hardship, especially for families with children. Newer EU-SILC data reveal that Latvia has made significant progress reducing child poverty risk over the past decade. The country’s remaining gaps are increasingly tied to who benefits equally from schooling rather than whether schooling exists. In 2024, 17.9% of children in Latvia were at risk of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE), down from 20.3% in 2023 and far below 30.7% in 2015.
This improvement matters because Latvia is unusual within the EU, as adults experience a higher poverty-or-exclusion risk than children. Eurostat shows that in Latvia, the AROPE rate for people aged 18+ exceeded children’s by 8.0 percentage points in 2024, one of the largest gaps in the EU. This suggests social support for families has strengthened, but it also underscores a critical issue for education policy: whether schools are effectively closing learning gaps for the children most at risk of becoming poor adults.
Educational Enrollment and Completion
On average, learning outcomes, Latvia’s schools perform relatively well in Europe. In PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2022, Latvian 15-year-olds scored above the OECD average in mathematics and science and around the OECD average in reading; 78% reached at least baseline proficiency in mathematics. These results are consistent with Latvia’s broader effort to modernize teaching and learning. Eurydice reports that competence-based education content was fully introduced by 2023.
In 2022, Latvia approved changes requiring preschool and general education to move to Latvian-only instruction. The transition is being carried out one grade at a time and was completed in September 2025. Authorities frame the shift as bolstering integration and the state language, while allowing minority students to study their language and culture through extracurricular programs.
International human rights experts have been more skeptical about the impact on minority children. In a 2023 statement, U.N. experts cautioned that the reforms “severely limit education in minority languages” and said they could conflict with non-discrimination standards and children’s rights protections. They also criticized the policy process, arguing that it didn’t ensure “effective and meaningful participation” of affected minorities.
Outcomes and Challenges
Roma inclusion remains one of the most difficult equity tests for Latvia’s education system. A 2025 non-discrimination country report presents evidence that a high proportion of Roma children in some municipalities attend special basic education schools. For example, 65% of identified Roma children in Jurmala and 73% in one Tukums County special school. The same report cites serious concern from the Framework Convention’s Advisory Committee about Roma children’s access to quality inclusive education, urging more consistent monitoring and action.
The Council of Europe’s anti-racism body (ECRI) also points to capacity constraints that can affect outcomes for Roma students. During its 2024 visit, ECRI found that Roma mediators and teaching assistants were too few, noting that, at the time, there were only seven Roma mediators and one teaching assistant nationwide—insufficient for sustained school-family support and attendance follow-up.
Fortunately, NGOs have begun addressing these equity gaps directly. The Latvian Centre for Human Rights conducts monitoring and advocacy on minority and Roma education to inform policy reforms, including research on school segregation and language rights.
Latvia’s progress on child poverty risk is real and measurable – child AROPE fell to 17.9% in 2024, and the country has improved dramatically since the mid-2010s. Yet the education challenge described in older accounts hasn’t faded; it has shifted. Latvia now pairs strong average performance (PISA) with a set of high-stakes equity decisions, especially around language-of-instruction reforms and the persistence of Roma segregation into special education tracks.
If Latvia’s goal is not only to protect children from poverty today, but to prevent poor childhoods from turning into poor adulthoods, the next gains will likely come from inclusive education. This means better disaggregated data, targeted support for minority learners, and a system that keeps Roma children in mainstream high-quality schools.
– Jeff Zhou
Photo: Flickr
