During a subsequent meeting of Ministers of Education, held in Brasilia in July of 1998, it was agreed that the Minister of Education of Chile would coordinate the design and implementation of a project to develop education indicators for the region. The Ministry of Education of Chile and UNESCO/OREALC established a cooperative agreement for the development and implementation of the Regional Education Indicators Project – PRIE.
Interested countries throughout the hemisphere met in August, 2000 in Washington D.C. During this meeting, Chile presented the content and methodology of PRIE and the implementation of the 3 – year project. The PRIE was established as a project in which the countries of the Summit of the Americas would participate in its construction and be the main actors in its development.
Since 2000, the Regional Education Indicators Project (PRIE) has been an important mechanism for monitoring countries' progress toward meeting the education goals of the Summit of the Americas. In doing so, it continues to strengthen national education information systems and contribute to greater dissemination and use of information in education. PRIE efforts are helping to foster an understanding of the state of education and its challenges in Summit of the Americas countries. It continues to offer insight into defining and managing the education policies needed to advance toward fulfillment of the 2010 Summit goals.
PRIE was developed to contribute to the set of long-standing and on-going international efforts to improve educational data bases that support the formulation, execution, and assessment of education policies. Political leadership of the project is provided by the Public Education Secretariat (SEP) of Mexico, and that of the Organization of American States (OAS). Since its inauguration, the project has benefited from the technical support of UNESCO, thus assuring international and regional collaboration through its Institute for Statistics (UIS), and the Regional Information System (SIRI) of the Regional Bureau of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC).