Avances y retos de la educación para jóvenes y adultos en el Ecuador

Youth and Adult Education (EPJA) in Ecuador is a strategic tool for guaranteeing rights, cognitive justice and overcoming historical inequalities. This article argues that, despite its constitutional recognition, EPJA has been treated as a compensatory, disjointed and subordinated policy, instead of being consolidated as a permanent pillar of social development. From a critical and documentary approach, its historical evolution, theoretical foundations, territorial experiences, recent advances and structural limitations are examined. The research reveals that EPJA has the potential to be a path of profound social transformation if it is reconfigured as a comprehensive, intersectional and territorialized public policy, guided by lifelong learning, interculturality and community participation. The argumentative core of the article states that only through robust institutionalization, with flexible curricula, sustained investment and empowered local actors, will EPJA be able to transcend its remedial nature and become an effective right that responds to the multiple realities of contemporary Ecuador.