Since April 2008, the Ministers of Finance and Education of El Salvador have maintained a very important social partnership that has enabled the execution of diverse projects to promote a new tax culture in the country. The result is that tax education is covered in all grades in the Central American country's primary and secondary school curricula, and, since 2009, both institutions have organised diplomas and courses on tax education for teachers, visits to recreational-educational spaces for tax education, and tax culture week, among other activities. All of these advances made it possible for the Tax Education Programme in 2011 to obtain the National Innovation and Best Practices Award, "Es calidad" (That's Quality), granted by the President of the Republic.

Nonetheless, consolidation of the achievements and the need to seek greater collaboration in the future made it necessary to work to formalise this cooperation in an institutional convention. The Salvadoran Ministry of Finance, within the framework of EUROsociAL II, had the support of the Superintendence of Customs and Tax Administration (SUNAT) of Peru, an institution that has a convention with the Ministry of Education (MINEDU) of this country.

Through the expert advising, the two institutions exchanged different technical documents, and discussed key aspects of the characteristics and content of the conventions: changes in the leadership, structure and organisation of training; anticipated future changes in the curriculum; and the dynamic of the meetings for signing the convention.  The experience exchange was a great help to the Salvadoran Ministry of Finance, as it provided a detailed vision of the nature, structure and content of this type of convention. All of these inputs were included in a first draft of the convention, which was presented to the authorities of the Salvadoran Ministry of Education, culminating in the signing of the agreement.

The convention, signed in December 2014 by the Minister of Education, Carlos Mauricio Canjura, and the Minister of Finance, Carlos Enrique Cáceres Chávez, establishes the fundamental framework for inter-agency cooperation. The Ministries of Finance and Education will use this to take actions that contribute to raising tax awareness among students, teachers and professionals, and others, and to strengthen the technical, social and citizen skills prescribed in Study Plans and Programmes related to tax education. Due to its nature and importance for compliance with the State policy, the convention will be in effect indefinitely.

This activity is part of the working line of the EUROsociAL cooperation programme of the European Commission for "Strengthening Latin American tax education programmes", which is being coordinated by the FIIAP, with the El Salvadoran Ministry of Finance as its operational partner.