Mexico & Nafta - May 2014 (ISSN 1741-444X)

Mexico’s education system needs a radical overhaul. That is the boiled down version of a report presented by the new institute for educational evaluation (INEE) to the senate on 29 April. The INEE, which was created under the education reform driven through congress by the government led by President Enrique Peña Nieto last year, exposed a series of severe challenges facing the education system. Sylvia Schmelkes, the president of the INEE, highlighted an unacceptably high school drop-out rate and child labour, but principally inequality in terms of access to quality education. Schmelkes said that programmes to address this were woefully inadequate.

The INEE report, simply entitled ‘The right to quality education’, was the first by the body since it was formally established under the secondary legislation to enact the government’s education reform last year. Schmelkes presented the report to the president of the senate, Raúl Cervantes, and senators representing all of the country’s political parties. Schmelkes called for more resources, and better targeting. “All additional spending in education should be channelled towards the poorest”, she said, while underscoring the principal point of the report which is that inequality, in terms of access, opportunities, infrastructure and teaching standards, is the principal problem facing the country’s education system.

Schmelkes said that the school drop-out rate is 20% at secondary school level and 40% at higher levels. The report said that this dramatically increased the risk of unemployment, as well as youths drifting into organised crime, while schools did not always provide the requisite climate of wellbeing, respect and security for pupils. Schmelkes said that it was imperative that the government improve funding and programmes to improve schooling, especially in poor, small, rural areas.

In the latest (2012) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which assessed the competencies of 15-year-olds in reading, maths and science (with a focus on maths) in 65 countries, Mexico came last of the 34 OECD members. It came 53rd out of 65 countries assessed in maths, albeit of the eight Latin American countries that took part in the tests only Chile (just) fared better. Mexico also came 55^th for science and 52^nd for reading (see table below). PISA conducts the tests every three years. Schmelkes said Mexico had barely improved at all from one PISA assessment to the next. A total of 55% of Mexican pupils were below the basic competence level in mathematics; 47% in science and 41% in reading.

The INEE argues that for Mexico to improve in the PISA rankings it needs to reduce inequality and end the differences within the State education system. There are big differences in the quality of education from state to state. The difference between pupils from the state with the best results —Aguascalientes— and the worst—Guerrero—is 70 points, the equivalent of almost two grades. In

Guerrero 80% of pupils were beneath the basic competence level for maths, 72% for science, and 69% for reading. The impoverished southern states of Tabasco and Chiapas were next worst and Schmelkes suggested that had Michoacán and Oaxaca taken part in the PISA tests they would have been right down there too.

Schmelkes said that behind “the differences between states […] another difference, of a socio-economic and cultural nature, is hiding”.

Schmelkes urged better training for teachers and more rigid adherence to a curriculum in the classroom. She also said that carrying out performance appraisals of teachers was essential to address regional differences in educational standards. The INEE’s remit includes setting the curriculum; designing and overseeing teacher training and recruitment; and introducing a meritocratic system of promotion, freeing teachers from “discretionary criteria” (which had allowed teacher posts to be bought and sold like goods in a store) by means of a ‘professional recruitment service’. Under the new evaluation system, teachers will have to undergo three performance assessments, and will be pushed into administrative positions for the rest of their careers (while retaining retirement pensions and other privileges) if they fail to make the grade.

Peña Nieto takes legal action against states

President Peña Nieto served notice of his determination to improve the standard of teaching in Mexico and the country’s poor international standing in late April by filing four constitutional complaints against the states of Chiapas, Michoacán, Oaxaca and Sonora before the supreme court of justice (SCJN) for failing to harmonise state education laws with his government’s education reform.

The legal suit filed by Peña Nieto specifically accused the Oaxaca state government of failing to adopt the precepts of the education reform in its legislation by the 12 March deadline, and of refusing to implement the secondary legislation creating a professional recruitment service to assess and continuously evaluate teachers. The performance appraisals are the aspect of the reform most reviled by the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE), Mexico’s second largest teachers’ union, which organised disruptive protests in Mexico City against the education reform for weeks on end last August.

The Oaxaca state government approved a request by the CNTE to allow union delegates to evaluate teachers instead of professionals appointed by the federal government. Similar charges were brought by Peña Nieto against Chiapas, Michoacán, and Sonora which, while they changed their laws, allowed teacher performance appraisals to be performed by union delegates. Given the CNTE’s hostility to the appraisals, this is rather like allowing a prisoner to choose his length of sentence, and is a sure-fire way to ensure the preservation of the current corrupt system of hereditary posts or allowing retiring teachers to sell their positions.

Winning approval for his education reform was always going to be easier than implementing it for Peña Nieto, but having faced down the CNTE in Mexico City, he is adamant that states will not be allowed to dilute the reform through re-interpretation, or simply ignore aspects of it they dislike. While choosing to take legal action against the four states Peña Nieto would have also been acutely aware that his reputation for modernising Mexico could be fatally undermined if it becomes apparent that the first of his sweeping reforms, while impressive on paper, has amounted to little in practice.

• PISA breakdown

In Mexico, the average performance in reading of 15-year-olds is 424 points, compared to an average of 496 points in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Girls perform better than boys with a statistically significant difference of 24 points. On average, 15-year-olds score 413 points in mathematics, the main topic of PISA 2012, compared to an average of 494 points in other OECD countries. Boys perform better than girls with a statistically significant difference of 14 points. In science literacy, 15-year-olds in Mexico score 415 points compared to an average of 501 points in other OECD countries. Boys perform better than girls with a statistically significant difference of 6 points.

• Supreme court on education reform

Mexico’s supreme court must rule whether to compel the states of Chiapas, Michoacán, Oaxaca and Sonora to comply with the education reform promulgated by the federal government to the letter and adjust their laws accordingly, or whether to uphold their right to place their own interpretation on the reform.

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