By Jorge Mario Soto.
Mexico has done much to improve its education system over the past 30 years, including decreasing illiteracy rates and expanding educational coverage at the primary and secondary levels. Yet, despite these improvements, Mexico's education system remains very unequal according to the CONEVAL 2018.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Education is a basic human right and a priority in every country in the world. It’s of such importance that there are international laws and goals regarding the subject. Education was both a Millennium Development Goal and now a Sustainable Development Goal.
Education is a broad subject and its context bound, but the theory behind policy, development, and techniques of measurements remains the same. When talking about education, poverty, and development, especially economic development, education is bound to have a human capital approach. Almost every policy made to tackle poverty or productivity has an element of education in it, whether it’s a means to an end, such as vocational training courses, or an end in itself, like literacy rates.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Education is a basic human right and a priority in every country in the world.
Education, both as a training component for an activity or as an end, in my opinion, will always improve the quality of life of a person or enrich the options a person has in their decision-making process. Nevertheless, education as a right has prerequisites to be fully enjoyed: health and inclusion. On one hand, health is a prerequisite for increases in productivity and a successful education because it affects a person’s performance in school or job regardless of their age. Inclusion, on the other hand, seen as education for all regardless of their ethnicity, race, sex, gender, capabilities, age; and not only to physical disabilities, is a barrier breaker for access to the right of education.
Education in Mexico
How do you explain a country’s education system and quality? Do you show the policy surrounding education? Do you display indices and indicators regarding education? Do you show results of a United Nations, World Bank, or Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report? Or do you try to explain it through your own experience? Every option has pros and cons, and the sum of these might show a picture of the educational situation in Mexico to a degree, but none of them show the areas of opportunity for growth and development. Because of this, the National Evaluation Council of Social Development Policy - CONEVAL in Spanish - drafted seven reports, one of them about education, that showed the status of the right of education at a regional and national level in Mexico.
In numbers, Mexico has accomplished progress in its level of education. In 1980, Mexico had an illiteracy rate of 17.1 per cent, meaning almost one out of five people did not know how to read or write, and this dropped drastically to 5.6 per cent in 2015, according to World Bank figures. In 2017, Mexico reported its schooling coverage rate by educational level, where primary (ages 6 to 11) and lower secondary education (ages 12 to 14) are virtually complete, leaving behind preschool (ages 3 to 5), upper secondary education (ages 15 to 17) and a virtual nonexistence of schools for adults (ages 18 and up that did not complete any level of education of the mentioned before) with only five per cent coverage. Illiteracy rates diminishing can be partially explained by the schooling coverage, but the reasons why there is still a 5.5 per cent of illiteracy is unknown. For this to be explained it would be necessary to compare not only illiteracy with coverage, but with the enrollment rates, terminal efficiency by educational level - controlling for age groups, ethnic background, and if they have a disability or not - whilst tracking past interviews, which is near impossible.
Mexico's spending on education is around two per cent of their gross domestic product, which is as much as many developed countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but Mexico ranks in the bottom 15 countries that participates in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the last position among the OECD members. This shows that even when expenditure is relatively equal among countries, considering their starting points and structural differences, their general performance can vary. It is important to bear in mind that even though standardized tests are a homogeneous way to measure the process of knowledge building, they are not sensitive to social context and the heterogeneity of societies.
With a very general view of education in Mexico, gaps can be addressed. CONEVAL in their report on education identified eight gaps that affect the fulfillment of the right to education: region where people live, the type of educational service offered (the formats of schooling), where the schools draw funds from (public or private funds), sex, age group, whether people have an indigenous background or not, whether they have a disability, and their economic condition. Here’s an overview (CONEVAL 2018):
The south of the country is worse off than the north and Mexico City.
Women have a better attendance rate in every level of education, and they don’t drop out as often as men.
People 65 years and older tend to be left behind in the process of education and have higher levels of illiteracy. In the age bracket of 3 to 17, the group with the highest attendance rate is the children from 6 to 11, followed by the group of 12 to 14, then 3 to 5 and in the last position, 15-17.
Illiteracy and educational lags drop when income rises; scholarships are given mostly to students between 6 and 14 years old.
13.7 per cent of children and teenagers that identify as indigenous don’t attend school, they have important lags in years of schooling in every age group, and they get less grants to attend school than non-indigenous people.
31.8 per cent of the population in the age bracket of 3 to 17 with any disability is illiterate, and almost half of the population with any disabilities has an educational lag.
Public schools take in a larger percent of the population (average of 86 per cent), have worse studying conditions overall and do worse than private schools in international standardized tests (average of 14 per cent throughout all levels of education).
Regarding the formats of schooling, the best schools are the “general” schools, which tend to have better schooling conditions, more funds and better educators, then learning-to-a-distance schools, indigenous schools and community schools, in every educational level.
Every gap listed above acts on one another, hindering an individual’s opportunity to exercise their right to an education. More so, the Mexican educational system seems to deepen and reproduce the effect every gap has. The question here is, can gaps be reduced or eliminated? Can certain aspects that make people unequal be fought against? As someone that believes in development, I think some gaps can be addressed: equal access to education for all, and in similar conditions, differentiated grants for people who need it the most; assistance and curricular adaptation to promote inclusion; more schools, better quality of education and what comes with it, among many others. But, as a government official and external consultant, I also think that drastic change regarding inequality requires political stability and continuity, collective action in large scale, and a multidisciplinary approach on policy, which Mexico and similar countries don’t have.
By Jorge Mario Soto
Jorge is from Mexico. He completed his Bachelor in Economics, specialising in political science. Jorge worked for the Secretary of Social Development and the Federal Economic Competition Commission, after that, he was a Junior Consultant for IDEA Consultores in Mexico City. His main interests are public policy, behavioural sciences, and education. He is currently studying for a Masters in Development Studies at IDS.