EDUCATION-MEXICO: Quality Evaluation Institute Riles Teachers

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Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Aug 9 2002 (IPS) - A Mexican teachers association spoke out Friday against a government decision to create a quality assassment body for public education, charging that it will pave the way for privatising the country’s school systems.

The teachers refuse to recognise the National Education Evaluation Institute and will stage protest marches and acts of civil disobedience, announced the National Coordinator of Educational Workers (CNTE), a group aligned with leftist organisations and known for its aggressive mobilisations.

The creation of the new Institute, announced Thursday, is the result of talks involving the Vicente Fox government, business leaders, education experts, and the National Syndicate of Educational Workers (SNTE), which is linked to the centre-right Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The governments of the PRI, which ruled Mexico uninterrupted from 1929 to 2000, touted their achievements in education: illiteracy in that period fell from 70 to 10 percent and the average education level of the Mexican people rose from first grade to the second year of secondary school.

But quantitative progress has not translated into better quality public education, say critics.

Independent assessments, which the PRI governments repeatedly rejected, indicate that Mexico fails when it comes to quality and that the second year of secondary school is really only equivalent to the third year of primary school, based on international standards.

The SNTE betrayed the PRI and the teaching profession by signing the agreement with Fox, says Robert Reyes, of the CNTE. He argues that the rival teachers’ union is aiding in handing over educational planning to the private sector, endangering the right to free public schooling.

The new institute, which is to be made up of education experts from the government and from the private sector, has a mandate to develop a system of indicators for assessing students and teachers.

With the results of those evaluations, adjustments will be made to the current curricular system and teaching methods, according to the agreement.

More than 60 percent of poll respondents said their children are in the hands of poorly trained teachers, according to a survey conducted Thursday evening by the national Azteca television network.

Until recently, the SNTE and CNTE had been tenuously united in opposition to any suggestions from the government or experts to get rid of the teachers’ monopoly over handling evaluations of education quality.

The leftist CNTE will not accept evaluations if they do not involve the participation of unionised teachers. And those individuals must receive a wage increase, said Reyes.

Every year in May, thousands of CNTE members converge on the Mexican capital by bus and gather in the city centre to demand that the government raise their salaries, which currently average some 300 dollars. The teachers’ protests often turn violent.

The number of people entering teacher training programmes falls 25 percent a year, according to a study by the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM). The reason cited most often is the decline in income for teachers and professors.

Mexico, with a population of over 100 million, has 1.5 million teachers and 220,000 public schools.

The government spends 5.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on education, 2.9 percent less than the proportion recommended by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation).

The new governmental institute, which will not have a role in salary negotiations or budget matters, was created thanks to the friendship between President Fox and Elba Esther Gordillo, an SNTE leader, according to columnist Miguel Granados, of Reforma newspaper.

Gordillo, who is also secretary general of the opposition PRI, has long been a friend of Fox, of the National Action Party (PAN). It was that close link and the emergence of evidence that educational quality in Mexico was suffering that led the SNTE to change its stance and agree to the Institute, agree observers.

But within the SNTE and the PRI, not everyone is happy with the Gordillo-Fox accord to found the National Education Evaluation Institute.

“We will be monitoring the operations of the new Institute very closely. We will not allow it to violate teachers’ rights,” said Miguel Alonso, member of the New Syndicalist branch of the SNTE.

Meanwhile, CNTE leaders are saying that what the Fox government is trying to do is push education to the political right. Intellectuals, entrepreneurs and supposed experts are attempting to impose an educational model that differs greatly from the Mexican tradition, according to the unionists.

The SNTE was fundamental for political stability during the PRI governments. Every year, the union and the party signed alliances that included pay raises for teachers, thus reducing the likelihood of labour conflicts.

Only the CNTE engaged in protests, distancing the union from dialogue with the government.

It was in that relationship that the government and teachers cast aside education quality, says Pablo Latapí, an education expert.

A study conducted for the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2000 that involved 265,000 students in 32 countries ranked Mexico second to last in reading comprehension, mathematics and sciences.

In countries like Brazil and Mexico, where education spending per student over age 15 is just 25 percent of the OECD average, promoting education among those who most need it is a considerable challenge, says the report.

In another assessment, conducted in 40 countries by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement in 1995, Mexican students in the third and fourth grades of primary school and in the first and second of secondary school had some of the lowest scores in math and science.

The Mexican government must choose a model that is consistent with the need to reduce poverty and socio-economic inequalities, says a 2000 World Bank report. The country must confront these major problems, which are in large part the result of educational inequalities.

UNAM research shows that Mexico spends 935 dollars per primary school student and 1,700 per secondary school student per year, while the United States spends 5,500 and 7,200 dollars, respectively.