EDUCATION-MEXICO: Low Marks on Quality

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Dec 5 2001 (IPS) - Mexico has failed the exam on quality of education, according to a report released Tuesday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which confirms the warnings of local experts and stands in contrast to the leap made in terms of enrollment and coverage.

The study carried out among 265,000 students in 32 countries ranked Mexico second-to-last in the areas of reading comprehension, math and sciences.

The study, whose results were presented in Paris by the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, was carried out last year in 28 of the 30 member countries of the OECD – dubbed the “rich nations’ club” (of which Mexico is a member) – as well as four non-member countries: Brazil, Latvia, Liechtenstein and Russia.

The report ranked Finland, Japan and South Korea tops in terms of quality of education, with Brazil taking last place, just behind Mexico.

Pablo Latapí, an expert on education who has a column in the local weekly publication Proceso, said the OECD thus confirmed what specialists and others have long been complaining: that education in Mexico is of poor quality.

In countries like Brazil and Mexico, where spending on education per student over the age of 15 is just 25 percent of the OECD average, promoting adequate schooling for the neediest is a major challenge, the study stated.

Mexico’s Education Secretary Reyes Tamez said boosting the quality of education in Mexico would take decades. However, he said he was confident that the first results of the change would be seen in 2006, at the end of President Vicente Fox’s term.

The National Action Party (PAN) government that took office on Dec 1, 2000 after 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) launched a special scholarship programme, strengthened grading and assessment systems, and promised to bolster the quality of schooling in this Latin American country of 100 million.

For decades, PRI governments proudly displayed their achievements in terms of expanding enrollment, but expressed irritation when experts criticised the quality of education.

In the 1970-1971 school year, there were 11.5 million students and 332,000 teachers – totals that had grown to 29 million students and 1.4 million teachers by the 2000-2001 school year.

Official statistics also showed that years of schooling in Mexico expanded from a third grade average in 1970 to an average of two years of secondary school in 2000.

However, only one of every 100 children enrolled in primary school in Mexico makes it to the university.

Government strategies have put the accent on expanding access, coverage and enrollment, while occulting a deterioration in quality, said Sergio Sarmiento, a columnist with the daily Reforma.

It came to light last October that the government of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), the last PRI administration, concealed Mexico’s low ranking in a study of 40 countries carried out by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.

In that 1995 study, Mexican students in the third and fourth grades of primary school and the first and second grades of secondary school came in last in math and sciences.

The decision not to publish the results of the 1995 study was based on the aim to create “a favourable mood” and to avoid discouraging the population, said Miguel Limón, who served as secretary of education under Zedillo.

Former associates of Zedillo also admitted that they asked the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement to delay the release of the results on student performance in Mexico.

Fox, on the other hand, said he would not hide the results of any evaluation or study on Mexico, because “the years of make- believe and authoritarianism are over.” But education must improve signficantly if Mexico wants to attain steady, sustainable growth and development, the president has periodically stated.