Mexico: An education reform to strengthen inequality?

The current president of Mexico Peña Nieto announced to introduce extensive reforms to improve the quality of the countries education.

To achieve improvement, he plans to face the inequality of educational standards across the country by testing the teachers for their skills and qualifications to teach. If they are not sufficient in terms of the program, a dismissal from their post would be the consequence.

Opposing to the presidents' approach to evaluate the teachers the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) calls it an „intentionally misnamed labor reform aimed at firing teachers and breaking the union“. Instead, they demand more resources for the students in need at the unprivileged schools.

In fact, a big part of the Mexican students between the age of six and 17 drops out of school: one million of them per year. Dr. Gil Anton (College of Mexico) argues that this happens due to an outdated education model that even strenghtens the existing inequality.

16.4 million people in Mexico haven't completed secondary school, over ten million Mexicans haven't finished primary school and even 5.4 million people are illiterate.

Editorial team (sz)

Sources

Photo credit: Profesores de la CNTE toman Boulevard Puerto Aéreo by Padaguan / CC BY-SA 2.0
Information sources: telesurtv.net, amerika21.de (german article)