The Status of Education in Mexico

In the past decade, Mexico has made great accomplishments towards having a thriving
education system, but there is still a large amount of work to be done to the system. In the past
decades, Mexicos education system has been known as a predominantly failing system, but with
recent initiatives, the country has began to become globally accredited for their enhancements to
their education. According to the United Nations global initiative, the three priorities needed to
have a thriving education system are having every child in school, improving the quality of
learning, and fostering global citizenship. Mexico has achieved the two priorities of fostering
global citizenship and improving the quality of learning, but they have not yet been able to have
every child in school.
Mexico has embedded cultural diversity and recognition throughout its education system
by completing the UN global initiative priority of fostering global citizenship. An example of
global citizenship in Mexican schools is the immersion of different languages and cultures with
the Global Citizens Network. The Global Citizens Network brings volunteers from the United
States and other countries to small towns, such as Xiloxochico, where they help teachers with
bilingual studies for their students and provide a background of different cultures for the
children. With programs like these, Mexico is able to integrate multicultural learning into their
curriculum, which give their students the opportunity to master different cultures and expand
their career path opportunities.
Another way Mexico is improving their education system is through the improvement of
the quality of learning. An example of this is the Mexican mathematics assessment scores for 15
year old children, which has increased 28 points since 2003(Education,2014). Along with
improving test scores, the mathematics failure rates have also decreased since 2012 from 66% to

55% for this age group(2014). This improvement can be credited to programs such as the Star
Program, which developed a performance based incentive system that helped over 8,000 students
in Chiapas, Mexico improve their grades(Christensen,2012), and the overall improvement of
teachers. One way teachers have improved is through the new standardized test for teachers,
which was enacted by Mexicos current president, Enrique Pea Nieto, in order to make sure that
the teachers of Mexico were properly educated.
One of the UN priorities that Mexico needs to improve in is having every child in school.
Up until the age of 15, Mexican students have an already low enrollment rate of 65%, but this
number drops even lower, to 35%, at the age of 18(Education,2014). One of the main reasons for
this drastic drop in enrollment is that the teens of Mexico have to work to provide for their
family, which does not give them time for school. In order to get an field based career, Mexican
companies expect 6.4 years of employment training, which is the highest of all OECD
(Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Countries)(2014). With this extra
time needed, students are not able to work and find time to complete their schoolwork, which
makes them have to choose between going to school to get a career or providing for their family.
Many Mexican students get overwhelmed with the burden of having to worry about school and
money, and end up neither employed nor in education or training, which makes up 20% of
Mexicans from the ages of 15 to 29(2014).

Work Cited

 Priority #3: Foster Global Citizenship. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2016, from
http://www.globaleducationfirst.org/220.htm
Xiloxochico, Mexico. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2016, from
https://www.globalcitizens.org/where-we-go/xiloxochico-mexico
Education at Glance. (2014). Retrieved April 13, 2016, from
https://www.oecd.org/edu/Mexico-EAG2014-Country-Note.pdf
Christensen, A. (2012). Performance Based Incentives for Learning in the
Mexican Classroom. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from
http://www.invalsi.it/invalsi/ri/improving_education/Papers/fuller/38.pdf