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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2005 
Education Lags Despite Boosts in Spending
 Wire reports
| | Public Education Secretary Reyes Tamez said the nation's high schools need to improve quality. |
Mexico's long-underfunded schools now have more money but the quality of education especially in high schools has not significantly improved, Education Secretary Reyes Tamez said this week.
Since President Vicente Fox took office in 2000, spending on education has increased more than in any other sector and should reach nearly US53.8 billion this year.
That represents about 27 centavos of every peso the government spends a 26 percent increase in real terms from the education budget in 2000, Tamez said.
But his comments came a day after a study released by the government's National Educational Evaluation Institute likened the quality of Mexico's education system to that of South Korea in the 1950s, before decades of reforms helped the country make vast improvements.
The study found that while national math and reading averages have improved over the past five years for primary school students, the average high school student has shown almost no improvement in either subject.
Speaking at a news conference at Mexico's presidential residence, Los Pinos, Tamez said part of the problem is that high schools have gradually increased the curriculum to cover 12 subjects, leaving less time for Spanish and math classes. The new workload has caused many students to give up, he said.
Tamez said officials are working on a plan to reduce the curriculum to four core subjects in many schools.
The education secretary also said that preventing older kids from dropping out of school to take a job remains a serious challenge. He said officials have awarded tens of thousands of scholarships to combat that.
Speaking at an event at a primary school in the northern state of Zacatecas on Wednesday, Fox said that he planned to unveil sweeping reforms to high school education next year, promising greater access to modern technology. He did not provide many details.
Tamez said earlier that in primary schools, teachers continue to emphasize memorization over independent thought.
A constitutional amendment calling for an overhaul of the primary school system will allow officials to ensure that teachers stress creativity and analytical thinking, Tamez said.
"We need an education system that allows students to be taught to learn for themselves, taught how to find information, defend their points of view and work as a team," he said.
Tamez said greater education funding has caused teachers' salaries to increase faster than any other public sector job. He said the average teacher now earns 12,000 pesos (US1,100) a month, but that "it's still not enough." Tamez also said the Fox administration has placed an emphasis on improving education in poor, largely rural southern states such as Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas, where many youngsters live in towns not large enough to support their own schools.
In those areas, multi-grade classes and regional community teaching programs have helped improve access to education, he said.
"Not every state has achieved the same level of quality," Tamez said. "But things are improving." |
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