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| 25% of Mexican classrooms are in spaces not designed to be schools Photo: Cuartoscuro/Archivo |
Schools without basic materials, with deficient infrastructure, students without access to computers and the internet are some of the flaws of the Mexican education system detected by the official census released at the end of March.
The census was prepared by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) as part of the education reform announced more than a year ago (February of 2013) with the objective of giving the education authorities in Mexico a panorama of the situation with students and teachers.
Here we present to you some of the flaws the census found:
1. 25% of the basic education [elementary and middle] schools in Mexico are located in installations adapted for teaching facilities and not in buildings specifically constructed for that purpose. Preschool is the education level with the largest number of school plants in that situation (29% in total).
2. 36% of the schools lack drainage.
3. 24% of the schools don’t have water from the public water supply system.
4. 10% of the schools don’t have bathrooms.
5. 8% of the schools don’t have electric power.
6. 59% of the schools lack emergency exits.
7. In civil defense, 58% of schools are without evacuation routes and 54% of school plants are without safety areas for eventualities like an earthquake.
8. 15% of the schools don’t have chairs for the students.
9. 10% lacks chalkboards.
10. 20% of the schools don’t have desks or chairs for the teacher.
11. 40% of the schools lack computers.
12. 61% of the schools don’t have internet.
13. From the previous data it can be deduced that 45% of the preschool, elementary and middle school students don’t have access to a computer in their school, while 61% don’t have access to the internet.
14. In total, 2,215,201 students aren’t included in the census. This represents 8.9% of the student body in basic education.
15. 158,565 teachers refused to participate in the census. These teachers represent 8.1% of the total and the majority are from the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Michoacán.
Those state have a strong presence of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE), a dissident group within the teachers union who are against the education reform because they think it affects the labor rights of their union members by requiring them to be periodically evaluated to remain in their position.
In response to the refusal of these teachers to be included in the census, the head of the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP), Emilio Chuayffet, has warned that they will not earn their salary as of 2015, since that is the year the control of the payroll will pass to the federal government and they will only pay the teachers that are registered in the census. Spanish original