[Assam] Part1A--lessons from Mexican education refrom

[umesh sharma]

A811 � Final paper                                                By: Umesh Sharma

 

Introduction

Mexico has seen a move towards full enrollment in primary education,  thereby addressing the problems of access at primary level, to a large extent. However, there is still a wide variation in enrollment and dropouts rates for various categories. Rural , poor and indigenous populations have significantly lower enrollment rates, much higher dropout rates, lower student achievements in standardized tests and lower quality of schooling overall �compared to urban, richer students. The government has taken several steps through compensatory and quality improvement programs like Progresa, PARE and Carrera Magisterial and has made efforts towards decentralization to address the issue of educational inequity in access and quality. However, problems still persist. I discuss the current problems and their causes, the government policies and their drawbacks (if any) and recommendations for improvements. The current policies are aimed in the right direction, and have resulted in some degree of success, but are not always thought through. They face implementation problems also.

 

The current scenario in primary and secondary education in Mexico:

As can be seen from table 1 below, rural areas have a marginally lower enrollment rates than  urban areas. Moreover, within urban areas the poorer segments of the  population (Q1 and Q2) have significantly lower enrollment rates than those of richer segments (Q3 and Q4).

 

 

TABLE 1: Enrollment rates of 8 or 9 year olds

Criterion	Year	Urban	Rural	Quartile of Income in Urban areas
				Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Percentage of children Enrolled in School at 8 or 9 years of age	1994	98.3	97.1	95.9	99.7	100.0	100.0

Source: CEPAL (1999) : Reimers (2000)

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