Jose Sanchez
Research expert covering society, economy, & politics for Latin America
Education in Mexico - statistics & facts
Since 2012, pre-primary, primary, secondary, and high school education are considered mandatory in Mexico, that is, education from ages three to 17. The school system in Mexico is structured into three years of pre-school, six years of primary school, three years of secondary school, and three years of high school education. Nonetheless, no federal entity has an average school time of over 12 years, with Mexico City at the top with 11.48 years and Chiapas at the bottom with 7.78 years on average.
During the last few years, the public expenditure on basic and upper secondary education has been steadily increasing to improve programs and institutions. Still, in the last ten years, the number of people enrolled in primary education decreased by around 1.44 million students (about the population of Guadalajara), while the drop-out rate level shows a rapid increase during secondary education, recording almost nine percent of all enrolled students in higher education exiting formal education.
To counter the restrictions in place to stop the spreading of the virus, some of the main characteristics of the program were to use public television channels and radio broadcasts with the contents covering primary education, in addition to some electronic resources in web pages and e-platforms. Nonetheless, the outcome was nothing but underwhelming, in fact, Mexico ranked as one of the Latin American countries with the highest number of academic years lost during the pandemic. The Aztec country lost on average 1.8 academic years.
During the last few years, the public expenditure on basic and upper secondary education has been steadily increasing to improve programs and institutions. Still, in the last ten years, the number of people enrolled in primary education decreased by around 1.44 million students (about the population of Guadalajara), while the drop-out rate level shows a rapid increase during secondary education, recording almost nine percent of all enrolled students in higher education exiting formal education.
Higher education
During the academic year 2022/23, only slightly over four million Mexicans were enrolled in higher education programs, both bachelor and post-graduate degrees. Higher education institutions in Mexico are heavily divided into state-level public institutions, public central institutions, and private universities. Regarding the academic reputation, there’s no contest on which university ranks at the top. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) ranks with almost twice the number of points of the second place university. Moreover, the central university also ranked second with the highest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) score in Latin America, only behind São Paulo University in Brazil. In both rankings, the second place for Mexico was the famous private university called Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Tecnológico de Monterrey).The state of online education
During June 2022, the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) announced the ending of the program "Learn from home" (Aprende desde Casa) established during the academic year 2019/20 to avoid the risks from the COVID-19 pandemic. The program had some issues due to technological deficiencies and the high share of households without the necessary means for e-learning. For example, before the pandemic, only 60 percent of Mexican households had internet access.To counter the restrictions in place to stop the spreading of the virus, some of the main characteristics of the program were to use public television channels and radio broadcasts with the contents covering primary education, in addition to some electronic resources in web pages and e-platforms. Nonetheless, the outcome was nothing but underwhelming, in fact, Mexico ranked as one of the Latin American countries with the highest number of academic years lost during the pandemic. The Aztec country lost on average 1.8 academic years.
