By Kevin Rolwing
Assistant Director WES
Assistant Director WES
Mexico’s education system and its evolution over the last half-century can be characterized by one defining feature: its expansive growth. From 1950 to 2000, total student enrollments in the formal education system — primary school through graduate studies — increased more than eightfold from 3.25 million students in 1950 to 28.22 million students in 2000. Secondary school enrollments in the public sector rose from 1.4 million in 1972 to 5.4 million in 2000. The percentage of the population with a ninth grade education rose from just 9 percent in 1970 to 41.4 percent in 1998, while in the 1990s alone, enrollment in the tertiary sector grew by 46 percent.
This explosive growth in enrollments has placed tremendous pressure on the Mexican education system. Educational authorities and planners in Mexico are faced with two quite different and partially conflicting tasks: on the one hand, to manage and increase educational opportunities for the burgeoning population; on the other hand, to improve the quality of education at all levels in the face of this increasing demand. Beginning in the 1980’s and continuing through today, Mexico has been implementing needed educational reforms such as standardized national admissions and exit examinations at different levels of education, teacher evaluation and professional development mechanisms, institutional evaluation and accreditation, and a set of rankings for university degree programs.