In the midst of the health and economic crisis, little has been said about the 2020 Population and Housing Census, and its implications for education. This is not good news, very little progress has been made in a decade. We are still a country with little and bad education.
According to INEGI, the average schooling in Mexico is only at the secondary level. On the other hand, the percentage of the population that only has basic education is 49%. In contrast, in Chile it is 32% and in the US it is only 9%. This indicator should trend downward, but in Mexico it rose 2 percentage points compared to 2010. With the pandemic, this will worsen.
There are advances, but modest ones. The total population that has a high school went from 21% to 24%, and those with higher education went from 18% to 21%.
However, once again we fall short in the international comparison: in Chile 25% have university studies; in France 40%; while in Japan and the United States 50% of the population has higher education.
Of course, not only educational coverage matters, but quality. And there the data is alarming: According to the PLANEA Test (2018), 63% of students in basic and upper secondary education do not have basic mathematical skills, that is, 16 million students!
There are no demagogic shortcuts. To achieve development, more and better education is needed, not social welfare. The pandemic threatens to leave an educational system in shambles.
As the census also shows, Mexico has been one of the countries least prepared to face the disruption of online education: only 52% of Mexicans have internet at home and 37% have a computer or tablet.
These figures should call for a national educational emergency, but unfortunately education is not considered an essential activity. In August of this year, when apparently there would be conditions for an educational reopening in Mexico, 500 days will have passed with schools closed, the only sector that has not had openings or intermittent ones.
The bill as a country will be devastating and the issue is not even on the national discussion agenda.
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