In the document published by the SEP “Main figures of the educational system in Mexico 2020-2021” a period of 16 school years is taken as reference (6 primary, 3 secondary, 3 high school and 4 university) covering the corresponding period from 2004 to 2020, that is, those who entered primary school in 2004 and managed to graduate from university by the end of 2020; Of every 100 students who entered primary school, 95 finished sixth grade, but only 92 started secondary school and only 78 managed to finish third grade. However, in high school the situation becomes more serious.
School dropout is aggravated in high school because high school students are already of “working age” and personal and family economic problems drive them to abandon their studies to work full time. In other even sadder cases, these young people are recruited by organized crime to form part of these criminal gangs. To the extent that almost half abort their studies in this period of two six-year terms, since of every 100 who entered primary school in 2004, by 2016 only 53% managed to graduate from third year of high school, of which another 14 already they do not continue their professional studies and decide to enter the labor market.
Therefore, of the initial 100 students, only 39 begin their university studies, but only 26 out of every 100 students in Mexico managed to graduate from university from 2004 to 2020. By 2021, the figures by state reach 46 and 41 out of 100 in Ciudad from Mexico and Nuevo Leon; Sinaloa is above the national average (26) reaching 31 graduates and the worst figures are located in Oaxaca and Chiapas with just 12 university graduates out of 100 in that period.
That the average in the country is only one graduate out of 4 and in Sinaloa 3 out of 10, undoubtedly gives us clear evidence of school dropout. A multifactorial problem that involves lack of resources and inefficient allocation of resources allocated over decades in our country. For example, in Sinaloa the lag in educational physical infrastructure (to remodel classrooms, bathrooms, courts, fences, seats, blackboards, etc.) in 2018 was 3 billion pesos and by 2019 the lag reached the scandalous figure of 5 thousand million pesos and all that was before the covid-19 pandemic. Let us remember that during those two years thousands of schools were depredated and looted since they were alone for a long time, abandoned. On the other hand, we cannot forget the most backward sector, where illiteracy, according to the same document cited by the SEP, reaches the figure of 4.66%, which means that more than 5 million people over 15 years of age do not know reading, writing or basic mathematical operations such as adding or subtracting.
Education is the sine qua non ally to fundamentally solve the main problems in Mexico, which are job opportunities and the violence and insecurity that we suffer. In addition, education is the best investment that a person can make in himself, a family in his children and a country to grow and develop. Those who invested in education since the 70s and 80s are now world powers, and they have done so by investing in academia alongside the arts and sports. And yes, it’s true, the rate of return on such educational investment is long-term, but at some point we have to start. We all want the best school for our children, so we must demand that the government invest more and better in education, sports and the arts; because in the Mexican educational system only 9.7% belongs to the private initiative; and more than 90% of schools are public. In Mexico, as in the world, education is the solution.
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