Supporting Mexico through political transition
Reflecting IIEP’s priority on improved governance, transparency, and accountability, a new project aims to support Mexico with continuity in educational decision-making. Writing for The IIEP Letter, Néstor López from the IIEP office in Buenos Aires discusses its main objectives.
In December 2018, Mexico will inaugurate a new government. Consequently, a new team of decision-makers will run the region’s second most populated education system.
In order to enrich the debate about education policy during the upcoming transition period, the IIEP office for Latin America in Buenos Aires is partnering with Mexico’s National Institute for the Assessment of Education (INEE). The objective is to prepare a descriptive analysis of the current state of the country’s education system, framed within a regional context.
The study has two sections. The first is a comprehensive mapping of Mexico’s educational policy, focusing on all state activity that contributes to the daily provision of educational services, including policies aimed at improving education quality and equity as well as structural elements, such as legislation and norms, goods, services, and infrastructure. The second section places this national analysis in dialogue with the main educational policies being implemented in other Latin American countries.
Frequently, the transition between two educational administrations leads to a loss of institutional knowledge and discontinuity in educational decision-making. Education policies, however, have the tendency of taking effect in the longterm only. IIEP therefore maintains that good educational planning requires a minimum degree of stability in the implementation of public policies in order to sustainably improve a country’s education system.
This is especially relevant in the case of Mexico, where an ambitious but incomplete education reform began in 2014. The present project aims to support a smooth transition and continuity in educational decision-making. It will help incoming officers of the Department of Public Education to gain an overview of the current state of the Mexican education system within the regional context, and to take informed decisions on whether, and to what extent, the policies that are currently in place will be continued or transformed.
By promoting a structural and long-term view of educational governance in Mexico, the project constitutes an important contribution to the Mexican education community and society at large.
Read the rest of The IIEP Letter here!
