Plateforme de suivi de l'EPU / UPR monitoring platform

Date of review: February 10th 2009 

The delegation was lead by H.E. Mr. Fernando GÓMEZ-MONT, Interior Ministry.

In order to access all the main documents of the last review, follow this link

Points of the national report which deal with education. 

79. Education is a fundamental right that is guaranteed and promoted by the Mexican State. Both the right to education and human rights education are promoted, thereby generating inclusion, learning and participation and developing a sense of citizenship. Primary education is virtually universal. The national education system now has 33.3 million pupils and students at the basic, upper secondary and higher levels and in vocational training. The objectives of the 2007-2012 Sectoral Education Programme include improving the quality of education; expanding educational opportunities as a means of reducing inequality and promoting equality between social groups; and offering an all-round education.

80. This programme includes a scholarship scheme that currently benefits some 6 million low-income pupils at all levels of education. Significant efforts are also being made to integrate children and young people with disabilities.61 During the 2007/08 school year, 21,997 basic education facilities met the minimum conditions for integrating pupils with special educational needs and attended to 177,856 pupils with such needs. A major effort is being made to provide instruction in indigenous languages, including the development of teaching materials, teacher training and the promotion of indigenous language instruction. During the 2006/07 school year, 1.4 million sets of material were distributed to 583,202 primary school pupils in 33 indigenous languages.

81. Improving the quality of education represents a major challenge. The Alliance for Quality in Education, a programme launched in May 2008, promotes infrastructure improvement, refresher training for teachers and evaluation of the education system. The plan is to renovate 27,000 schools and to equip 14,000 schools so as to enable three out of every four students to connect to the Internet. Primary, secondary and upper secondary curricula have a high human rights content.62

122. Although it develops educational materials, promotes initial and specialist teacher training and promotes the teaching of indigenous languages in schools, Mexico still has not managed to guarantee indigenous peoples full access to compulsory bilingual intercultural education with qualified teachers who can speak and write a given community’s language variant. The Federal Government has developed intercultural universities in various federal entities.

(61) Durante el ciclo escolar 2007-2008 se distribuyeron libros de texto gratuitos de educación primaria: 5,535 en sistema Braille. 

(62) V Informe Interamericano de la Educación en Derechos Humanos. Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos.