By Nada AbiSamra
Based on Easton’s & Bashshur’s Frameworks.

(Word Document)

Keywords
SEP = The Secretariat of Public Education
SNTE = The National Teachers’ Union

Check the Appendix for some Definitions
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Thus, because of these economic integrations, the Mexican government had to create a modern educational system able to produce competent manpower required to consolidate the structural transformation of the economy. 2- National factors: In the late 1960’s, after the Second World War, everything turned national in Mexico, including the system of education. This system knew a rapid expansion. However, this expansion benefited the urban areas at the expense of the rural ones, hence the need to increase the quality of education and provide more educational opportunities to the poor–especially in the rural areas. In the 1970’s, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP)’s cumbersome bureaucratic structure was not capable of responding to the speedy incorporation of the numerous new teachers. Very soon complaints and protests among teachers began and there was a growing dissent movement that needed to be coped with. From this grew the need to reorganize the administrative structure of SEP and decentralize daily procedures in the different states. The highly centralized system was notoriously rigid, inefficient, conflict laden, unresponsive to the needs of local schools, unable to improve the quality of education, and frequently dominated by the National Teachers’ Union which was becoming too powerful. During the late 1980’s, the weakening of the centralized State within a context of economic crises and neoliberal policies alerted politicians and policy-makers to the need for State reform. Country studies of educational decentralization demonstrate that while improving the quality of education is always a goal, it is rarely (if ever) the principal goal. These types of reform tend to be born in political arenas and driven by many motives (mostly informal and frequently hidden). The two main motives behind decentralization in Mexico were:

1- Strengthening policy control at the national level and federalism in education in order to improve the quality and equity of education.

During Miguel de la Madrid’s administration (1982-1988), the decentralization issue returned to the educational sphere with the creation of the Decentralization Committees for Primary and Teachers Education. These committees operated in each state with the rationale to enhance state and municipal governments, although state authorities were tied to the education central power of the federal government. This policy caused some difficulties between the SNTE and the SEP. Again this attempt for decentralization failed because the central government did not transfer its decision capacity and resource control to the states, because the better distribution of the resources among the three levels of government –federal, state and municipal- implied in the fiscal reform never arrived. Therefore, states dealt more with an administrative deconcentration, where they obtained more responsibilities instead of resources and decision-making capabilities. From 1970 to 1988, structural reforms made in the Mexican education system guided the national project to decentralize basic education and teacher training institutes with the aim of improving the quality of education. In 1989, the SNTE (the National Teachers’ Union) who had been opposed to educational decentralization finally agreed to accept it when the federal government bundled the policy with increases in wages for teachers, economic incentives to improve quality of instruction, new schemes to promote upward mobility, and the President’s assurance that this strategy would not dismantle SNTE. What enablers and barriers were faced?

President de la Madrid and First Secretary of Public Education, Reyes-Heroles, worked hard in order to decentralize education in Mexico. The weakening of the centralized state because of economic crises in addition to the economic integration of the country on the international level helped a lot to achieve this decentralization later on.

- Opposition: The biggest losers with the arrival of educational decentralization in Mexico were Mexico City Bureaucrats, and they often criticize the reform saying that it was just a federalist revamp, another example of the reformist tendencies of the Mexican State.

1. Determines for the whole nation the basic education and teacher training curricula.

6. Regulates the system of education, in-service training and professional upgrading of teachers.

11. Realizes planning, programming and evaluation of the national system of education.

13. Takes all the necessary measures to guarantee the national character of basic education and teacher training institutions. The State Governments

2. Propose to SEP the regional curricular contents for basic education and teacher training.

6. Supply, reject or revoke authorization to the private sector to create and operate basic education and teacher training services. Shared Jurisdiction: They both

4. Approve, reject or revoke the recognition of private educational institutions different from basic education and teacher training.

6. Provide library services to assist the national education system, with educational innovation and scientific, humanistic and technological research.

10. Oversee the enforcement of the General Education Law. The unification of education maintained the most essential matters of educational policy under the federal government direction: the definition of the national curriculum, the design of teachers’ training and Teachers’ Career, the evaluation of the system, the allocation of educational budgets to the states, and the channeling of compensatory and extraordinary resources from national programs. Outcomes Despite erratic policies and political conflicts, the decentralization of education in Mexico is on the move; it generated important institutional change in the states, some power shifts, and planted the seeds of a new organizational model for school management. Whereas it does not represent a complete devolution to the states of curriculum content, academic evaluation, and quality assessment, through significantly increased management responsibilities, the states are assuming a large measure of influence over education — and it is getting larger. The federal government is continuing to transfer to the states responsibility for additional educational institutions, such as: adult education, technical secondary education (CONALP), and the corporation for school construction. However, even though the federal government is transferring significant management tasks to the states, the center retains and utilizes its power to define the limits and boundaries to which the states must adhere. The federal government is playing a more dynamic role in policy formation, controlling educational expenditures at the state level, promoting compensatory programs, and helping poor states struggle with the lack of sufficient places for students to attend. Stresses Stresses Stresses Stresses Stresses Stresses Stresses Stresses

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