COVID-19 and Post-pandemic Educational Policies in Mexico. What is at Stake?

Abstract

AbstractThe Latin American region is experiencing an educational crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic since efforts to contain the outbreak will grow the deep educational and economic gaps characterizing this region. During the pandemic, Mexico’s central intervention to continue instructional activities in the basic education system was implementing distance education based on educational television. As expected, this intervention raised different concerns on its effectiveness and how different student populations will be affected. This chapter has four main goals: (a) to describe and analyze educational gaps before the pandemic, identifying the central educational policies implemented in previous decades; (b) to describe and analyze educational policies implemented during the pandemic and how these may affect students at risk; (c) to conduct a prospective analysis to identify potential effects of the sanitary crisis in the administration of the education system in Mexico, and (d) to identify the main policy lessons resulting from the Mexican government initial response to the COVID-19 sanitary crisis.