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Mariana and Carlos are twin brothers and are learning the conjugation of the verb run in copreterite and postpreterite. They have doubts but cannot pause the class that is being broadcast on television. There is no teacher to guide them. The mother of Mariana and Carlos, whose surnames I omit so as not to disclose their personal data, is serving the customers of the taqueria where I am eating, her children share their doubts but just a couple arrived at the table who was free. Who solves the doubts of Mariana and Carlos? Will they learn the co-past and post-past? How many more doubts have they had throughout this year and a half about not attending school? What will happen to the students who couldn’t even watch TV?
Before the pandemic the education it was already significantly unequal between regions, economic strata and gender; availability was also shown to be insufficient and, furthermore, there were no indicators that made it possible to measure educational quality. Then the Covid-19 came to deepen all these problems.
Unequal: those who can learn, those who can study and those who are left out
In Mexico, educational availability is insufficient to meet the global standards recommended to guarantee optimal education. These deficiencies deepen as the educational level is higher and the incidence is much higher in rural areas of the country.
As the pandemic arrived and schools closed their doors to bring learning to screens, these problems became bigger and new ones were created.
Mariana and Carlos have the possibility of taking classes, (many students of all educational levels could not) but even this does not mean that they are progressing according to the study programs and educational standards for each grade; due to the shortage of teachers, materials, access to platforms, infrastructure, time available, supervision at home and even administrative staff.
According to figures from Coneval (National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy), a quarter of public primary and secondary schools have incomplete teaching staff and 2 out of 10 primary school students did not receive free textbooks on time. In the transition from secondary to high school, about 2 million students enrolled in public schools are lost and women are the majority in this group.
The Covid-19 It arrived and the deficiencies in educational availability deepened, generating that 285,360 students enrolled in the 2019-2020 school year could not finish it because they lost contact with their teachers or because their schools closed temporarily or permanently.
And most of the student dropouts occurred in the group of the youngest students, such as Mariana and Carlos, in primary and secondary education, according to figures from the ECOVID-ED of the Inegi.
The data also reflected that economic need was another of the fundamental reasons for student dropouts during 2020, the most aggressive year of Covid-19. About 16% of the students who dropped out during that school year did so because they needed to work or due to lack of money.
But to study in Covid-19 times, not only financial resources are needed, time and guidance at home has been essential. The survey showed that 7% of primary school students did not receive support from any family member during their online classes and this situation rises to 48% for secondary school students.
So the pandemic created different groups of students in the country: those who were definitively left out of the educational system until further notice, those who continue to study but whose academic achievement can hardly be measured, and those who in a more privileged way have been able to keep a guide at home. , contact with their teachers and schools and periodic monitoring.
Difficult access: Internet access is impossible in much of the country
Education, already difficult to access for many children and young people before the pandemic, became a definite impossibility for more than a quarter of the student-age population.
Mariana and Carlos had the possibility of following their classes through the television that they have in their mother’s taco business in the historic center of Mexico City, but this is not the same situation for millions of students in the country.
In Mexico, 3 out of 10 (28%) of those over 6 years old still do not have internet access and 2 out of 10 (23.4%) do not have a television at home, according to figures from the ENDUTIH (National Survey of the Use of Information Technologies in Homes) of the Inegi.
Michoacán, Guerrero, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas are the states in which the rate of Internet users it is less than 60 percent. This implies that access to digital platforms, social networks, virtual media or any type of activity that requires an electronic device and an internet connection is out of the reach of 4 out of 10 inhabitants of these entities.
And not to mention having internet at home. In Chiapas only 27.3% of households have their own internet. 40.0 and 45.2% for Oaxaca and Tabasco respectively.
Online education was a challenge for all students, their parents and their teachers, but a real impossibility for millions of girls, boys and young people in conditions of high economic, regional or ethnic vulnerability. The international educational tests will reflect the impact that the pandemic had not only on the widening of social gaps, but also on the general academic achievement of Mexican students.
ana.garcia@eleconomista.mx
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