In a failing school system in which more than half of 15-year-olds cannot master basic maths, the reform is one of the most significant of the policy changes pushed through by Mr Peña Nieto in his first two years in office. Mexico’s students are among the worst performers in the OECD, so the reforms are critical to improving poor productivity and vaulting Mexico into the big league of world economies.
But a dissident teachers’ union, the CNTE, wants the reform bill — which introduces a merit-based system of appointing, promoting and firing teachers — scrapped. It has been staging weeks of roadblocks and marches, which have spread beyond the union’s southern power base to Mexico City and the northern state of Nuevo León.
Officials of the CNTE met interior ministry mediators on Monday to try to end the impasse, but came away with a commitment only to keep talking. The main SNTE union, which had earlier backed the reform, has weighed in with a dozen demands of its own. These include changes to teacher evaluations, the backbone of the reforms.
“The government is going to have to make some concessions,” said Sergio Aguayo, a political analyst. “The question is, to what extent teachers are going to want to make life easy for Peña Nieto.”
The answer appears to be “not very”. The SNTE has begun negotiations with the education ministry on its own demands.
“There’s a lot of pressure to water down the reform,” says Marco Fernández, a professor at the Tecnológico de Monterrey university and researcher at think-tank México Evalúa. “I’m fearful,” he said.