Mexico’s daft plan to cut the school year for the World Cup

The football World Cup is still a month away. But in Mexico the planet’s biggest sporting event has already spawned its first political row, ending with an own goal for the education ministry.

On May 7th Mario Delgado, the education minister, said the school year would end on June 5th rather than July 15th, cutting it by 15%. He cited extreme heat and the “issue of the World Cup”, which Mexico is co-hosting with the United States and Canada.

The backlash was immediate. Parents asked what they were supposed to do with their children while they worked. Think-tanks noted that the burden would fall disproportionately on women, who spend roughly twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work. Others wondered why a nationwide change was required when only three cities are hosting matches. Some suspected the government wanted to clear Mexico’s snarled streets. Others argued that if the heat was the problem, the government should spend money on cooling systems instead.

At first the government defended the plan. President Claudia Sheinbaum said that education authorities in all 32 states had agreed to it. Mr Delgado, not known for tact, made matters worse by suggesting that after grades are given out in June schools do little teaching and children’s time there is “dead time”.

The reversal came on May 11th. After meeting state education officials, the ministry said that classes would end on July 15th after all, but that states could request adjustments. (The governor of Jalisco, one of the states hosting World Cup games, says schools there will close only on match days.) The retreat made it look as though the ministry was freestyling one of the most basic parts of its job.

The affair is a blot on Mexico’s education system, which has several serious problems. Teachers’ unions were not responsible for this fiasco, but education policy in Mexico is rarely just about the children, because the unions wield unusual power. For decades the SNTE, the main teachers’ union, had a major role in deciding who entered the profession, where teachers were posted and how they were promoted. A reform in 2013 tried to return control to the government through evaluations and centralised payrolls. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Ms Sheinbaum’s predecessor, reversed it.

He made matters worse in other ways too. During the covid-19 pandemic his government kept schools shut for longer than almost any other country, even while bars and restaurants re-opened. That hurt already poor results. In the 2022 round of PISA, an assessment across the OECD, a club mainly of rich countries, only 34% of Mexican 15-year-olds reached basic proficiency in maths, half the OECD average of 69%. Then, in 2023, Mr López Obrador overhauled the curriculum and textbooks, introducing errors and political bias. Poor Mexicans, who depend on state schools, suffer most from the decline.

Ms Sheinbaum says she wants to improve education. But her government’s preference, as revealed by the World Cup fiasco, seems to show little real concern. Instead of cutting teaching time, it should be running summer schools and extra classes to help children catch up. Mexico cannot afford to treat school like a football. ■