Post-2000 developments

In 2000 the ruling party in power in one guise or another since 1917 ceded control to one of the two opposition groups, the Partido de Acción Nacional, an organization that aimed to represent the aspirations of the entire middle class but was divided between traditionalists and neoliberals. It is probably best to characterize the 12 years the PAN was in political control as one of modest change in a time of institutional continuity. Reforms respected the existing structure and even reinforced it. The state and its institutions remained intact, in part, because PAN militants were rewarded with posts within the system. Promises to move towards a meritocracy were never fulfilled and the system continued, albeit populated by new people.

We will discuss these reforms in depth in the following chapters. But it is important to note that the Programa 2001–6 launched by the PAN fully preserved the educational reforms of the previous PRI-led governments, although it paid lip service to the task of radically transforming traditional management practices. Whilst this was regarded as a euphemism by some for breaking the SNTE’s effective veto over much educational reform, for more immediate political reasons the PAN sought an accommodation with that organization rather than fulfilling its promise to bring the organization under its control. The leader of the SNTE worked closely with the new minister, Reyes Tamez, and was often in the company of the new president, Vicente Fox Quesada. The very narrow and disputed victory of Felipe Calderón in 2006 was, in part, secured by the SNTE that was rewarded with unheralded power within the SEP and, above all, within basic education, with the son-in-law of the SNTE leader becoming undersecretary. That crucial decision of accommodation that was to mould educational policy until 2012 was couched in terms of combining the best from the past with the promise of the future. The mechanisms long in place continued to operate and were staffed by supporters of the PAN government, many of whom had quickly changed their allegiance from PRI to PAN, and the structures remained the same, with the effect of not making the task of implementing programmes any easier.

The decentralization agenda, which comprised a belated recognition that the federal government could no longer manage the vastly expanded range of programmes and proliferation of institutions, was never properly implemented. Most state governments had neither the personnel nor an administration that could cope because there was no real research base among teachers or even in the state universities. There was little or no mobility between states and the congregation of researchers in Mexico City. There was not the political will to promote transfers of powers to the states, in part, because the central government continued to insist that it alone controlled educational programmes and also the financial arrangements. Local organizations could not cope and the SNTE feared that in certain individual states dissident trade unions could take power and use those bases to launch a national challenge.

Like previous PRI governments the PAN ministry increased the availability of grants for higher education. More importantly, it initiated a special programme to expand intercultural education through the Coordinación General de Educación Intercultural y Bilingüe (CGEIB). In 2002, they established the Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativo that over the years was to evolve into a major institution. The government also spent an inordinate amount of money taken from other basic education programmes on what amounted to the creation of an online encyclopaedia crammed with predigested knowledge called the Enciclomedia. It turned out to be the regime’s white elephant every bit as much as the PRI regimes’ equally poorly thought out and implemented programmes, such as the MICROSEP, designed to install custom-made computers in every school.