El derecho a la educación y su incumplimiento. Un análisis de la interrupción de trayectorias escolares en el sistema educativo mexicano

Abstract

Although the Mexican legislation stipulates that education is a right for all people, the full exercise of this right has not been completely fulfilled in the Mexican education system. An example of this is the large number of people who do not complete compulsory education. Consequently, the main purpose of this research is to investigate reasons for the interruption of educational trajectories of people at typical ages of attending upper secondary and higher education in the recent years. The framework adopted by this study is the human right to education. The methodology is quantitative; descriptive statistics are used for data analysis and the source of information is the National Survey on Access and Permanence in Education carried out by the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and History [Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI)] in 2021. The findings of this research suggest that the interruption of school trajectories is a multicausal phenomenon, therefore, it is necessary to identify the barriers that lead each person to interrupt its studies. Nevertheless, we identified three trends when disaggregating data; (1) in upper secondary education predominates the interruption of studies due to young people’s disinterest for school, (2) in higher education the interruption of school trajectories due to economic reasons is constant and, (3) both in upper secondary education and higher education, the interruption of trajectories is greater for men than for women. To face these systemic problems we recommend rethinking educational policies, with special attention to gender issues.