translated from Spanish: SEP promises 5,000 mdp to maintain Full-Time Schools by 2021

Education Secretary Esteban Moctezuma Barragán reported that the Full-Time Schools program will have resources to operate in 2021, after the Federation Budget project appeared with zero pesos.
During his appearance in the Glosa of the Second Presidential Report he pledged that the program will have about 5 billion pesos that will come from La Escuela es Nuestra, the program created by the current administration through which money is delivered directly to parents.
It assured that, thanks to its management before various authorities, the programme would have “the resources necessary for its continuity”.
The amount promised by the secretary of education is similar to the program’s budget in 2020, with 5 billion pesos, although that already meant a 50% cut from the previous year.
The program was created in the six-year history of Felipe Calderón and continued in the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, each year with budget increases, but from the first year of government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador began the first cut of 5% in 2019.
He said he “raised his voice about Full-Time Schools, but more important than that, it was that this call was heard to have positive results on this program.”
Indeed, evaluations of the Coneval and the Higher Audit of the Federation confirmed that students benefiting from this program, which consists of having food within the campus and extracurricular and sports activities during extended hours, have better academic results.
Moctezuma Barragán recognized that in the 14 years of operation the program adds “27 thousand schools, most of them, 70% in indigenous areas; with a population of about 3 and a half million students, and 160,000 teachers and teachers,” sep reported in a statement.
The most recent program impact assessment conducted by Coneval in 2018 analyzed the results obtained by students in the PLANEA test regarding math and language learning, and concluded that the schools integrated into the program managed to reduce the number of students in laggards.
Sixth graders in Full-Time Schools “have an average decrease of 3.1 percentage points in the percentage of students corresponding to grade I of math performance and an increase of 1.6 percentage points at level IV,” says the Coneval assessment.
And the greatest benefits are seen among the most vulnerable populations, because according to the analysis, the increase in the duration of the school day in a scheme with food service “is an effective intervention to improve educational achievement and the level of learning, primarily, among primary school students in high-marginalization locations”.
This is because the program’s own design “presupposes a causal mechanism that links vulnerable populations or social risk contexts with the need for more instructional and feeding time as the means to increase their level of educational achievement.”
Leaving this program without resources will mean that one million children and adolescents would stop receiving food on their campuses, and 534 thousand no longer had extracurricular classes and artistic or sports activities during extended hours, the central objectives of the program.
During the arraignment, Moctezuma Barragán also said that “efforts were made to ensure that next year there are sufficient resources for normal schools, because “if we do not have robust Normal training, we will not have a robust public education”, although it did not specify how much.
This is because according to the draft Budget, the Magisterium will be one of the sectors affected by next year’s budget cuts in education. Normal schools in the country that train new teachers will receive 95% less budget, while the training program for active teachers will have 45% fewer resources in real terms.
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Original source in Spanish