Education as a competitiveness factor for Mexico

Education is definitely a strategic matter for every nation. One of its multiple impacts is on labor competitiveness, since a good educational system gives the skills, flexibility and adaptation capabilities to the working force for more complex or sophisticated processes. This analysis will be about 3 relevant aspects of education in Mexico:

Aspect 1: There are progresses, but slower than other countries

According to the Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011, World Economic Forum, Mexico kept or improved its grade on all the education related elements, but lost positions on the ranking.

On primary education, the Report evaluates quality and enrollment rate. Mexico kept its score on the first one, and improved it on the second one; however lost 5 and 2 places respectively.

	2009-2010		2010-2011
	Score	Place	Score	Place
Quality of primary education (1=poor, 7=excellent)	2.6	115	2.6	120
Primary education enrollment rate	97.6%	27	98.1%	29

Referring to higher education, the Report evaluates enrollment rate, quality, access to internet and staff training infrastructure. Mexico again improved its grade, but lost 5 places, moving from 74 to 79.

	2009-2010		2010-2011
	Score	Place	Score	Place
Higher education and training	3.86	74	3.94	79

The detail of this category is the following:

	2009-2010		2010-2011
	Score	Place	Score	Place
Secondary education enrollment rate	88.7%	64	89.9%	61
Tertiary education enrollment rate	26.9%	75	27.2%	80
Quality of the educational system (score from 1=poor to 7=excellent)	2.8	115	2.9	120
Quality of math and science education (score from 1=poor to 7=excellent)	2.6	127	2.6	128
Quality of management schools (score from 1=poor to 7=excellent)	4.4	49	4.5	52
Internet access in schools (score from 1=poor to 7=excellent)	3.4	77	3.5	89
Local availability of specialized research and training services (score from 1=poor to 7=excellent)	4.2	53	4.3	55
Extent of staff training (score from 1=poor to 7=excellent)	3.8	78	3.8	84

As another reference, OECD applies every 3 years an evaluation to 15 year-old students on OECD’s 34 countries and 31 partner countries, called the PISA Program, to evaluate skills on reading, math and science, as elements that help to understand the performance skills required for the working life. Although Mexico has had improvements in the last 6 years, it is still the last place between OECD countries and ranks between places 48 to 51 on the total ranking.

Scores	Reading	Math	Science
2003	400	386	405
2006	410	406	410
2009	425	419	416

Aspect 2: there are mix results within Latinamerica

The World Economic Forum Report includes 23 Latinamerican countries. Among them, Mexico is on the half of the ranking.

	Place
Quality of primary education	14
Primary education enrollment rate	5
Higher education and training	12

However, according to PISA, out of 9 Latinamerican countries Mexico is on 3^rd place (behind Chile and Uruguay).

Aspect 3: there are important polarizations in the country.

There is in Mexico a national evaluation made by the Ministry of Education, applied to almost 85,000 elementary schools, about 30,000 junior high-schools, and a little more than 10,000 high-schools. On its most recent evaluation, there are big differences under 2 variables:

1.       Marginalization level of the community where the school is. The evaluation distinguishes between low or extremely low marginalization, and high or extremely high. The results are better for schools located on low or extremely low marginalization. About 74% of the enrollment lives on this kind of communities.

2.       Type of school: the difference between private and public schools is a lot more important than the influence of marginalization level. Certainly there is a correlation between these two variables (there are no private schools in high or extremely high marginalization areas); however, there are important differences between private and public schools in the same kind of area. Approximately the 8% of the total enrollment goes to private schools.

	Percentage of students with “Excellent” level, last year of elementary school.
	Spanish	Math	History
Total	2.4%	3.8%	1.8%
Low/Extremely low marginality	4.4%	5.9%	2.8%
High/Extremely high marginality	0.6%	1.8%	0.8%
Private schools	12.2%	10.5%	6.1%
Public schools	1.5%	3.2%	1.4%

	Percentage of students with “Excellent” level, last year of junio high-school.
	Spanish	Math	History
Total	0.5%	2.3%	5.5%
Low/Extremely low marginality	0.9%	2.4%	6.5%
High/Extremely high marginality	0.1%	2.1%	4.4%
Private schools	2.8%	5.1%	14.3%
Public schools	0.2%	1.9%	4.3%

It is important to have national and international evaluations that allow the identification of improvements and opportunities. Undoubtedly, Mexico requires of bigger and faster improvements to be more competitive in the world scenario.

Tourism in Mexico in an uptrend

Tourism private organizations estimate that Mexico received 22.5 million foreign tourists in 2010. This represents a 4.6% improvement against 2009, and places the country near its peak in 2008 (22.6 million tourists).

These figures appear to be against the common assumption that insecurity is affecting this important economic activity for the country (according to the Ministry of Tourism, it holds for 7.5 million employments). What statistics show is that the effect of insecurity reflects on the destinations chosen by foreign visits. The 12 main destinations for foreign tourists according to hotel occupancy concentrate more of the national share this year (from 48% in 2009 to 50% in 2010).

More good news are that foreign tourists increased their per capita spending, being $450.80 USD, 2.5% more than last year.

Regarding local tourism, there are no precise figures of its volume. Some estimates are that it is around 5 to 7 times bigger than foreign tourists. Except for Mexico City, their main destinations are clearly different (Acapulco and Guadalajara for local tourism, and Cancun and Mayan Riviera for foreign tourists). Insecurity may appear to have the same effect, not to diminish local tourism, but to change its destinations. For example, Monterrey’s hotel occupancy dropped down 12% on 2010, and some estimates are that North and Northeast had a 30% decrease on its occupancy.

For 2011 there are positive perspectives, with big differences between private and public estimates.

	Millions of foreign tourists	Millions of USD
Touristic national confederation	22.6	$12,600
Ministry of Tourism	26	$15,500

It will be important to keep an eye on how the mix of destinations may change due to insecurity, and consider how the Panamerican Games in Guadalajara may influence this activity; however, it seems that tourism will finally recover the levels of 2008.