| BEING YOUNG AND WILLING TO GO TO PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE CITY OF MEXICO 
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| The case of human rights violations in the Examen Único (Formal request to Amnesty International, in March 2004) |
| Karina Galvez, a sociable young woman of 15 years of age and a good student read the newspaper that morning of the first of August 2003, and she was completely overwhelmed. She saw that she had been assigned to a vocational track education, that made much harder to latter on continue to higher education. The comforting words from her boy friend, mother and sisters, who had quickly gathered in the living room, did little to console her. She made some petty excuse, went upstairs, closed the door to her parent’s room and killed herself with his father’s gun. A few days later, another young woman, Elizabeth, although in a different admission process, did the same thing but this time she used an overdose of barbiturates. The message she left behind stated that once she had been rejected again to enter the Normal School she did not want to further burden the family finances with the cost of tuition for a private school. Mexico City’s reaction to these suicides was one of shock and confusion Although there had been massive protests involving thousands of parents, students and teachers’ unions in the preceding years against a new test and procedure to assign young women and men to a particular school, this was the first a suicide had occurred. Local and federal authorities, including the country’s Secretary of Public Education (SEP for its initials in Spanish) tried to minimize the deaths. The head of the private agency that manufactured and applied the test in question, remarked these two students were simply “sick young women”. But Karina was only one of the quarter of a million 15 year olds who every year since 1996, having finished grade 9th, have had to endure a completely different way to continue to study in public education. Instead of applying -as had always been- to the particular school (or schools) that they were interested in, the students now have to participate in a regional ‘contest’ (‘Concurso’ para el Ingreso a la Educación Media Superior) involving hundreds of schools. This massive Concurso is organized by the nine public institutions that serve the region and their 282 schools[1]. It is the Comisión Metropolitana de Instituciones Públicas de Educación Media Superior (COMIPEMS), and for this task they hire a private agency, Centro Nacional de Evaluación de la Educación Superior, A.C. (CENEVAL). 
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| The context |
| This change in educational access was far from being only logistical. It was the most convenient way the Secretariat of Public Education had found to solve a particular problem in the greater area of the City of Mexico: how to relieve pressure on the better and most demanded schools (those of the National University and the Politechnical Institute) and, most importantly, how to fill up schools of lower quality and technical (vocational) schools that were half empty. These schools were shunned by students for very good reasons. They tend to be very authoritarian, have an extremely high rate of drop out, their graduates have little acceptance in the labor market, and, most importantly, substantially diminish the chances of continuing to higher education. The planners of the Secretariat (SEP), under the direction of a former Undersecretary of Higher Education who was now (1996) the director of the private agency that sell the exam, came up with this mechanism that could assign students to technical schools, even though they actually preferred and expected to go to the general schools that lead into college education. The Concurso, also called Examen Único (One test) was presented as a way of facilitating access to this educational level by using one single test to enter any one of the schools. The trick was, however, that applicants had to list up to 21 schools in descending order of preference, which was something that could not be done without including technical schools[2]. Using the test score and the applicant’s list of 21 schools, students were then centrally assigned to different schools by a computer. In concrete terms this meant that of the 150 thousand applicants who want to enter the schools of the National University or the Politechnical Institute (which in total only have 51 thousand places available), almost 100 thousand were assigned to technical schools to study automecanics or some other trade (the case of Karina), or to general schools not associated with a higher education institution. What for the planners was a dream was for the students a nightmare[3]. It became clear the first year, for example that more than merit (the score attained on the test) a good guess and plain luck played a decisive role in obtaining access to the desired school. That is, if many place school “A” within the University as first priority on the list, it had the effect of automatically ‘rising’ the score needed to enter that school, say to 93 (out of 128) correct answers, but other less demanded schools, “B” and “C”, of the same National University would be assigned students having as low as 67 correct answers. This meant something very frustrating for the young women and men: that even if they get a relatively high score, like 90, they were sent to a technical school, basically because they have applied to school “A” and not to school “B” or “C”. They felt that they have been tricked and wee often overwhelmingly frustrated they saw as completely unfair and against any academic logic. 
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| Violations to human rights |
| Beyond what can transpire from this context, the chapters of teachers unions, faculty and clerical university unions that constitute the Mexican chapter of the Trinational Coalition in Defense of Public Education[4] would like to call your attention the following specific instances of violation to basic human rights regarding something as basic as the access to public education: 1) The organizers of the Examen Único have established and maintained every year since 1997 that those applicants who do not reach a certain score (31) will be excluded from public education. That is, they will not be assigned to any school, not even to an empty technical school, in the whole region (including Mexico City and the neighboring counties of the State of Mexico). As a consequence, thousands of 15 year olds who have already received the official diploma of satisfactory completion of previous studies, issued by the federal authority (Secretaría de Educación Pública, SEP), are denied the right to enter any public school, although with the same diploma, they would be readily admitted to a private school[5]. This means that the Examen Único overrides both the evaluation performed during the years of schooling and the certification issued by the Federal authorities. It also overrides the authority of the States involved who were not even consulted about the implementing of this mechanism. Denying the access to education under these conditions is not only against the Charter for Human Rights of the United Nations, but also against the general principles stated in the Mexican constitution “that every individual has the right to receive education” and also against the more specific criteria set by the Mexican -federal- Ley General de Educación. This law establishes that “all those living in the country should have the same opportunities to access the national educational system, as long as they comply with the requirements established by the general applicable regulations.”(Art. 2nd.) Those who are denied access to a public school in the region of Mexico City do not have the same opportunities as those who have the money to pay a private school in the same City of Mexico. And criteria set by the Examen Único are by no means part of the generally applicable regulations existing in the country. 2) As mentioned above, the Examen Único includes the unusually harsh practice of coercibly assigning around 100 thousand to enter schools -especially technical- that objectively places them in a disadvantageous social and educational position. This is something that clearly conspires against the right to “equal opportunity in the access to the educational system” (Art.2nd. Ley General de Educación), because their chances of later entering higher education are substantially diminished[6]. Obviously, many of those 100 thousand students assigned to other schools are as able as the 51 thousand admitted to university track schools. The Examen Único forces students to accept an undeserved social fate even from the point of view of the more strict merit logic. 3) The exclusion of thousands from public education as well as the assignment of tens of thousands to unwanted schools is solely based on the results of a single 128 multiple choice test. The test is taken by a quarter of a million of students in two days, in three hours crowded shifts starting early in the morning, and as many are tested inside, many more nervously wait outside with their families gathering around, giving them anxiety-ridden words of support (“don’t fail us”). Even for less stressful environments, organizations such as the College Board and the American Psychological Association have explicitly warned about using the results of a single test to take decisions that affect the life of the individuals[7], especially when serious deficiencies have been found in the test, such as items that are blatantly wrong or extremely confusing[8]. 4) Furthermore, tests such as the one used by the Examen Único have proven to be consistently biased against those coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, poor neighborhoods, public schools and for women. Thus, not only there are not enough places in public higher education, but also accessing it becomes more difficult. According to the official data provided by the CENEVAL, students from the affluent Benito Juárez District in Mexico City, for example, have an average score equivalent to 1041 points, while those from semi rural neighborhoods such as Tláhuac have 986. However, a difference as low as 15-25 points in this scale may result on the student being assigned to a technical school[9]. This type of test, especially if used in a context -like Mexico’s- of drastic social contrasts, to determine the destiny of hundreds of thousands, becomes clearly discriminatory. It certainly does not fulfill the criteria set by federal law to regulate access to education: “The education authorities -says the law- will take measures that favor the establishment of conditions that allow every individual to fully exercise the right to education…, as well as to achieve an equal opportunity to access and to remain in school. Such initiatives -continues the law- should be preferably aimed at groups… that face disadvantageous economic or social conditions” (Article 32, Ley General de Educación). Clearly such measures are not being taken in this case. 5) The Examen Único has had a very strong social and human impact, suicide only its latest and more alarming manifestation. Since the starts of this procedure, close to 30 thousand students have been excluded from public education and more than 800 thousand have been sent to schools not really of their choice. As a result, in the 8 years of the Examen Único the number of drop outs at this Middle Higher level has increased significantly in the City. Before the test, the average drop out was 17.8 per cent a year. But once started, it has climbed to 24.4 per cent. This means that close to 100 thousand drop out of school every year. Barring students altogether from public education or coercing them to study auto mechanics when they are very capable to go to university track education are practices that contribute to a heighten tone of anxiety and frustration[10]. The suicides are the strongest possible indication that such tone has already reached alarming levels. We are afraid that, like it has happened in other countries, once the path has been opened more deaths will occur in the following years if the Examen Único is to continue[11]. 6) All channels and legal recourses are close to students, parents and other interested parties, who have complains about this procedure. That is, they have been deprived of any effective recourse to have the protection of the law or of the authorities in charge of upholding the law. When federal and local authorities are presented with the above facts and violations to the law, they respond by saying that they have no responsibility regarding this mechanism, ignore the complaints or, to go to the extreme of the irony, they direct those who complain about the Examen Único to present their complains to its organizers themselves. This is like saying that he who decides whether the law has been broken is the same one accused of violating it. Not surprisingly, the organizers -that is the authorities of the institutions participating in the Examen Único- have never found themselves to be at fault. In spite of the data, their own incriminating documents[12], the arguments of a legal and social nature, and the suicides, they have never accepted that there could be anything wrong. Deferring the problem to the organizers, however, it is something that also violates the law, since local and federal authorities are the ones that are legally bound “to concurrently… oversee that this law is upheld…” (Art. 14 Ley General de Educación)[13]. And this includes, as mentioned before, seeing the “establishment of conditions that allow every individual to fully exercise the right to education…, as well as to achieve an equal opportunity to access and to remain in school” (Art. 32th, Ley General de Educación). The authorities maintain their position stating that nothing is wrong, in spite the fact that neither the existence of the Examen Único nor its criteria is backed by any “general regulation” -as the law requires if the general right to education is to be limited or conditioned- since no norm, decree, or any other legal form whatsoever, has been issued to sustain its legality, not even a memorandum from the educational authority. Additionally, access to the benefit of the law has also been closed by the judiciary system (judges have not responded favorably to the legal recourses presented by parents and students), and also by the public National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, established by law by the Congress). This Commission has rejected three fully documented complaints presented by the Coalition. One claim, for example, included several sets of data that showed how women again and again appeared in a second place when the test of the private agency, CENEVAL, was used. For example, women appeared to be equal or slightly superior to men only in two of the 32 states of the country when the test for Middle Higher education was used. The National Commission’ answer to this and to pages and pages of significant data was to say that human right violations could not possibly happen since the honesty of the CENEVAL was guaranteed: “there are no violations… to human rights of young women with the use of the CENEVAL tests… because in the making and application of those tests there is the intervention of qualified representatives of public institutions… something that guarantees the transparency and honesty of CENEVAL and its tests.” (Oficio 30383, 29 Sept.1999, Expediente 99/1541-1, p.7, in response to our complain of March 8, 1999). Perhaps one important element in this whole matter is the fact that CENEVAL, although formally a non-for profit organization, was founded and is conducted by a board of associates presided ex-officio by the federal Secretary of Education, together with other Undersecretaries. In Mexican political culture, this not only sends a strong message to public institutions to hire the services of CENEVAL -which accounts for its present prosperity- but also to insure a very friendly treatment when any complains arise. This is also something that explains the reluctance of the Secretariat in intervening in the case of the Examen Único[14]. The only favorable answer from the legal and human rights circuit has come from the public local Human Right Commission of the Federal District[15]. In response to a complaint by the Coalition, in May 2001 the Commission sent a letter to the local government asking it to intervene given that the educational law of the City provided that the local authorities “may analyze together with the public higher education institutions…, the problems of this educational level in order to offer solutions that respond to the needs of the City of Mexico and that respond to the principles of equality, equity in the access to higher education…” (Art. 75, Ley de Educación del Distrito Federal). However, when faced with the reluctance of both the Federal and Local governments, this turned out to be of little help: the local government sent a letter to the federal Secretariat of Education asking them to begin talks about the matter, the Secretariat took a year to respond (only to say that it was sending the letter to the consideration of another office), the local government never really insisted in that whole year and now says it has done its part. 
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| Conclusion and formal request |
| In the overall context of numerous and serious violations of basic principles of human rights in the access to education and to its own federal and local law that guarantees such rights, and in a context where there is no hope that claims will be given the basic consideration they deserve in a State based on the rule of law and respect for citizens, we ask Amnesty International to intervene and fully consider the matter hereby presented. We submit to the consideration of Amnesty International the importance of a resolution from you that asks the Mexican Federal and Local Government of the City of Mexico to act promptly, decisively and according to the law and suspend the application of the Examen Único and to appoint a special independent and plural commission to study the situation of this educational level in the greater Mexico City area. This commission would have the task of making the necessary recommendations to local and federal authorities to better insure the compliance with human rights, the law regarding access to education and, as stated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights the progressively generalization of higher education. |
| Trinational Coalition for the Defense of Public Education, Mexican chapter |
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