Amid an ongoing dispute over the suitability of the federal government’s free textbooks, just over 24 million educación básica (primary and secondary school) students returned to classes Monday, August 26 for Mexico’s 2023-24 academic year.
The official school year will consist of 190 days of classes, with two vacation periods at Christmas and Easter, and end on July 16, 2024.
According to Education Ministry data, 1,223,387 teachers will instruct children and adolescents in 229,000 public and private schools.
A handful of states run by opposition party governors are refusing to distribute the textbooks, which are obligatory study material in the nation’s public schools. Their main gripe is that they contain an ideological bias reflecting the left-wing leanings of the nation’s president, as well as a slew of factual and spelling errors.
Jalisco authorities also suspended the distribution of primary school books but relented this week after academics from the University of Guadalajara gave their approval to the content (see story page 5).
In Jalisco, 13,303 primary and secondary schools welcomed back 1,655,489 students and 79,799 teachers.