In response to the teacher strike that has impacted activities in Mexico City, the federal government revealed that three states have the highest number of schools without classes: Oaxaca, Zacatecas, and Chiapas.
In his morning press conference this Monday, the head of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), Mario Delgado, stated that only 9.88 percent of all public schools in the nation were on strike last week due to the actions of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE).
“More than 19 million girls, boys, and young women, 92.1 percent of all elementary school students, attended classes last week in 182,000 public schools across the country,” the official stated before President Claudia Sheinbaum.
In breaking down the report on public elementary schools in the country that were on strike last Friday, Delgado explained that in Oaxaca, 12,484 schools were closed, equivalent to 95 percent of the state’s total.
Followed by Zacatecas, 2,195 schools reported a strike, equivalent to 49.59 percent of the state’s total; while in Chiapas, 3,388 schools were on strike, 18.24 percent of the schools in that state.
Other states with reported school closures are Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, and Mexico City; in the remaining states, the secretary said, there were no closures.
Regarding salaries, he indicated that the 4T administrations have seen significant increases in teachers’ salaries.
During Vicente Fox’s administration, he said, the salary for mentors was 4,582 pesos; under Felipe Calderón, it was 6,709 pesos; and during Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, it was 9,580 pesos.
Meanwhile, under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it reached 17,635 pesos due to the increase decreed during his administration; and with the recent increase under President Sheinbaum, the official noted, the average teacher’s salary is 18,965 pesos.
“This increase is the second largest in at least the last 40 years. It represents an extraordinary effort by public finances to maintain this salary increase. It is a recognition by the president of the national teaching profession,” Delgado explained.
He insisted that the Pension Fund for Welfare provides supplements so that most teachers and other state workers can retire with the last base salary they contributed, for those earning 16,000 pesos per month or less.
This, he noted, is better than the 4,320 pesos a person who contributed 16,000 pesos per month would have received at retirement following Calderón’s 2007 reform to the ISSSTE law, which returned state workers’ pensions to individual accounts in the Afores.
Source: jornada
