Mexico curriculum

Overview

Mexico's school system is run under the national framework set by the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), the federal education ministry. Basic and upper-secondary schooling together span four stages: preescolar (preschool), primaria (primary), secundaria (lower secondary), and bachillerato, also called educación media superior (upper secondary). All four stages are compulsory under Article 3 of the Constitution, following constitutional reforms that added preescolar in 2002 and made media superior compulsory in 2012. This file covers that overall structure, the curriculum SEP sets for it (currently the Plan de Estudios 2022 under the Nueva Escuela Mexicana), and how students are assessed along the way. University entrance exams such as Ceneval's EXANI-II, which many institutions use to admit students after bachillerato, are covered in their own separate programme files and are only cross-referenced here.

Who it covers

Every child resident in Mexico is entitled to free public basic and upper-secondary education, and attendance through the end of bachillerato is compulsory under federal law. Preescolar normally starts around age 3 and runs 3 years; primaria follows for 6 years from around age 6; secundaria follows for 3 years from around age 12; and bachillerato follows for 3 years from around age 15, typically finishing around age 17 or 18. Enrolment ages and grade-entry cut-offs are set by each state's education authority working within the federal framework, so exact start ages can vary slightly by state.

Structure

Preescolar

Three years of preschool, the entry point into Mexico's compulsory education system since the 2002 constitutional reform that made Mexico one of the first countries to mandate preschool attendance. It is taught under the same Plan de Estudios 2022 framework described below, alongside primaria and secundaria.

Primaria

Six years of primary school, grades 1 through 6, built around the same Plan de Estudios 2022 curriculum. Promotion from one grade to the next is managed by the school itself through continuous, in-class assessment rather than a single pass/fail exam.

Secundaria

Three years, grades 7 through 9, completing the compulsory basic-education stage. Secundaria runs in several modalities depending on the school: secundaria general, secundaria técnica (which adds technical/vocational subjects alongside the general curriculum), and telesecundaria (distance/broadcast-based teaching used mainly in small or rural communities that lack enough students or teachers for a full in-person school). All modalities follow the same national Plan de Estudios 2022 content; they differ in how it is delivered.

Bachillerato (educación media superior)

Three years, grades 10 through 12, and the only basic/upper-secondary stage not organised under the Plan de Estudios 2022 campos-formativos model described below — media superior has its own curricular framework coordinated by SEP's Subsecretaría de Educación Media Superior. SEP recognises three main types of bachillerato:

• Bachillerato general: a general academic track intended mainly to prepare students for university study. Offered by institutions such as the Colegio de Bachilleres (Colbach) and, in Mexico City, UNAM's Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades (CCH) and Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP).

• Bachillerato tecnológico: a bivalent track that teaches the same general-education content as bachillerato general plus a technical specialty, so a graduate receives both the upper-secondary certificate and a mid-level technician qualification in one programme.

• Profesional técnico: focused on direct entry to the job market, granting an SEP-recognised technical qualification; a "profesional técnico-bachiller" variant also carries the upper-secondary certificate, keeping the university-entrance route open.

Curriculum standards

SEP sets one national curriculum for preescolar, primaria and secundaria: the Plan de Estudios 2022, which implements the government's Nueva Escuela Mexicana education policy and was formally issued through Acuerdo 14/08/22, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación. Rather than organising basic education purely by separate subjects, it groups content into four "campos formativos" (formative fields): Lenguajes; Saberes y Pensamiento Científico; Ética, Naturaleza y Sociedad; and De lo Humano y lo Comunitario. Cross-cutting themes called "ejes articuladores" (such as inclusion, health, and artistic and cultural appreciation) run through all four fields rather than being taught as stand-alone subjects. Learning is organised into six developmental "fases" that span preescolar through secundaria rather than following single grades: Fase 1 covers early/initial education, Fase 2 preescolar, Fase 3 grades 1-2 of primaria, Fase 4 grades 3-4 of primaria, Fase 5 grades 5-6 of primaria, and Fase 6 all three grades of secundaria.

Bachillerato is not part of the Plan de Estudios 2022; SEP's Subsecretaría de Educación Media Superior sets a separate curricular framework for the upper-secondary stage, within which the specific subjects and emphasis vary by bachillerato type (general, tecnológico, or profesional técnico) and by the institution or state subsystem operating the school.

Assessment approach

Day-to-day promotion through preescolar, primaria and secundaria is continuous and school-based: teachers assess students against the Plan de Estudios 2022 fases, and there is no single national exam that a student must pass to move up a grade or finish secundaria. SEP, through the Dirección General de Análisis y Diagnóstico del Aprovechamiento Educativo (DGADAE) together with Mejoredu, also runs an Evaluación Diagnóstica for basic-education students in reading and mathematics; this is a formative tool meant to help teachers plan instruction, not a pass/fail gate for the student.

Separately, Planea (Plan Nacional para la Evaluación de los Aprendizajes), first run in 2015, periodically evaluates how well students are learning at a system level: it has historically sampled students finishing 6th grade of primaria, 3rd grade of secundaria, and the final grade of media superior, measuring outcomes in Language and Communication and in Mathematics. Planea results are used to track and compare learning outcomes across schools and states; they are not used to decide an individual student's promotion or graduation.

After school

Finishing bachillerato is what completes Mexico's compulsory education and opens the route into higher education (licenciatura or ingeniería study) or directly into the workforce, depending on the bachillerato type completed. Many higher-education institutions in Mexico admit students through their own entrance process, which commonly includes a standardised exam such as Ceneval's EXANI-II alongside the institution's other requirements; the subjects, format and scoring of exams like EXANI-II are covered in their own separate programme files rather than repeated here. A profesional técnico qualification on its own is intended mainly for direct workforce entry, while profesional técnico-bachiller and both bachillerato general and bachillerato tecnológico keep the university-entrance route open.

Preparation tips

• Check which secundaria modality (general, técnica, or telesecundaria) is actually available locally, since they teach the same national content but differ in format and in the technical subjects on offer.

• Decide on a bachillerato type (general, tecnológico, or profesional técnico) with the student's next step in mind: a tecnológico or profesional técnico-bachiller path keeps both a technical qualification and university eligibility open, while plain profesional técnico is oriented toward direct workforce entry.

• Treat classroom, continuous assessment as what actually decides grade promotion in preescolar, primaria and secundaria — there is no single end-of-year exam to cram for at these stages.

• If the student is heading toward university, look up the entrance exam (for example EXANI-II) used by the specific institutions of interest well before the bachillerato's final year, since admission processes and required scores vary by institution.