Mexico’s 4T Education Policy Under Scrutiny as PISA Becomes a “Trial by Fire” for the Nueva Escuela Mexicana

Mexico’s Nueva Escuela Mexicana is approaching what specialists describe as a “trial by fire”: the release of the 2025 PISA results on September 8. The assessment will offer an important test of an education model introduced during the governments of the so-called Fourth Transformation, known as the 4T.

Mexico stopped applying standardized national assessments at the start of those governments. Although the Nueva Escuela Mexicana began in the 2022-2023 school year and has undergone diagnostic evaluations during its first three years, the country does not have a comparable national series showing how student learning has evolved.

The previous PISA results provide a difficult starting point. In 2022, just 34% of Mexican 15-year-olds reached at least the basic level in mathematics. The figures were 53% in reading and 49% in science. Mexican students scored 395 points in mathematics, 415 in reading and 410 in science, below OECD averages of 472, 476 and 485, respectively.

The results showed that two out of three Mexican students could not mathematically represent a simple situation, such as comparing the total distance of two routes or converting prices between currencies. Nearly half did not adequately understand a moderately difficult text, and about half could not use basic scientific knowledge to interpret simple situations.

Carlos Mancera, a former official at the Public Education Secretariat, said PISA does not measure everything an education system does or all its aims. But he argued that it does assess fundamental learning in reading, mathematics and science, skills that should form part of any educational philosophy. “PISA should be judged only by what it measures, and once again, fundamental learning in language, mathematics and science corresponds to the Nueva Escuela, or should correspond to the Nueva Escuela Mexicana, and to any other educational philosophy. Comprehensive education, however it is defined, cannot be achieved without fundamental learning,” he said.

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PISA should be judged only by what it measures, and once again, fundamental learning in language, mathematics and science corresponds to the Nueva Escuela, or should correspond to the Nueva Escuela Mexicana, and to any other educational philosophy. Comprehensive education, however it is defined, cannot be achieved without fundamental learning.