Mexico City, Mexico — During a morning press conference, the Secretary of Public Education, Esteban Moctezuma, reported that the 2020-2021 school year in Mexico will begin on August 24 and, due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, will be remote.
The secretario de Educación Pública made the official announcement Monday, explaining that due to the pandemic, there are no sanitary conditions for students to be able to attend classes in person.”It is neither possible nor prudent,” he added.
“We all want to return to the classrooms in the company of our friends and teachers we miss, however, the risk to health and life remains high. Reality forces us to have patience and prudence or otherwise it may happen to us the same as Israel, South Korea, the United Kingdom and France, to name a few examples, who opened their schools and had to close again,” he said.
The federal government has signed an agreement with national television stations so that young students across the country have access to distance education in the face of the coronavirus contingency.
Grupo Multimedios joined the agreement with the federal government to transmit the content of the Aprende en Casa program and thus, “return to classes with a robust, official and valid scheme” that will serve 30 million students, noted the official.
Through six television channels, broad national coverage will be achieved 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and “those who do not have access to a television signal will work under the radio and textbook scheme, workbooks and special attention.”
Esteban Moctezuma says that distance classes “are not entertainment broadcasts and the classes will have curricular value.”
“It is necessary to mention that the conditions of the health emergency that caused the spread of Covid-19 still prevails throughout the country, which implies continuing with social distancing measures,” said the government in a recent notice.
The Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, stated a week ago that when analyzing the course of the pandemic throughout the country, “it will definitely not be possible to return to school in August.”