▲ The President (center) was at CBTIS 304, to be inaugurated in February.Photo Presidency
Emir Olivares Alonso
Sent
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, December 21, 2025, p. 5
El Marqués, Qro., Having eliminated the high school entrance exam in the Valley of Mexico caused 95 percent of applicants to enter one of their first three options, said President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.
Highlighting the obligation of the Mexican State to provide more opportunities so that any young person of age to attend that level of studies can do so, he stressed that the objective in his six-year term is to expand enrollment by 150 thousand additional spaces,
“And if more are needed, (there will be) more, because what we want is for young people to go to school.” For this reason, he proposed that around twenty new schools will be built and others will be rehabilitated in order to meet the goal.
At the headquarters of the new CBTIS 304 “El Marqués” – which will be completed on December 27 and will be inaugurated next February – the president highlighted that in order to enter high school, for years the single exam of the Metropolitan Commission of Public Institutions of Higher Secondary Education (Comipems) was carried out, with which young people were excluded from their first options.
In that sense, he highlighted that since his administration agreed to eradicate this process, the reality today is different, which is why he questioned the voices that criticize the fact that the entrance contest has been eliminated.
“In the Valley of Mexico there was an exam called the Comipens and, depending on your grade, you entered one or another high school. Well, there is no longer one, and now they simply register on a platform and, according to the location of the school and the interest of each student, they go to that high school.”
He pointed out that with the entrance contest there were young people who were admitted in their option 30; Now, 95 percent stay with their first options. “It is a falsehood that the general admission exam generates better students,” he said before Governor Mauricio Kuri and federal officials.
In front of dozens of students from this new campus – who began activities last August for the 2025-2026 school year and are awaiting the opening of the Cbtis – the president urged them: “Study, commit to studying and, above all, to your family, to your neighbors, to nature and to the country.”
Sheimbaum Pardo led the assembly in which the students were given the corresponding card to receive the Benito Juárez universal scholarship, with which they will be supported with 1,900 pesos every two months.
The head of the Ministry of Public Education, Mario Delgado, said that in this government 18 new high school schools are being built in the country, 25 existing ones will be expanded and in 35 high schools where the afternoon shift is not taught, in the afternoon they will become spaces for high school.
He highlighted that a scholarship is currently provided to 4 million public high school students, in addition to 5.6 million high school students receiving the new Rita Cetina scholarship, and starting in 2026 this support will be extended to all public primary school children.
For his part, the head of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation, Jesús Esteva, explained that the new CBTIS 304 had an investment of 49.2 million pesos and 18 million for equipment.
The work will be completed on December 27 to start work in February of the following year (even though it was expected to be ready at the end of 2025). It will have capacity for 540 students per shift.
