Hannia Zenteno, a 25-year-old member of the Global Opportunity Youth Network, agrees that the social contexts in which a person grows up influence their access to education.
“They think that all students are perfect, that we will have money for copies, we will have money for the tickets, and at the end of the day, that is not always the case. So, many take a long time to finish their cycles or sometimes drop out because they see that the need at home is money, not studying,” she explains.
They drop out even with a scholarship
According to Ofelia Angulo, Secretary of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation of Mexico City, the scholarships have had a positive impact, because low-income families use 70% of this support to feed their children.
“And we all know that a well-fed child is better able to learn,” he stressed at the presentation of the report. Learning Evenly.
However, other experts insist that there are other reasons for dropping out of school that cannot be solved with financial support alone.
The SEP’s own Planning and Evaluation Directorate conducted a qualitative study on why some Benito Juárez Scholarship recipients drop out of school. The publication, released in February 2024, identified 201,440 third-year high school students who between 2019 and 2022 stopped receiving scholarships and did not continue their high school studies.
Teachers interviewed for that evaluation indicated that the main causes of school dropouts are lack of learning, family and financial problems, as well as the lack of opportunities once they finish their studies.
“It is a community with many economic needs and they depend on resources such as scholarships and, if they do not receive them, they have to look for them elsewhere, either by migrating,” the report states.
