Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) launched on Monday, August 24, a national consultation in which more than 1.2 million basic-education teachers will define the new rules for hiring, promotion, and career advancement, as announced by Secretary Mario Delgado.
The exercise will take place school by school during the Intensive Phase of the School Technical Council (Consejo Técnico Escolar, CTE), preceding the start of the 2026-2027 school year, to which more than 23 million children and adolescents will return, according to SEP. The new framework will replace the Unit of the System for the Teaching Career (Unidad del Sistema para la Carrera de las Maestras y los Maestros, USICAMM), whose elimination was a campaign commitment of President Claudia Sheinbaum. The outcome will determine how more than one million educators are hired and promoted starting with the 2026-2027 school year. The consultation had been announced since June and will allow the new evaluation model to be built with the direct participation of teachers themselves, reported Aristegui Noticias.
Through an online diagnostic questionnaire, teachers will weigh in on the relative importance of criteria such as professional preparation, subject knowledge, seniority, and pedagogical experience, reported El Universal. The consultation also includes a national debate on mobile phone use in classrooms, a topic that will likewise be put in teachers' hands during the technical council sessions. Separately, Delgado reported that more than 20 million students receive some form of federal scholarship: 9.9 million at the primary level through the Beca Rita Cetina, 5.3 million at the secondary level, and 4.1 million at the upper-secondary level through the Beca Benito Juárez, according to SEP data. The Secretary added that the School Technical Council is the principal space for pedagogical dialogue within the education system.
The questionnaire results will feed into the new teaching career rules taking effect for the 2026-2027 school year, and the decision on classroom mobile phone use will be made with teacher participation. On September 7, basic-education schools will hold a National Awareness Day on the Severity of Sexual Abuse and Child Maltreatment.
This article was drafted with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.