Certificates without learning: Effects of automatic promotion in Mexico

Abstract

Primary school teachers face multiple challenges stemming from the public policy of automatic promotion implemented in Mexico since 2013, aimed at ensuring school access and retention. This policy has intensified preexisting difficulties and generated new ones, including declining school attendance, the devaluation of schooling and the teaching profession, and issues associated with addressing student diversity and learning gaps, understood as the mismatch between expected learning outcomes and curricular standards. Within a qualitative paradigm, analogical hermeneutics was articulated as an inductive procedure within grounded theory to analyze teachers’ perceptions in urban primary schools in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Morelos. One of the most relevant findings is the devaluation of schooling, which weakens teachers’ pedagogical authority and reconfigures interactions with families. The elimination of grade retention has reduced shared family responsibility, shifting the focus from attendance and learning toward certificate attainment. This suggests that, historically, the value attributed to teachers and schools has rested more on ensuring credentialing than on guaranteeing meaningful learning.