Mexico's Sectoral Program of Education 2020: An analysis of causality and internal consistency

Abstract

Mexico's Sectorial Program of Education is a public policy instrument that expresses, in the form of a program, the decisions in the National Development Plan that are related to the educational sector. The Program's content consists of public problems and the government's actions aimed at solving them. Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education is the entity authorized by law to elaborate and execute the Program in a six-year period. The current article discusses an analysis of Mexico's Sectorial Program of Education 2020-2024, and is based on locating causality (cause/effect logic) and internal consistency (logical/sequential correspondence) among the Program's elements. The findings reveal that the Program's diagnostic is imprecise, that the indicators and parameters do not correspond to the enunciation of priority objectives, and that a considerable number of timely actions lack goals for 2024. As a result, the effectiveness of government action is difficult to measure, opacity is favored in the use of public resources, and the rendering of accounts to citizens becomes complex. The study is part of research that analyzes the design and implementation of public policies.