Third Upper Secondary Education Development Policy Loan

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Mexico is an upper middle income country with one of the highest per capita incomes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Enhancing skills through improved education quality is a core part of increasing labor force productivity, long term economic growth, shared prosperity, and alleviating poverty. The first Development Policy Loan (DPL) supported the establishment of the National Upper Secondary Education System (Sistema Nacional de Bachillerato, SNB), including the development of minimum standards for students, a student assessment system, a teacher training program, and a school accreditation system, as well as the consolidation of the Upper Secondary Education (EMS) scholarship program. The second Loan further strengthened RIEMS during an important political transition, focusing on the approval of technical programs, the operation of the student assessment and school accreditation systems, the governance of the teacher training program, and the expansion of services for youth at risk. To support this next phase of the Government's reform, this DPL will support policy actions around recognizing the equivalences necessary for transferring from school to school (irrespective of system), the establishment of an autonomous evaluation agency for the education system, a new policy for teacher training, innovations around supporting youth at risk of dropping out of school and enacting legislative changes to declare EMS mandatory. Annex one presents greater detail on the Government~^!!^s reform, in the form of its letter of development policy. Annex two presents the policy matrix and the results framework for this DPL series. The amount for the Third Upper Secondary Education Development Policy Loan Program is US$300,751,879.70.