Low earning teachers are set for a 7.5% pay hike, the education minister confirmed on Sunday at an event to mark Teachers’ Day.
The raise will affect teachers who earn less than 20,000 pesos (almost US $1,000) per month.
Delfina Gómez said that 25 billion pesos (almost US $1.25 billion) would be spent on the wage increase to bring the average monthly salary up to 14,300 pesos (US $715).
Finance Minister Rogelio Ramírez de la O told the president’s morning news conference on Monday that there were 957,000 teachers in the low wage bracket who would receive a raise, 49,000 of whom earn less than 12,000 pesos.
At Sunday’s event the president also promised to revise teachers’ pensions after the leader of the SNTE public school teachers’ union complained that educators’ pension plans were unrewarding compared to workers with pensions from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS). The president also said the government would continue to provide scholarships for students from low-income households.
López Obrador added that he wanted education to be focused on ethics. “We do not want inventors of atomic bombs, we want creators of fraternity. Teachers who teach students to be good citizens … who will practice the love of their neighbor,” he said.
The president said that information in textbooks should be subject to humanistic principles. “In all the books, even if they are natural sciences, there should be a common stem dedicated to humanism, to the social sciences. First we must form ourselves as good human beings, as good citizens and then as good scientists … and not abandon our humanism,” he said.
With reports from El Universal
