MEXICO CITY, May 8 (Reuters) – Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Friday appeared to reverse an announcement by the education minister that school holidays would start more than a month earlier than planned this summer due to heat and the World Cup, saying the proposal had not yet been finalized amid outrage from parents’ associations.
“Many Mexicans love football and we are looking forward to the World Cup, so this proposal is to bring the holidays earlier, but we also have to take into account the school days for the children,” Sheinbaum told reporters at her daily morning press conference. She added that “there is no definite timetable yet” for the proposal to shorten the school calendar.
Education Minister Mario Delgado made the announcement on Thursday on the cuts to the school year, saying the National Council of Educational Authorities had made “modifications” to deal with the country’s heat wave and the hosting of the World Cup.
“It will ensure that all provisions of the curriculum are met and academic progress is maintained for all students,” Delgado wrote, without elaborating on how that would be accomplished.
Under the proposed schedule, the school year would end on June 5 instead of July 15. The school will start the new academic year on August 31, one day earlier than 2025.
“It is unacceptable to use the FIFA World Cup as an argument to shorten the school calendar. We cannot sacrifice our children’s education for a sporting event that will be held in three of the country’s 2,500 cities,” Mexico’s National Federation of Parents Associations said in a statement, adding that high temperatures were nothing new.
Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara will host a total of 13 World Cup matches in June and July. Closing schools could ease traffic and congestion in these cities as hundreds of thousands of tourists are expected to flock to the country.
Mexico’s powerful teachers union, which last week also threatened a strike during the World Cup opener, has long demanded higher wages and changes to teacher pension laws.
About 90% of Mexico’s students attend public schools and about 10% attend private schools, which are exempt from the restrictions announced by the education minister for the new calendar year, according to official data.
Mexico is currently experiencing a severe heat wave, with temperatures reaching 45 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country. But such temperatures are not uncommon and usually start to subside in June with the arrival of the rainy season.
(Reporting by Raul Cortes, Iñigo Alexander and Diego Ore; Editing by Emily Greem, Kirsten Donovan)