As part of the budgetary cuts for 2015, the federal government removed the Safe School Program created by former Mexico administration in 2007.
The Safe School Program included the revision of child and teen schoolbags in search of guns and drugs, instead it was replaced by the National Program for School Coexistence, which aimed to reduce levels of bullying in schools by promoting a culture of peace, values and respect among the academic community.
The removal of the Safe Schoolbags feature of the previous program was justified by the current administration by establishing that the revision was not of an educational nature and “it did not correspond to the policies promoted by the Deputy Direction of Basic Education”.
The agency also stopped circulation of the School Security Manual, printed for the first time in 2011, when Ángel Córdova Villalobos led the Ministry of Education.
The manual detailed how should educators react in the event a student carries a gun to school and threatens its classmates: “Evaluate the risk. This increases if the student has showed violent behavior, has tried to commit suicide, has threatened people in the academic community, if he is a witness of any type of violence, including domestic, in addition to other conditions. If these were the cases, reach parents first. Despite having signs or evidence that the weapon belongs to him or that he is taking part in any type of criminal activity, talk to parents first. If the child is attending a school it is very likely that his parents want a better future for him”.
The revision of schoolbags, provided that parent’s granted permission, was also recommended in compliance with the observations of the Attorney General’s Office and the Human Rights Commission.
In the light of the recent school shooting in Monterrey, Juan Martín Pérez García, from the Network of Mexican Infancy Rights (REDIM) said that the National Program for School Coexistence is obsolete when it comes to prevent violence in schools as its planning process did not consider children’s opinions and holds families and students accountable for violence without considering Mexico’s violent context.
For his part, the Deputy Director of Mexicans First, Juan Alfonso Mejía, considers that all schools should be taking measures “as everyone should reflect on the false distance between the public and the private educational systems”.