Education in Mexico was, until the early twentieth century, largely confined to males from urban and wealthy segments and under the auspices of the Catholic Church.

Education standards are set by this Ministry at all levels except in "autonomous" universities chartered by the government (e.g., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México).

The term "High School"[8] usually corresponds to preparatoria or bachillerato, and follows "secundaria" comprising grades 10–12, when the student's age is 15 to 18 years old.

The term preparatoria is most commonly used for institutions that offer a three-year education program that "prepares" the student with general knowledge to continue studying at a university.

In contrast, the term bachillerato is most often used for institutions that provide vocational training, in two or three years, so the graduate can get a job as a skilled worker, for example, an assistant accountant, a bilingual secretary or a technician.

[16] Finally, training for new teachers doesn't provide them enough experience with special needs students, making the shift to educational integration difficult.

However, teachers with more hours of training, more teaching experience, and better knowledge of policies had higher levels of confidence in working with students with disabilities.

[24][25] Undergraduate studies normally last at least 4 years, divided into semesters or quarters, depending on the college or university, and lead to a bachelor's degree (Licenciatura).

"Educating the native population was a crucial justification of the colonizing enterprise, and that criollo (Spanish American) culture was encouraged as a vehicle for integrating" the indigenous.

[31] Fray Pedro de Gante established schools for indigenous in the immediate post-conquest years and produced pictorial texts to teach Catholic doctrine.

In 1536, the Franciscans and the Spanish crown established a school to train an indigenous Catholic priesthood, the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, which was deemed a failure in its goal of training priests, but did create a small cohort of indigenous men who were literate in their native language of Nahuatl, as well as Spanish and Latin.

The Franciscans also founded the school of San José de los Naturales in Mexico City, which taught trades and crafts to boys.

Religious orders, particularly the Franciscans, taught indigenous scribes in central Mexico to be literate in their own languages, allowing the creation of documents at the local level for colonial officials and communities to enable crown administration as well as production of last will and testaments, petitions to the crown, bills of sale, censuses and other types of legal record to be produced at the local level.

[36] The Jesuits arrived in Mexico in 1571 and rapidly founded schools and colegios, and sought to confer degrees; however, the Council of the Indies, the royal entity overseeing the Spanish overseas empire, decided against them.

[43] Barreda was a follower of French intellectual Auguste Comte who established positivism the dominant philosophical school in the late nineteenth century.

[44] The Juárez government created a system of secondary education, and a key institution was the National Preparatory School (Escuela Nacional Preparatoria), founded in 1868 in Mexico City, which Barreda directed.

[43] Education at the Preparatoria was uniform for all students and "designed to fill what José Díaz Covarrubias identified as the traditional void between primary and professional training.

Those overseeing schools sought to instill the virtues of punctuality, thrift, valuable work habits, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco use, and gambling, along with creating a literate population.

"Porfirian schools were more important in their production of middle-class talent for the post-revolutionary educational and cultural efforts than they were in transforming popular behavior and illiteracy.

He established the secular, state-controlled Universidad Nacional de México; The Pontifical University of Mexico under religious authority was suppressed in 1865.

An early program was the formation of "Missionaries of Indigenous Culture and Public Education," which had the aim of imparting a secular worldview emphasizing "community development, modernization, and incorporation into the mestizo mainstream.

Public school teachers saw themselves "as part of a mystical crusade for the nation, modernity, and social justice," but SEP personnel often held campesinos and rural culture in contempt.

The aim of socialist education was to create a "useful and efficient worker capable of assuming leadership of the national economy, employing methods of modern science with a profound consciousness of collective responsibility ... an indispensable precondition for the coming of a state in the hands of the working classes.

With the presidency of Luis Echeverría (1970–1976), the expansion included the use of telenovelas (soap operas) to shape public understandings, and Mexico became a pioneer in the use of this medium for policy matters.

With Catholic Church opposition to birth control, the secular format of telenovela were a means to bring a message of the benefits of family planning to women.

[60][61] President José López Portillo (1976–1982) created a National Literacy Program (Pronalf) in 1980 and then established an independent institute for adult education (Instituto Nacional de Educación para Adultos INEA).

In 1992, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who became president in the disputed 1988 elections, instituted changes in the organization of Mexico's educational system.

[65] The SNTE grew to be the largest labor union in Latin America, and its head, Elba Esther Gordillo considered the most powerful woman in Mexican politics.

In 2012, some teachers from rural areas, specifically, from Michoacan and Guerrero states, opposed federal regulations that prevented them from automatic lifetime tenure, the ability to sell or will their jobs, and the teaching of either English or computer skills.

IPADE and EGADE, the business schools of Universidad Panamericana and of Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education respectively, were ranked in the top 10 in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal among recruiters outside the United States.