Overview
- The Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) identified 26 institutions that used “militarized” models and ordered them to fully change their curriculum, organization and name before the 2026–2027 school year or face closure.
- The directive follows forensic and prosecutorial findings in the death of Dafne Zapata at the Academia Militarizada Marina Doenitz, for which the Tamaulipas authorities closed the academy and have detained three people.
- The SEP told state education offices to review RVOE authorizations, suspend activities where rules are breached, start closure procedures when schools refuse to transform, and require return of student records and reimbursements when services were not provided.
- Implementation is uneven: Nuevo León says its preparatory program will keep operating while it addresses SEP technical requests, Jalisco’s prosecutor has several open investigations into a Sayula academy, and other states are negotiating staged transformations.
- Parents’ groups urge targeted enforcement to avoid blanket shutdowns that would remove local schooling options, while the shift raises questions about municipal licences, state RVOE authority and how students will be kept in school during transitions.