Secondary education is a bottleneck in Brazil — a global problem

• Written by Mario Osava (rio de janeiro)
• Monday, April 15, 2024
• interpress service

Her public school in central Rio de Janeiro has more than 500 students and highlights the state of public education in Brazil, including low teacher pay and resulting poor attendance, unstable infrastructure and other problems. I have to.

According to a widely agreed assessment among experts, the biggest bottleneck in Brazilian education lies precisely in secondary education, the last three years of high school after the ninth grade. The first nine years are for students up to the age of 14, and the last three years are for students between the ages of 15 and 17.

Since March 27, the Senate has been debating reforms to the new Secondary Education Act, which came into force just two years ago. The government, which has been in power since January 2023, has proposed amendments, the main points of which have already been approved by the House of Commons.

Brazil is therefore trying to overcome the educational deficiencies that have placed it at the bottom of comparative assessments such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which examines 81 countries.

Under the new reform, the number of hours devoted to compulsory subjects such as mathematics, natural sciences, humanities, Portuguese, English and Spanish will increase from 1,800 to 2,400 hours during the three years of high school.

It also stipulates that full-time education will be extended to at least seven hours a day, and that the same extension will apply to technical colleges.

In full-time primary and secondary schools, students attend school for at least seven hours a day, attending regular classes in the morning and extracurricular activities such as technical courses, sports, and specialized subjects in the afternoon. Or vice versa.

In addition, the school provides two or three meals, and in some cases, you can even take a shower there. This is attractive to students from low-income families in countries characterized by high social inequality.

Still, the opportunities are not the same for everyone, as the nine years of public basic education are the province of local governments, secondary education is run by state governments, and university education is the responsibility of the central government.

The new reforms now depend on Senate ratification.

In secondary education, an additional 600 hours are allocated for elective subjects, depending on the student's interests, and may be extended further for technical courses.

This flexibility currently applies up to 1,200 hours, but many education centers do not have adequate controls in place. Alice, a student who preferred to use a fictitious name, complained that the extra time was being used to teach regular subjects and without any specific purpose.

“One teacher spent a long time explaining what the colors of the national flag symbolized,” she told IPS.

Reduce dropout rate

The government also created the “Pe de Meia” program, which in Brazilian terms means savings. The scheme gives a high school student whose family is poor and is registered on the government's Uniform Social Assistance Register an annual stipend of 2,000 reais ($400) divided over her 10 months. To receive this, you must demonstrate at least 80% school attendance.

The aim is to curb the dropout rate, which is higher in secondary education than in primary and junior high schools.

According to the school census released by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on April 2, the number of students who dropped out of school in 2023 reached a total of 480,000.

According to 2023 data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in this country of 203 million people, 9 million adolescents and young adults between the ages of 15 and 29 are out of school and have not completed high school. I haven't even graduated.

Savings programs may seem like small amounts of money, but they are important “as a complement” for young people, who typically work in informal jobs, and from low-income families who benefit from social programs, said the Education Policy Coordinator. Natalia Fregonesi said. Non-governmental organization Todos pela Educação (Everyone for Education).

IBGE's annual survey shows that the main reason for dropping out of school is the need to find a job, accounting for 47.1% of young people aged 15 to 29. The index for men is 53.4%, and the index for girls and women is 25.5%, and the difference is significant. Pregnancy is the second leading cause of dropouts for girls and women, accounting for 23.1 of all young female dropouts.

Among men and women, lack of interest in studying was second at 25.5%.

more time at school

“Statistics present a difficult scenario in which many students are falling behind due to failing or dropping out of school. In addition to the “Pe de Meia'' program and other measures, appropriate infrastructure, We need teachers, and systematic policies such as complete education. It’s time education,” said Fregonesi, a chemist who specializes in education policy.

Full-time schools create a different relationship between students and school, offer other subjects in addition to the regular curriculum, help young people think more clearly about their future, and give students a leadership role. It is an efficient model because it not only gives but also a leadership role. The expert spoke to IPS by phone from São Paulo.

The idea is to increase the number of full-time schools that already exist across the country, but in a highly unequal way. In the poor northeastern state of Pernambuco, 66.8 percent of students are in full-time education, but in the Federal District, where the capital Brasilia is located, the number is just 5 percent, and in the wealthiest São Paulo, just 5 percent. In the state, it was just 25.9 percent.

On average, only 21.9% of students in the public education system attend school full-time.

However, increasing the number of full-time schools requires significant investment, and public resources available in Brazil are limited. According to data from the 38-member Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Brazil ranks last in per-student spending on basic education.

Emphasis on technical and vocational education

Another initiative is to expand technical education. In Brazil, only 11 percent of secondary school students take technical courses, compared with an average of more than 40 percent in other OECD countries, Fregonesi said.

“There is a certain prejudice in Brazil regarding technical education, where it is seen as 'inferior' to high school in preparation for university,” he said. However, he argued that the national economy lacks vocational training to adequately prepare students for higher education.

Brazil has a growing unmet demand for skilled workers, including those in information and communication technology, and there is a need to expand technical secondary education.

The educational challenges in this country are immense. In 2023, 47.3 million students will be enrolled in primary and secondary education and 6.5 million on university courses. However, there were 68 million Brazilians without basic education.

Beyond these numbers, the fact remains that school populations are shrinking due to declining birth rates. In 2019, the year before the pandemic hit, 57 million students were enrolled in schools. The pandemic has reduced that number by 9.5 million.

Education in Brazil functions both as a factor of social advancement and as a factor of inequality. About 20 percent of high-income students attend private elementary and middle schools, which are typically better funded and have better academic results than public schools.

In higher education, the situation is paradoxically reversed. Children from high-income families who receive a better education in private schools can easily gain admission to public universities, which offer a higher quality education and are therefore more likely to advance professionally than private universities.

To correct this imbalance, progressive governments in recent decades have created racial and social quotas and affirmative action that generally benefit poor blacks and students in public elementary and middle schools.

All these measures and some other policies, such as the basic education funding system maintained by city and state governments, have facilitated small advances in education in Brazil, but they are still far from sufficient. yeah.

That process suffered setbacks due to the pandemic and the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). The current government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is trying to get back on track.

© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedSource: Interpress Service

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