Camilo Santana misses data when talking about the program

The Minister of Education, Camilo Santana, distorted data from civic-military schools and cited opinion research, not scientific evidence, to criticize a program developed during the management of former President Jair Bolsonaro. During a demonstration at the Education Commission in the Chamber of Deputies, this Wednesday (12), Santana made a mistake saying that among the 100 best public schools in Brazil none would be military and used data from Datafolha to say that the population’s adherence to the model would have been “minimum”.

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“Of the 100 best public schools in Brazil, 87 are in my state and none are military. The best public school in Brazil is from Ceará and is not military, from Cariré”, he said. In fact, the school cited by the minister is from the 1st to the 5th of elementary school and cannot be compared with military schools, as these institutions do not cover this phase of basic education. In addition, this school uses the molds of the National Literacy Policy (PNA) adopted by the Bolsonaro government.

According to the 2022 School Census, Brazil has a little over 47,000 schools from 5th to 9th grade and almost 21,000 public high schools. Among the military schools, managed by the Armed Forces, the civic-military schools created by the Bolsonaro government (military management and civilian teachers), and the civic-military schools that already existed in states like Goiás, there are about 300 institutions.

Even though they are fewer in number, among the top 100 high schools, 22 are military schools, according to data from the 2021 Ideb (Basic Education Development Index). 16 of the top 100 are military.

Participation was also minimal. Even though it was implemented during the pandemic, in 2020, the Civic-Military Schools Program brought good results and competition for vacancies. According to the balance sheet released at the end of 2022, the program achieved an 82% reduction in physical violence and a 75% reduction in verbal violence. School evasion and dropout dropped by around 80%. Schools that had low indexes in the Ideb, started to present good indexes.

Minister also makes a mistake when he says that it is necessary to define what a literate child is

In the session, the minister also claimed that it would be necessary to define what a literate child is until the 2nd year and that he would be mobilizing teachers to reach an agreement on this aspect. In fact, these parameters are already defined in the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) and followed in schools in Ceará, a state that was governed by Camilo himself.

Among other characteristics, the BNCC defines as literate the child capable of “coding and decoding” the sounds of the language (phonemes) in graphic material (graphemes or letters), with the development of phonological awareness and knowledge of the alphabet in its various formats.