Education grows in Brazil, but economy is crucial – 05/17/2023 – Market

Education in Brazil has made important progress by placing more students in school and increasing the years of study of the population, but it is still very lacking in terms of quality and productive inclusion. Without economic growth and fiscal stability, the country will also continue skating to take advantage of advances in the area in recent years.

The conclusion is from researchers who discussed the topic in the online seminar promoted by Sheet and Ibre-FGV (Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation) “The role of education in development”.

Economists Fernando Veloso, coordinator of the Regis Bonelli Productivity Observatory, from Ibre-FGV, Samuel Pessôa, associate researcher at FGV-Ibre, and Thomas Kang, professor of Economics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, participated, with mediation by the special reporter from the Sheet Fernando Canzian.

The Regis Bonelli Productivity Observatory has just made available on its website (open to the public) complete data from the last few decades on the advances in education in the country, which show the advances and challenges in the sector.

According to Pessôa, for a long time Brazil believed that development would come from the accumulation of productive capital, and that the increase in education would be a consequence of this process. Today, he says, it is clear that education should be a priority.

But, despite the increase in years of study and the inclusion of more Brazilians in the educational system, the country’s macroeconomic framework has not been opening up opportunities for those who study more, and it is essential to stabilize it so that Brazil and its students can take advantage of it. the advances.

In terms of quality, Pessôa states that education could be mirrored in what happened in health, where social organizations (OS, with private participation) helped to increase care. He also says that there is a “certain prejudice” in relation to technical education, which leads many young people to pursue higher education in areas where they often do not get a placement further ahead.

For Veloso, despite the difficulties, Brazil has advanced a lot in the area. According to him, until 1992, 2/3 of the employed population had not even completed primary education. Today, 2/3 have completed high school. Without this progress, he estimates, informality at work in the country would be around 15% higher today. “The problem is that increased education has faced an extremely inhospitable economic environment in recent years,” he says.

According to Kang, one of the problems of Brazilian education is that for a long time higher education was favored to the detriment of fundamental, basic and secondary education, which has been changing in recent years. He claims, however, that it is difficult to expect leaps in quality when the country has a relatively recent past of low educational level.

The complete seminar “The role of education in development” can be seen below: