Education secretaries reinforce support for the new high school

The National Council of Secretaries of Education (Consed) delivered to the Ministry of Education (MEC), on Monday (3), a proposal for readjustment for the new secondary education, reinforcing its position against the repeal of the policy. The document is the entity’s response to the public consultation on the subject, which will end on Thursday (6).

The implementation of the new high school, which began with the reform approved in 2017, had been suspended by the MEC, on April 5 of this year, for 60 days, after pressure from education unions and student movements. The Lula government’s decision was considered illegal by some states, as it deliberated against a law passed by Congress. At the same time, the MEC opened a public consultation to hear society and the educational community (students, teachers and administrators) on the subject.

According to the MEC, after the end of the public consultation, a report will be prepared within 30 days. “So far, more than 99,000 people have given their opinion about secondary education. Consed’s proposal was received, as well as those of other educational entities. And all will be analyzed by the MEC for the preparation of the report”, explained the ministry.

In February of this year, the state secretaries of Education issued a public note opposing the repeal of the reform, which has been implemented for more than five years. According to the note, Consed understands that the new secondary education is a collective construction, whose implementation has been led by state networks with the collaboration of technical teams from departments and schools, specialists from partner entities and unions.

“The reform has already been implemented, in the three years of the teaching stage, in virtually all states, and its repeal is completely unfeasible”, explains the council.

For Consed, “it is unwise to think of discarding all this technical and financial effort expended by the state networks over the last few years, which involved, among other initiatives, the construction of new curricula for all states, the training and hiring of teachers ”.

With the implementation of the new secondary education, approved in 2017, the number of hours provided for this teaching stage increased from 2,400 to 3,000 in the three years and more than 43,000 new teachers were hired. In addition to the progressive adoption of full-time education, students also began to choose between five training itineraries: mathematics, languages, natural sciences, humanities and professional training.

According to a survey carried out by Consed with the states, 42,946 new teachers were hired from 2020 to 2023 to attend the new high school, considering only the 20 states that responded so far. In addition, at least 19,693 teachers who were already working in the networks had their workload increased to attend the new secondary education between 2020 and 2023.

If one considers the national teaching floor of R$4,420 for these 43,000 new teachers, that means at least R$190 million in state investment per month to implement the reform, which results in R$2.2 billion a year, without consider the payment of teachers who had their workload increased.

New tweaks

Among the main alterations suggested by Consed, is the use of 300 hours of the 1200 hours of Training Itineraries according to the needs of the states, which can be used, for example, to complement general training or recompose learning.

The council also defends the elaboration of the Base of Training Itineraries, to reinforce the use of a common national guide that mitigates the inequality between the networks in the part of the itineraries.

Consed also suggests changes in the National High School Examination (Enem). The proposal is that on the first day an assessment of general knowledge should be carried out, with items by area of ​​knowledge to assess Basic General Training, in addition to writing. The second day would follow the eligibility criteria, according to the deepening chosen by the student, based on the curricular references for the elaboration of the itineraries.