Expanding internet at school is necessary for digitalization – 09/12/2023 – Education

The universal distribution of internet in public schools is essential to alleviate structural issues in the area, such as school dropout and lack of teachers. The conclusion comes from education experts who are looking for impactful innovations for the area, which would require experience at the level of SUS, for health, or Pix, for the economy.

With a unified digital system, integrating schools, the secretariat and the MEC, managers can register information such as student attendance and teacher allocation. Based on the data, it is possible for education secretaries to create strategies to improve these rates.

But the first step is connectivity. The preparation of a program that aims to expand internet access to all schools in the country was announced in July by the Minister of Education, Camilo Santana.

The creation of a digital public infrastructure for teaching management was the subject of a debate held by Cieb (Center for Innovation for Brazilian Education), an organization that seeks to support public education, at the end of August.

The event was attended by Beatriz Vasconcellos, program manager at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL (University College London), in the United Kingdom, by Marcelo Perez, leading education specialist at the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank), by João Abreu, executive director of ImpulsoGov, Mayara Yano, from the Central Bank, and Julia Sant’Anna, executive director of Cieb.

Mediation was by Guilherme Cintra, director of innovation and technology at the Lemann Foundation.

“It’s important to ensure that schools have internet and computers. It wouldn’t make sense to be discussing public digital infrastructure if we didn’t have such an optimistic perspective on networks and equipment in schools”, said Julia Sant’Anna.

This digital ecosystem in education includes data; software to manage larger processes that are common to all schools, such as student integration; and specific services, such as pedagogical assessments. This is what Beatriz Vasconcellos, from UCL, said.

Today, Brazil has the School Census, which provides information about the structure of schools in the country and student approval, published once a year. However, for Júlia Sant’Anna, this means that the manager only realizes the situation at his school after the end of a cycle.

She argues that it is necessary to shorten the term of this work. One proposal would be for the federal government to indicate basic management data, such as student enrollment, for bimonthly monitoring. Defining this data must be part of the construction of digital infrastructure.

Marcelo Perez, from the IDB, presented pillars for a good Educational Management System in the debate.

In the first phase, it is necessary to create unique identification (which can be a document, such as CPF) for groups such as students, positions and schools, according to Perez. From this base, it is possible to build associated data management. In the case of students, this could include information about qualifications and repetitions, for example.

The final phase would be to digitize management functions. Student enrollment and job assignments for teachers could be done based on data.

Furthermore, the development of the system must consider the country’s context and, if necessary, vary according to local reality. Beatriz Vasconcellos, from UCL, cites the case of the digitalization of education in India.

One of the Indian creations was to record student attendance. In it, managers mark the student’s presence on paper, take photographs, and the image enters a digital system, which gives access to information from schools throughout the state.

Experience has shown that it is possible to develop a platform using available resources, with just one of the professionals having a device that accesses the internet.

“The idea is not to standardize, but to think about what can be scalable according to local specificities and diversities”, he states.

At the event, experts also stated that experiences from SUS and Pix can influence a platform for education. Both were successful as digital public infrastructure, according to the debaters, as they excel in data management and scalability.

In the case of the Central Bank, the communication strategy helped to gain the trust of users, with wide dissemination about what the tool is and what the benefits are.

Mayara Yano, senior advisor for Pix management and operations at the institution, says that common communication guidelines were defined so that each bank could share the same content, even if the language varied.

In the SUS, the National Health Data Network (RNDS) is an ideal model of digital public infrastructure, according to João Abreu, from ImpulsoGov, an organization focused on increasing the use of technologies in the public health system. The RNDS includes Conecte SUS, which records information such as vaccinations.

The network exchanges health data between different institutions, public and private, integrating this information on the same platform. It is still in the process of expanding, but it promises to transform the sector.

Guilherme Cintra, from the Lemann Foundation, stated that existing experiences in the public sector can be adapted for education.

“It’s important to point out that there’s nothing different being done. Those who work in schools on a daily basis face a lot of challenges, and inventing new things is not what will lead us to improvements. It’s a matter of having resources and using them well the data.”