Fragile education condemns the country to low growth. how to change it

Productivity and education practically go hand in hand. A study released by the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) shows that Brazilian productivity per hour worked grew at an average rate of 0.9% per year, between 1995 and 2021 alone. People’s Gazette point out that low productivity, a reflection of quality in education, inhibits faster growth of the Brazilian economy. Between 1980 and 2022, Brazil expanded its GDP at an average rate of 2.3% per year. The world, 3.4%.

The best performance in terms of productivity came from agriculture, which advanced, on average, 5.6% per year, but even so, it is the sector with the lowest productivity. Services, which account for almost 70% of the Brazilian GDP, had an average annual growth of 0.4%. The industry moved backwards, and its productivity shrank by 0.2% per year in the period, on average.

“We have low and stagnant productivity, which prevents long-term sustainable growth. And this difficulty is associated with the lack of quality in education”, says Cláudia Costin, director of the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Educational Policies (Ceipe) at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV).

Lack of quality reduces economic complexity in Brazil

Low productivity was also accompanied by a loss of complexity in the Brazilian economy, says the director of education and innovation at the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), Rafael Lucchesi.

Ranking of the Atlas of Economic Complexity at Harvard University (USA) shows that from 1995 to 2020 the country lost 35 positions, going from 25th to 60th.

Brazil’s low productivity and loss of economic complexity is reflected in the country’s difficulty to insert itself into global production chains. Lucchesi recalls that, over time, they extended and created a sophisticated demand for services.

Another factor that contributed to the worsening complexity of the Brazilian economy, according to the atlas, was the lack of diversification in exports.

But there is hope. “Looking forward, Brazil is positioned to take advantage of many opportunities to diversify its production using its existing know-how”, says the American university.

Transformation scenario

The picture of the last 40 years is different from that recorded between 1930 and 1980, when Brazil was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. According to historical data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the Brazilian economy grew 22.6 times in that interval, or 6.31% per year.

One of the main characteristics of this period, according to the director of the CNI, is that there was a coordination of economic policies that resulted in the development of the economy.

But while the country carried out the first industrial revolutions, the country did not carry out the educational revolution, he says. The impacts began to be felt from the second half of the 1960s, in the third industrial revolution, characterized by advances in microelectronics, and which had as one of its landmarks the arrival of man on the Moon, in 1969, through the Apollo Project.

Lucchesi points out that, over time, during the 20th century, efforts were made to allocate resources to education, but there were no more effective results.

Costin recalls that Brazil was one of the last countries in the Americas to universalize primary education. “While many countries in the region did this in the 60s, in Brazil it only happened during the first decade of the 21st century”, says the Ceipe/FGV director.

Another indicator of the lack of results in the highest allocation is given by the CNI director: he points out that Brazil took a hundred years longer than the United States and Europe for the population to have an average schooling of eight years.

Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that 37.7% of the Brazilian population between 25 and 64 completed high school and 20.7% have higher education. These numbers are lower than those of the member countries of the organization: 40.6% have completed secondary school and 39.9% have completed university.

It was precisely a more focused investment in education that transformed South Korea. 40 years ago, the country had the same GDP per capita as Brazil. Today it is more than six times larger. And the economy of the Asian country has become the fourth most complex in the world, according to Harvard University.

The director of the industrial entity recalls that we are in a transforming moment, in the fourth industrial revolution. “It is a disruptive moment, with the advancement of technologies such as the internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence and advanced biotechnology. We are witnessing a global war for reindustrialization and societies are reshaping education.”

Education needs to be seen as a way of accessing citizenship

Both Lucchesi, from CNI, and Costin, from Ceipe/FGV, consider that learning and education are gateways to citizenship. “Education is a fundamental pillar for building a project for a winning Brazil in the 21st century”, he emphasizes.

In addition to hindering faster and more sustained growth, problems related to education also hinder the construction of a more cohesive Brazilian society. “We have deep economic and social inequality because of educational issues,” says Costin.

The expert points out that Brazil has to look more deeply at educational inequality. And she points to some examples, such as Pernambuco, which is developing full-time secondary education. “There is no magic solution to solve educational problems. It takes determination.”

Another example cited by Costin is Sobral (CE), which was later expanded to the rest of the state. “The way of teaching literacy was changed, learning began to be evaluated with more emphasis and investment was made in improving the teaching staff. And part of the ICMS transfers was also linked to advances in education.”

Data from the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep) show that Ceará has one of the highest assessment scores for private elementary education in Ideb (7.3, equal to the average of the states in the Southeast) and the highest for teaching state fundamental (7.2).

Another positive aspect, according to her, is that states in the Northeast are exchanging experiences. “Pernambuco is copying Ceará’s model and Paraíba is copying Pernambuco’s model”, says Costin.

Need to go beyond

But it is necessary to go further, say experts. Although the country is the 13th largest economy in the world, it was only 57th out of 79 countries in the 2018 edition of the Pisa test – the OECD’s program for international student assessment, which measures the ability of 15-year-olds to use your knowledge and skills in reading, math and science to meet real-life challenges.

Half of the Brazilian students who took the exam had problems with reading comprehension. And grades in math and science were low.

A new test was carried out in 2022 and the results will be known at the end of 2023. It is likely that there will be a slight deterioration due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Brazil was one of the countries that stayed with schools closed for the longest time.

“You have to look and analyze the results. You can’t be satisfied with the 57th position in the ranking”, says the director of the FGV center.

Lucchesi defends a strategy based on two bases: community participation in the school and the more accurate use of indicators and metrics to evaluate investments made in education.

The bottlenecks that inhibit growth

One of the bottlenecks for investments in education is their distribution. According to the OECD, public spending on higher education accounted for 1.1% of the Brazilian GDP in 2018. This is more than the averages of the organization’s countries and the 20 richest countries in the world (0.9% of GDP).

However, Costin recalls that higher education serves few people in Brazil: 20.7% of the population between 25 and 64 years old has this degree, according to OECD data. In the countries of that entity, the percentage is 39.9% and in the G-20 economies, this proportion is a little lower: 32.9%.

A problem also faced by Brazil is the low wages paid to teachers. In Germany, a primary school teacher with 15 years of experience earns an average of US$85,000 a year. “Here, salaries are poor and fragmented, that is, the teacher has to teach in several schools. There is no dedication and the profession is unattractive.”

Costin also emphasizes that Brazilian professors teach few hours compared to other economies. The OECD shows that pre-school education is 800 hours a year; while in Germany there are 1,755. In primary education, the record holders among the organization’s countries are Costa Rica (1,209 hours/year) and Chile (1,016 hours/year). In Brazil, this number is 800.

In the first periods of high school, the situation is repeated: there are also 800 hours/year per teacher, below countries like Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico.

There is no “silver bullet” for education

The experts consulted by People’s Gazette point out that there is no “silver bullet” to solve the problem. Accelerators in improving the quality of Brazilian education can be full-time education and prioritizing assistance to families that are in a situation of social vulnerability, such as those included in CadÚnico. “It doesn’t make sense to have more than ten subjects with four hours of classes per week”, says Costin.

Another concern, cited by the director of Ceipe/FGV, is in relation to the writing. “Very little is written. It is necessary to work on writing since elementary school, because thinking is processed by writing. This helps to make the reasoning explicit.”

This is the third text in the series of reports “Country in slow motion”, which seeks to show the obstacles to economic growth in the country and what to do to accelerate this expansion.