Full-time basic education needs to be a priority – 01/12/2024 – Sou Ciência

In Brazil, only 18.2% of Brazilian public basic education students have access to full-time education, according to data from Inep. In the northern region, this number is just 8.4%. Although the National Education Plan (PNE) has established a timid target of 25%, everything indicates that there will be a resounding failure in achieving it. And this, unfortunately, is not surprising, given that the country did not reach the target of 46 indicators among the 52 monitored by Inep.

Even though the Constitution establishes the right to education for all Brazilians under equal conditions, in practice the struggle over public funds and fiscal policies have caused important losses for social policies, including education.

The data shows that Brazil has underfunded public basic education. We invested 3,826.00 PPP dollars (Purchasing Power Parity) per student/year, while Argentina invested 4,355.00, France 10,346.00 and the United States 13,208.00. Each American student had 3.5 times more resources than Brazilian students. And yet, some analysts insist on comparing the scores obtained by our students in PISA with those of their foreign colleagues, without considering the gulf that exists between their realities.

It is important to highlight that the countries with the best PISA classification have full-time schools for the majority of their students, while Brazil still struggles to put all children in school for at least four hours, which obviously has an impact on the results. of learning tests. But the silence on this fact is deafening.

Good news is that Brazil can benefit from the upcoming demographic dividend. The Brazilian demographic composition, revealed by the last 2022 Census, shows a reduction in the number of Brazilians in the basic schooling age group. In this way, a small increase in investment could increase revenue per basic education student, favoring the Brazilian educational process.

The pace of population growth has been decreasing in recent decades and, since 2018, Brazil has been reducing the size of the population between 0 and 17 years old, priority targets of the Basic Education public policy. According to projections, in 2028 all grades in the initial years of Elementary School will require fewer enrollments, the same will occur for the final grades in 2032 and for secondary education in 2035.

The data shows that there was a reduction in public basic education enrollments between 2007 (41.196 million) and 2022 (35.383 million). In terms of full-time enrollment, there was an increase in this modality, however, much lower than necessary, as shown in Graph 01 below:

We seek to develop a calculation model to measure the investment necessary to universalize full-time basic education for the public network, considering that free and compulsory basic education must be offered from 4 to 17 years of age, in accordance with Section I of Art. 4th of Law 9,394/1996 (LDB).

According to the MEC’s ​​’Full-time school’ program, the projected cost of including 1 million students in full-time education in 2023 will be 4 billion per year. Using this volume of resources as a reference, it is possible to determine that, on average, the transformation of a basic education place offered on a part-time basis to a full-time basis requires an additional investment of R$4,000.00 per enrollment per year, a value consistent with the defined in Interministerial Ordinance No. 2, of April 19, 2023, which established the Fundeb Student Year Value (VAAF).

In a projection for the year 2030, it will be necessary to convert almost 26 million part-time enrollments (25,866,656) to full-time enrollments. Considering the reference value, the universalization of basic education for students between 4 and 17 years old will require an additional investment of R$ 103.5 billion/year (R$ 103,466,625,023.42).

Brazilian GDP in 2022 was R$9.9 trillion. This indicates that the investment necessary for the universalization of full-time education would represent approximately 1.05% of GDP/2022.

If, on the one hand, the data shows that the 1.05% increase in GDP for education would be capable of placing ALL BASIC EDUCATION STUDENTS FROM 4 TO 17 YEARS OLD in school full time, on the other, the Federal Senate, with public support from the Navy commander, is analyzing the Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC) No. 55/2023, which proposes that the Union allocate “annually, a percentage equal to or greater than 2% (two percent) of the value calculated in GDP in the previous year” to the Ministry of Defense, which represents an increase in the budget of around 1% of Brazilian GDP for the Ministry of Defense.

This is one of those crossroads that define a nation: where should this 1% of GDP go? For the Ministry of Defense or for the attack on what should be considered the main national problem? As Julio Cesar Strassera said: “This is our opportunity and may be the last.

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