Government bets on comprehensive education against school dropouts – 09/09/2023 – Seminars Folha

Stay at least seven hours a day at school or 35 hours a week in two shifts. Learn from formal education subjects, such as mathematics and Portuguese, and receive additional content that leads to cognitive and social development. This is one of Brazil’s main efforts to prevent children and adolescents from abandoning their studies.

President Lula (PT) sanctioned in July the law establishing the Full-Time School Program. By 2024, 50% of public schools must offer this type of enrollment.

As of August 23, 3,416 municipalities in all states, in addition to the Federal District, had joined the initiative.

The program before this launch was Novo Mais Educação, criticized by experts for providing extended time for classes (at least more than seven hours a day), but not necessarily a comprehensive model.

There is a difference between full-time education, extended-time education and extended-time full-time education — which is the program’s proposal, according to Priscilla Bacalhau, a researcher at FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas).

“Integral education presupposes a learning process that will lead to cognitive, social, emotional, political and cultural development, and all of this needs to be linked together. This speaks volumes to what we expect from education: the formation of citizens. The proposal brings this perspective, despite being for induction of full-time employment, which is a strategy.”

The program advocates “an intentional and integrated curriculum, which expands and articulates different educational, social, cultural and sporting experiences in spaces inside and outside the school with the participation of the school community”.

The forecast is to promote one million new vacancies in basic education in 2023 and 3.2 million by 2026. The initial investment will be R$4 billion this year and next to support public schools to open full-time education places.

Resources are needed to guarantee at least three meals a day for students, adapt spaces for the extended day, increase the number of employees and expand the curriculum.

The funding is not expected to be renewed after 2024. According to the MEC, once enrollment is created, it will be maintained through Fundeb (Basic Education Maintenance Fund). The ministry says it recognizes that maintenance is a challenge for education networks and that it has worked with states, municipalities and the Federal District.

Education agents still ask for continued support. “It is necessary to offer training to teachers. If they, from one day to the next, need to spend more time at school without knowing what comprehensive education is, it won’t be worth it”, says Bacalhau.

Experts have concerns about the program, despite considering the discussion positive. One of them is that the financial support is directed to new enrollments and does not include schools that already maintained comprehensive education.

“In Lajedo do Tabocal [cidade com cerca de 8.500 habitantes na Bahia], of the 14 schools in the municipal network, 10 are comprehensive education. They face a lot of financial difficulties and will not receive incentives”, says educator Cláudia Cristina Pinto Santos, member of the Integral Human Training research group.

“Just increasing after-school activities could end up reinforcing inequality. The only people who will have access are students who already come from more privileged places”, says Bacalhau.

The MEC’s ​​Secretary of Basic Education, Kátia Schweickardt, says that the department is seeking budgetary allocation (amount authorized by the Annual Budget Law) to try to make a scholarship policy for new students viable.

“It is still problematic that 20% of young Brazilians are outside the educational system. When we look at this group, we discover that a large proportion are black, in a vulnerable situation.”

Around 2 million girls and boys aged 11 to 19 who had not yet finished basic education left school in Brazil, according to a 2022 Unicef ​​study.

The effort to reverse this situation is valid, says Laura Muller Machado, coordinator of Insper’s Integral Education Evidence Center.

A study by the center published in July 2022 estimates that students at full-time schools are more likely to complete basic education, complete higher education and find employment. The survey predicts that the present value of the gains in generating income for society, for each additional student who has access to full secondary education, will be R$145 thousand, against a cost of R$24 thousand.