Government should invest R$ 3 billion for literacy at the right age

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed, this Monday (12), a decree establishing the National Commitment for Literate Children, the new policy to subsidize actions to promote literacy at the right age for children in the country. According to the Ministry of Education, BRL 1 billion will be invested in 2023 and another BRL 2 billion between 2024 and 2026.

In a ceremony at the Planalto Palace, Lula highlighted that the policy is a collective construction, both in its formulation and in its execution.

“The commitment is not an idea that the Ministry of Education [MEC] took it out of his hat, on the contrary, it was built after a lot of dialogue with specialists and managers from other federative levels. It was born out of collaboration and with cooperation it will get off the ground and make a difference in classrooms”, he said, stating that he expects the adherence of all 27 governors to the commitment.

For Lula, in recent years, the State has “failed miserably” with early childhood education.

The policy provides for the protagonism of the states, municipalities and the Federal District, which must develop their own local literacy policies, according to their specificities. The Union will act in the induction, coordination and technical and financial assistance. With this, the government recognizes the territorial diversities of Brazil and does not propose a single answer.

Speaking on behalf of the governors, the governor of Mato Grosso, Mauro Mendes, praised the federative initiative and highlighted that the effort to make literacy happen at the right time, “will surely be one of the good and great strategies to recover the quality of public education ” in the country.

“Here we have many politicians and I would say, without fear of being wrong, that most of the Brazilian political class are children of the Brazilian public school, but that most of the children of these politicians study today in private schools in all corners of Brazil . Only this sad fact shows that over many years we failed to do what needed to be done so that education had the importance it has, to deliver the results it needs to deliver to the Brazilian nation”, said the governor.

President Lula agreed with Mendes and added that the middle class “fled” from public education because the quality of public school education did not keep up with the needs of the population. “So, it’s normal for a lawyer, the mayor, a deputy, the small business owner to look for a private school for their child. That is, there are people who spend almost half of the salary they earn to guarantee their child in a private school because the public school has not yet reached that educational level that we understand is perfect for our people ”, he said.

For him, the commitment instituted today is a step for the public school to return to quality.

The objective of the policy is to ensure that all Brazilian children are literate by the end of the 2nd year of elementary school, aged 6 and 7, as provided for in Target 5 of the National Education Plan (PNE). In this context, before, in early childhood education, when children are up to 5 years old, the commitment provides for the promotion of orality, reading and writing.

In addition, the government wants to ensure the recomposition of public learning impacted by the restrictions of the covid-19 pandemic. For students enrolled in the 3rd to 5th year of elementary school, aged 8 to 10, there will be a focus on consolidating literacy.

social losses
According to the government, 2.8 million children completed the 2nd year of elementary school in 2021. Data from the Alfabetiza Brasil survey, carried out by the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep) to support the new policy, reveal that 56.4% of students were considered illiterate due to their performance in the Basic Education Assessment System (Saeb) 2021.

In another international study conducted by Inep in Brazil, the Study International of Progress in Reading, released last month, Brazil was ahead of only five countries in international assessment of literacy, applied in 65 nations.

The Minister of Education, Camilo Santana, highlighted that lack of literacy leads to losses in the economic and social potential of the population and the country.

“Studies show that, when citizens become literate, they have the chance of having twice as much income; yet, 26% of them are able to have a formal job and they even have the condition to have a better health situation when they become literate”, said Santana, calling on the entire political class to engage in the initiative.

According to Santana, the target of 100% of literate children will not be achieved in four years, but it is a process that will be defined jointly with the states, according to each reality.

Adherence to participation
After the publication of the decree in the Official Gazette of the Union, the federal entities will be able to adhere to the policy, via the MEC’s ​​Integrated Monitoring, Execution and Control System (Simec).

Adhesion will be voluntary and implies the responsibility of the states, municipalities and the Federal District to promote the improvement of the quality of the literacy process and results, with attention to the reduction of learning inequalities among students in their sphere of competence.

Other premises are the mobilization and engagement of society, with communication, follow-up and social control; and tackling regional, socioeconomic, racial and gender educational inequalities. In the 90 days following accession, the government expects the entities to collaborate in the formulation of the territorial policy, through seminars, listening and public hearings, in order to have the multiple perspectives of the Brazilian territory.

For the distribution of resources, the federal government will adopt as criteria the proportion of illiterate children; socioeconomic, ethnic-racial and gender characteristics; and the presence of children who make up the target audience of inclusive special education.

five axes
The commitment defends the focus on the needs of the classroom, the teacher and the student, with systemic policies, clarity of demands and co-responsibility of management agents. The new policy is based on five axes.

• Management and Governance: offer of more than 7,000 grants to policy makers in the territories, for the local implementation of initiatives and to ensure that all education networks prepare and publish their territorial policy within 90 days of adhering to the commitment;
• Training: resources to make local training possible, so that education networks implement their Policy for Training School Managers and their Policy for Training Literacy Teachers;
• Physical and Pedagogical Infrastructure: resources for teaching networks to have complementary didactic material for literacy, pedagogical material to support early childhood education teachers and spaces to encourage reading practices appropriate to the age group and sociocultural context, gender and the ethnic-racial belonging of the students;
• Recognition of Good Practices: award for managers who work with successful pedagogical and management practices in the field of guaranteeing the right to literacy and reducing educational, social and racial inequalities;
• Assessment System: production of technical parameters and articulation between the educational assessment systems of basic education, for making management decisions within the scope of the education network, the school and the teaching-learning process, and the provision of diversified assessment instruments of students’ learning.

Governance
The MEC reinforces that it will offer technical and financial support to the education networks, but proposes a model of governance and management of the literacy policy based on political leadership, federative agreement and strategic definitions within the scope of commitment, executive coordination and the carrying out of the actions of a technical nature.

The National Strategic Commitment Committee (Cenac) and the State Strategic Commitment Committee (Ceec) will be set up to act on the first front; and the National Network for Coordination of Management and Training of the National Literate Child Commitment (Renalfa).

Cenac will be chaired by the Minister of Education and will include representatives of the MEC, the National Union of Municipal Education Directors (Undime), the National Council of Education Secretaries (Consed) and the National Council of Capital Education Secretaries (Consec). The Ceec will be composed of the respective state/district secretary and the municipal secretaries of Education. Renalfa will have state and municipal instances, technically subsidizing the discussions and decision-making of Cenac and Ceec, respectively.

Progressively, the government hopes that education systems can advance and structure three pillars for the sustainability and institutionalization of the commitment, having: a technical team dedicated to the literacy policy; consolidated norms in the education system, with articulated action with the education councils and legislative bodies; and prioritizing the local literacy budget.