Lula government closes agreement to approve new secondary education – 03/19/2024 – Education

The Lula (PT) government gave in to negotiations on the reform of secondary education and the matter should go to a vote in the Chamber in the coming days.

The Executive’s allied base allowed for the provision to make the mandatory workload of the common curriculum more flexible for students who choose, among the five training itineraries, to take professional courses. This was the main demand of the rapporteur, deputy Mendonça Filho (União Brasil-PE), and of the parties that support the drafting of the project proposed by him.

The common curriculum contains traditional subjects, such as Portuguese, mathematics, history and physics, among others.

The articulation in search of consensus had the direct participation of the Minister of Education, Camilo Santana. On Monday night (18), he was in a meeting with Mendonça at the official residence of the president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL).

Deputies who were present stated with reservation that the meeting had an atmosphere of tension and an exchange of barbs between Santana and Mendonça. In the end, they both apologized to each other. This Tuesday (19), there was a new meeting on the topic and the government representative and the proposal’s rapporteur reached an agreement.

The government’s proposal provided for 2,400 mandatory hours of the common curriculum for all training routes. The rapporteur, with the support of the majority of state education secretaries, stated that the mandatory level would make professional courses unfeasible.

The MEC, however, agreed to reduce the common schedule for all students to 1,800 hours in cases where the student opts for professional courses. Thus, students will be able to take a technical nursing course, for example, of 1,200 hours — in total, 3,000 hours per year in high school.

In other training itineraries, which are the areas that students have to choose to deepen their secondary education, the requirement remains at 2,400 hours.

The government already anticipated the need to give in on some points to avoid a greater defeat. The Planalto Palace’s pessimism regarding the issue in the Chamber began the moment Lira appointed Mendonça to report the matter.

This is because the deputy was the Minister of Education under Michel Temer (MDB) and responsible for formulating the secondary education reform sanctioned in 2017, which the current government is now trying to overturn.

The approval at the end of last year of an urgency request for the project also indicated the government’s difficulty with the matter in the House. Against the Executive’s wishes, the urgency was approved by 351 votes in favor of 102 against.

Another change in the text implemented by Mendonça in relation to the proposal to make Spanish a mandatory second language — the first is English.

The agreed text treats Spanish as preferential, in a reduction in the importance initially given by the MEC.

The ministry has also accepted a change in the project regarding the possibility of implementing distance education in high school.

The report foresees, contrary to the Executive’s initial proposal, training via “mediation by technology”, which does not mean that it will necessarily be a recorded class, without a teacher on the other side of the video, but which leaves room for distance learning.

Arthur Lira worked hard to find an agreement and stated in an interview before the vote that this was an urgent matter because “8 million students depend on this definition”.

“We defend that in an issue like this, which is so sensitive, we have neither losers nor winners, that we build a middle path to be able to vote with an increase in the quorum and support necessary so that there is no change tomorrow depending on the flavor one ballot box or another”, he said.

Son told Sheet that the agreement makes technical courses viable, which was one of the main points I had raised since the beginning of the debate. “More than 60% of the demand for professional courses requires 1,200 hours,” he says.

Representative Dandara Tonantzin (PT-MG), who is a pedagogue and belongs to the government base, is critical of the reduction of the common curricular base.

“We need to give students the freedom to choose which area of ​​technical education they will pursue throughout high school, but we cannot compromise basic general training,” he says.

And he continues: “Professional training cannot be used to reduce the burden of sociology, chemistry, philosophy, among other mandatory subjects. The student cannot go between one or the other. The student cannot have to miss a story to learn how to make a gourmet brigadeiro, with all due respect to the gourmet brigadeiro”, he says.

Such as Sheet showed in March last year, state Education Departments (which are responsible for more than 80% of secondary school enrollments) offer at least 1,526 elective course options. The list includes RPG materials and Brigadeiro Gourmet.

The governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), in turn, met with party benches last week in the Chamber to defend Mendonça’s report.

“We are focusing on maintaining flexibility with regard to the workload for us to undertake vocational education. This is fundamental, we want young people to have access to vocational education, we want to increase the percentage of those completing the education high school with vocational education”, he said.