Lula government rules out revoking secondary education reform – 02/28/2023 – Education

The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) rules out revoking the new high school, a reform that sought to make the curriculum more flexible for the stage and which has been the target of criticism. Sectors of the left and part of the specialists have pressured the PT government to review these changes.

The social networks of the Minister of Education, Camilo Santana (PT), and of the MEC (Ministry of Education) have accumulated demands for the government to revoke the measure. Despite discarding this option, the current folder team sees flaws in the implementation and intends to organize a review.

The reform was approved in 2017, during the Michel Temer (MDB) government, with the aim of making the stage more attractive for students. Secondary education is considered one of the bottlenecks in basic education, with high dropout rates.

With the measure, the students of the stage now have their curriculum divided into two parts. One is common to all, while the other is made up of electives, with each student choosing an area. This occurs from the so-called formative itineraries, among five general options: Mathematics and its Technologies, Languages ​​and its Technologies, Natural Sciences and its Technologies, Applied Human and Social Sciences and vocational technical education.

The teaching networks began implementation in 2022 and several problems surfaced, always in relation to the diversified part: difficulty in offering itinerary options in all schools, which increases inequality; some contents with little curricular coherence, while disciplines such as philosophy and sociology lost ground; inadequacy of infrastructure, in addition to lack of teachers and inadequacy of training to the contents taught.

The MEC under the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government was absent from the implementation process, without coordination actions or technical and financial support. As each state was responsible for creating the itineraries, there is a diversity of models and strategies across the country.

Now, the department is organizing a listening process to understand the process, including students who are already studying in the model, and gather experiences to define the path to follow.

In 2018, when Fernando Haddad (PT) was a presidential candidate, his program had the objective of revoking the reform. This did not appear in Lula’s victorious campaign last year.

A letter for the repeal of the reform had the support of more than 280 organizations, such as trade unions, research groups, scientific associations and social movements.

Administrative assistant Eliene Pires dos Santos da Silva, 41, has found her daughter Iasmin’s teaching schedule, in the 2nd year, very vague. The daughter studies at a school in the Federal District network in Fercal, an administrative region on the outskirts of the federal capital. “On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays she has the most common classes, such as Portuguese, mathematics, physics. On the other days, they are the new model, such a life project that seems to have nothing, it is very vague”, she says.

“It seems that they are being guinea pigs, and not just the students, the teachers as well. These high school students are very unprepared, after two years without classes because of the pandemic, and now a change is coming,” says Eliene.

The DF Department of Education said, in a note, that it will conduct a hearing on the implementation this year and that all the traditional curricular components are maintained in the new organization. “The novelty is in a part of the curricular organization in which students can make personal choices oriented towards their life project”, says the text.

The federal government plans to adapt the Enem from 2024, when the first class under the new high school graduates.

Professor Fernando Cássio, from UFABC (Federal University of ABC), defends the repeal because he considers the proposal unfeasible on a large scale. In addition, he claims that the reform increases inequality by not offering a range of itineraries for everyone, and does not address the structural problems of education.

“Revoking does not mean stopping everything and canceling, it means that we are at a favorable moment in the country for society to sit together and create a model of secondary education in dialogue with schools, which was not done”, he says.

“If we had schools with infrastructure, well-trained, well-paid teachers and conditions for teachers to stay in a school, we wouldn’t need itineraries”, he says. “Reform is synonymous with saving money. And freedom of choice [dos alunos entre os itinerários] increases the cost, there is no easy way out”.

Data collected by the Public School and University Network, of which Cássio is a member, show that, in the state network of São Paulo, 36% of secondary schools offer only two training itineraries, which is the minimum required.

In a note, the state network of São Paulo stated that more than 2,800 schools offer three or more training itineraries. Secretary Renato Feder’s team is studying the reduction of the possibilities of disciplines within the itineraries, based on the assessment that pedagogical management and evaluation are compromised, according to reports made to the Sheet.

The curriculum for the new high school in São Paulo was announced in 2020, when Rossieli Soares was the Secretary of Education. Current manager of the area in Pará, Soares was MEC’s ​​Secretary of Basic Education and Minister of Education when the reform was approved.

“Schools can have two itineraries with two areas of knowledge each, thus guaranteeing all areas of knowledge. But we need to pay attention to how we are listening to young people”, says Rossieli Sores. “Every implementation requires constant review and improvement within the process, but the biggest challenge is not getting stuck within a political issue.”

Consed, the body that brings together state education secretaries, released a note last week in defense of the reform. The agency claims that the program has been a collective effort, with the involvement of technical teams and teachers.

“But of course there are necessary advances, and that depend on the MEC. It is important to map Brazil on how the offers are, for the MEC to think about the PAR [Plano de Ações Articuladas, que leva recursos federais para redes de ensino] to help secretariats with limitations to expand itineraries”, says the president of Consed and secretary of Education of Espírito Santo, Vitor de Angelo.