New high school itineraries are imposed or drawn – 03/25/2023 – Education

Created with the aim of giving young people the option of choosing an area to further their studies, the new high school itineraries are, in practice, being imposed and even raffled among students in state schools across the country.

Due to lack of teachers, physical space, laboratories and crowded classes, schools are unable to meet the option made by all students and end up putting them on the available itineraries. Without having their choice respected, students have 40% of high school classes in areas that are not of interest to them.

Experts warn that the model ends up promoting the opposite effect of what it was looking for: it distances teaching from what interests young people and, consequently, reinforces low levels of learning and the risk of dropping out of school.

Pressured since the beginning of the government by teachers, students and entities in the area to revoke the new high school law, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) announced on Tuesday (21) that he had asked Minister Camilo Santana (Education) to present a new proposal for the stage.

The policy for the new secondary education establishes that students must have 3,000 hours of classes over the three years of the stage, with 60% of the common course load for all with regular subjects. The other 40% are formed by electives within five major areas of knowledge, the so-called training itineraries. By law, every school must offer at least two itinerary options to students.

Even following the law, schools do not have enough structure to meet the choice of students. This is the case of the state school Adenilson Franco, in Franco da Rocha, which offers four itineraries, but was unable to guarantee that student Janet Baez, 17, would go deeper into the area she wanted.

In the 1st year of high school, the school consulted the students about which itinerary they wanted to follow in the next two years. Janet, already determined to be an architect, chose mathematics. But, the following year, she discovered that she had been enrolled in the humanities class.

“They said they couldn’t meet everyone’s wishes, that they had to organize the classes so that they were all the same size.”

“The worst thing is that, in addition to not having studied the area I wanted to, they also reduced the time of normal classes to have the itineraries. I hardly studied mathematics, chemistry and physics”, says the student, who is in the 3rd year and there is only one math and Portuguese class a week.

Approved in 2017, the new secondary education law increased the workload of this stage from 2,400 hours to 3,000 hours. However, it limited the part of the common disciplines to 1,800 hours, so that the rest can be complemented with elective disciplines.

As shown by Sheet, students have complained that these new subjects are taking the time away from traditional content. “They removed the math classes to include a subject on extreme sports. In class, they teach how to stretch. How am I going to get a good grade on the Enem learning how to stretch?”, asks Janet.

Camila Oliveira, 17, is also on an itinerary she didn’t choose. As she wants to work in the communication area, she opted for the language area, but was enrolled in a sustainability itinerary at the João Comenius state school, in Jabaquara, in the south zone of the capital.

“It’s a mess because neither the students nor the professors have the option of choosing anything. I’m taking a subject called light and technology, which involves the physics content, but the person who is teaching the class is a Portuguese teacher”, he says. .

“This subject doesn’t make any sense, it’s just taking up the time I could be learning Portuguese with the teacher in the room having to teach something else.”

A Sheet he also spoke with students who changed schools during high school and were unable to continue the itinerary they were on.

This is the case of Carolina Fialho, 17. She left at the end of the 2nd year of a private school where she studied languages ​​in depth. Upon entering the following year at a state school, she was told that the only option available was in the natural sciences class.

Prize draw

Professor at a state school in Arapiraca (AL), Lucas Costa says that he and his colleagues put together a plan of which itineraries they would offer and presented proposals for students to choose from. Then they found out that they would have to follow other itineraries already determined by the Department of Education.

The school then decided to divide the students through a lottery. “They called the representatives of each class to follow. They were saying the names of the students and raffling which class each one would go to.”

The same procedure took place in a state school in Santo Ângelo, in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul. Teachers set up ten itineraries to offer to students, but later found out that they could only go on with two. To balance the classes, the unit chose to draw students.

For Débora Goulart, professor at Unifesp and member of Repu (Public School and University Network), the imposition of itineraries is inevitable due to the structure of teaching networks and schools.

“The model was never designed to actually give the student the option of choosing. First, because who determines what the itineraries are are the departments of education. Then, the schools end up organizing themselves according to their structure, according to the number of teachers, classrooms”, he says.

Fernando Cássio, professor at UFABC and member of the National Campaign for the Right to Education, says that the reform of this stage imposed that schools create itineraries without providing structural conditions for change.

“There was no hiring of more teachers, opening of new classes, construction of laboratories. No structural problem was dealt with and the schools were left with the task of organizing themselves with the little they had. They created an unmanageable model and the public educational system collapsed .”

Olavo Nogueira Filho, executive director of Todos pela Educação (one of the entities that supported the reform and is against its repeal), recognizes that the problems faced by the network are not just a flawed implementation, but an error in the design of the policy. Even so, he argues that it is possible to make adjustments and “preserve the essence” of the reform, which would be the flexibility of disciplines.

“The design of the policy made a mistake in establishing such a low time limit for the regular disciplines. The issue of itineraries was also very loose and culminated in this bunch of absolutely inadequate paths that we are seeing in the country. With adjustments, it is possible to adapt to what we need .”

Questioned about the cases of students who did not have their choice respected, the Secretary of Education of São Paulo only informed that the mentioned schools offer more than four itineraries. But it didn’t explain why students couldn’t study what they wanted to.

Management Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans) also said that he is studying adjustments in the stage. The Secretary of Education, Renato Feder, defends the reduction of the offer of itineraries in state schools and wants to redistribute the workload to increase the classes of regular subjects.

The Department of Education of Alagoas reported that all state schools offer three itinerary options, but “group” students according to need. In a note, the Secretary of Education of Rio Grande do Sul said that it is not from the folder the orientation for schools to draw students.

---

Understand the New High School

What is it
Measure approved in 2017, by provisional measure, during Temer (MDB), defined that part of the workload would be chosen by students so that they could deepen their knowledge in the area of ​​greatest interest.

Structure
It increased the number of hours of mandatory annual classes for the stage, going from 800 to at least 1,000. Thus, the total workload of secondary education was increased by 25%, from 2,400 to 3,000 hours, as follows:

• 60% of the common workload with the regular disciplines
• 40% formed by electives within five major areas of knowledge, the so-called training itineraries

for whom it is worth
All public and private schools in the country. About 7 million students were impacted by the policy, most of them (about 85%) are enrolled in schools in the state education networks

Deadlines
The law established a period of five years for education systems to prepare themselves, following the following schedule: 1st year of secondary education in 2022, 2nd year in 2023 and the three-year stage until 2024