New National Education Plan can transform Brazil – 02/02/2024 – Sou Ciência

At the beginning of this week, the National Education Conference (Conae), promoted by the Ministry of Education (MEC), ended. Conae was preceded by free, municipal, intermunicipal, state and Federal District Conferences.

This entire process that culminated in Conae 2024 was very symbolic and extremely important for Brazilian society, as it materialized a rupture in the retrograde and undemocratic direction of public policy formulation, typical of the governments that followed each other between 2016 and 2022.

The administration of former president Michel Temer, for example, changed the composition of the National Education Forum (FNE), the body responsible for participating in the processes of design, implementation and evaluation of the national education policy, excluding several entities in the area and emptying, with this, dialogue and the presence of society with the government. The administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro eliminated numerous channels of effective popular participation in the development of public policies.

With the recomposition of the FNE, on March 17, 2023[MM1] , along the same lines as the one that was disfigured in 2017, the Forum resumed its functions and established the following theme for Conae 2024: National Education Plan 2024- 2034: State policy to guarantee education as a human right, with social justice and sustainable socio-environmental development. A theme that realizes the aspirations of large parts of Brazilian society for the education of its people.

Over the course of three days, Conae 2024 participants evaluated the educational plan currently in force (PNE 2014-2024), identified the problems and educational needs that have afflicted our population and approved a text with proposals for the new plan (PNE 2024- 2034), coming from different participatory forums of Brazilian society and entities, such as associations of researchers, education professionals, unions, students and social movements.

The approved text will be the basis of the bill that the MEC will send to the National Congress, to be subsequently transformed into law after processing in the legislative house. Both the MEC and Congress can propose amendments and changes to the text approved at Conae 2024, which will require entities and the entire Brazilian society to pay close attention and monitor this process.

In general terms, the debates and the approved document show that the great educational challenges persist!

After all, in addition to the setbacks of recent governments in the area of ​​education, we are facing a pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 700,000 Brazilians and placed millions of students and education professionals facing unimaginable challenges, but mainly facing an extremely exclusionary situation for the majority of students and many Brazilian teachers.

Therefore, the document indicates that, together with the assistance and monitoring of Brazilian society, the different spheres of government need to:

Consolidate the National Education System, through integrated and intersectoral public actions, that definitively put into practice the federative collaboration regime established in the 1988 Federal Constitution;

Universalize basic education, guaranteeing access, permanence and completion for students, at all levels, stages and modalities of teaching in different contexts and territories of the nation;

Guarantee socially referenced, free, democratic and secular quality education and the democratic management of schools and education networks, providing adequate material conditions for institutions and their professionals and public financing for public education;

Value education professionals, offering quality training, adequate and fair salary and career standards, as well as conditions for exercising the profession and maintaining their health;

Value inclusion policies and respect for diversity, combating inequalities and any type of discrimination and violence;

Strengthen the role of education committed to social justice, the protection of biodiversity and sustainable socio-environmental development to guarantee quality life on the planet.

Among the many approved proposals, we highlight the repeal of the New Secondary Education (NEM), with a proposal to replace it with a new model already being processed in the National Congress (PL 2601/2023 and PL 5230/2023), and the repeal of the Common National Base Curricular (BNCC), with the development of a new curricular project for Basic Education. Both policies were formulated during Michel Temer’s administration and were widely criticized on this Blog, by research associations and by students and teachers across the country. This is, therefore, a fundamental point for the advancement of policies that can truly promote the full training of our students.

For the implementation of the proposals presented, we also highlight the emphasis given at the conference to the maintenance of a proposal that had already been established by the PNE (2014-2024) and approved by former president Dilma Rousseff: the application of 10% of GDP for education . This issue is seen as fundamental to achieving the other goals of the PNE (2024-2034), especially with regard to the universalization of basic education, as defended by the National Association for Research in Education Financing.

The start of the plenary session on the last day of the conference, January 30, was accompanied by a chorus of voices from most of the voices present crying out: “education is back!” No wonder, CONAE 2024 is a major milestone in the reestablishment of democratic participation in national education. However, this participation did not end on January 30th.

We know that some of the harmful setback proposals made for the country’s education in recent years still gain support in the actions of many of the parliamentarians present in Congress. Therefore, attention is needed on the part of the entire Brazilian society in monitoring the text approved by CONAE throughout the process in the National Congress to guarantee its approval and execution. This is a task for all of us!

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