Professor Dorinha will be the rapporteur for the homeschooling project

Senator Professor Dorinha (União/GO) was designated as the rapporteur for Bill 1.338/2022, which deals with the regulation of homeschooling, the so-called homeschooling. The proposal, already approved by the deputies in May last year, is being processed in the Federal Senate.

The text is under discussion in the Education Committee, where some public hearings were held throughout 2022. Before becoming law, the proposal needs to be approved by the committees and in the Senate plenary to follow the presidential sanction.

According to the president of the EC and former rapporteur of the proposal, senator Flávio Arns (Rede-PR), the processing of the project will follow the initial planning. “It is an issue that deserves a broad debate by civil society together with various sectors of the Government. So far, 3 public hearings have been held, with fruitful discussions about the legal and constitutional implications of the project, as well as its impact on public systems and private education. Other hearings will be in charge of the new rapporteur of the Matter in the EC”, he said.

Arns sees the proposal as an “important subject and present in the legislative agenda of the National Congress”. He assesses that “after the conclusion of all the public hearings necessary to exhaust the topics that permeate the theme, there will be valuable subsidies and full conditions for the Federal Senate to deliberate on the legislative project of home teaching”.

The new rapporteur has not yet given feedback on the project and what it will take into account. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Dorinha even presented an amendment to the homeschooling to the Provisional Measure that changed the calendar of basic and higher education due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the original text was not complied with. In his proposal, students would need to be enrolled in schools to adhere to homeschooling, but would only be submitted to national exams, such as the National System of Basic Education (Saeb).

“It is a choice for families. It is a practice adopted in several countries, such as Canada, with great success and good results”, said Professor Dorinha to Veja in 2020.

In a report from last year, the People’s Gazette showed that the project has faced resistance from some senators. There are senators who intend to wait for the public hearings to take a position. Others point to problems such as the possible lack of qualification of the parents and damage to the socialization of children to position themselves against the proposal.