Quota Law is amended after approval by the Chamber

This week, the House of Representatives approved a bill revising the Quota Law, which guarantees the reservation of vacancies in universities and federal institutes for black, brown, indigenous, disabled and low-income public school students. Bill No. 5384/20 goes on to be evaluated by the Federal Senate.

Law 12,711/12, which created the quota system, already provided for the reformulation of the policy after ten years of implementation, which should have occurred in 2022.

See the changes foreseen in the bill:

income reduction

Half of the vacancies reserved for quota holders will be allocated to students with a family income of up to one minimum wage (R$ 1,320) per person. Currently, the required family income is one and a half minimum wages per capita.

Quilombolas

The inclusion of quilombola students in the quotas of universities and federal educational institutes is planned. So far, the benefited students are black, brown, indigenous, disabled and low-income public school students.

Completion of quotas

The project brings a new criterion for filling quotas. First, the quotaholder candidates will compete for vacancies in the broad competition. If the grade is not enough to enter through this modality, they will compete for vacancies destined for their subgroups (blacks, browns, indigenous peoples, quilombolas, people with disabilities and public school students). As a result, quota holders will have more than one option for entering the university course.

student aid

Students who opt for quotas will have priority to receive a permanence scholarship and other types of student aid.

Postgraduate

According to the bill, institutions must promote affirmative action for the inclusion of blacks, indigenous peoples, quilombolas and people with disabilities in postgraduate programs. The project does not define which policy should be adopted, giving autonomy to the entities. According to the Ministry of Racial Equality, by December 2021, more than half of graduate programs at public universities had some type of affirmative action in the selection process.

Revision

Every ten years, the quota policy must pass an evaluation, with annual monitoring.

For the Ministry of Racial Equality, which acted for the approval of the PL, the prediction of affirmative actions in graduate programs is a step forward.

“The inclusion of graduate studies is a significant step forward, especially since the wording does not necessarily provide for quotas. The bill recognizes the inherent autonomy of postgraduate programs and establishes as a rule the proposal of affirmative actions with flexibility so that each program can propose and execute its affirmative policies in order to meet its specificities and differences in its selection processes ”,

highlights the director of Affirmative Action Policies at the ministry, Anna Venturini.

The director of the Faculty of Communication at the University of Brasília (UnB) and rapporteur for the institution’s racial quota policy in 2003, Dione Moura, considers that the renewal of quotas is necessary in the country, but one cannot lose sight of the fact that it is a policy temporary.

“The university is halfway through training qualified personnel for the job market. This path begins at the age of five, when they need day care. Then, you have to have pre-school, elementary, high school to get to university. Along the way, we are losing children and young people. The question that impresses and leaves us with the overwhelming need to claim, to claim and highlight that the quota policy is a provisional regulatory action. Permanent is education for all”,

said the researcher and pioneer in the implementation of affirmative policies in higher education in the country.

What does the law say today

Enacted in August 2012, Law 12,711 set aside 50% of enrollments at federal universities and federal teaching institutes for students who attended high school in public schools. The other half continues with the broad competition.

Within the quotas, half is for public school students with a family income equal to or less than one and a half minimum wages per person. The remaining 50% for public school students with family income above this amount. In both situations, vacancies are reserved for self-declared blacks, browns and indigenous people based on the proportion of these groups in the total population of the Federation unit where the institution is located, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

In 2017, people with disabilities also had access to quotas, based on the proportionality of the population of the state and Federal District.

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