Secondary education: Understand changes approved by the Chamber – 03/22/2024 – Education

The Chamber approved on Wednesday (20) the project that provides new rules for high school students across Brazil.

Deputies allied with the Lula government (PT) and opposition parliamentarians made a behind-the-scenes agreement and the new guidelines for the last educational stage in students’ education were approved in a symbolic vote, with resistance only from PSOL.

The matter goes to the Federal Senate and, if the House makes changes to the text, the project returns to the Chamber before proceeding for presidential approval.

The topic returned to Congress’s agenda after President Lula came under pressure from allies and sent a bill to revoke the secondary education reform drawn up by the then government of Michel Temer (MDB) and sanctioned in 2017.

Now, if the text approved in the Chamber prevails, the education system will have to adapt to implement the new rules. There was an expansion of mandatory subjects, an increase in the workload for classes in the common curriculum for all students, changes in the training itineraries that students choose to delve into, among other changes.

The approval of the project required a lot of negotiation between the rapporteur, deputy Mendonça Filho (União Brasil-PE), and the Minister of Education, Camilo Santana. Both got excited in a closed meeting and apologized to each other to try to calm the atmosphere.

The government saw it as essential to maintain the 2,400 mandatory hours in all training itineraries. Mendonça, however, obtained support from the majority of political parties and state education secretaries against the proposal. The view is that the lack of flexibility in the workload would make technical courses unfeasible.

In the end, the government gave in and reached an agreement to avoid greater losses in relation to the project sent to Congress last year. Understand the changes:

1. Common curriculum hours

Deputies approved a minimum workload of 2,400 hours for the common curriculum, which includes traditional subjects such as Portuguese, mathematics, physical history, among others. Only students who choose to take a professional course will have their common course load reduced to 2,100. Students who choose technical courses that require 1,200 hours, such as nursing, for example, will be used 300 hours of the common curriculum – in total, there are 3,000 hours in the complete cycle.

Today, due to the reform approved in 2017, 1,800 hours are set aside for mandatory subjects and 1,200 for the training itinerary chosen by the student.

2. Mandatory subjects

If the rules approved by the Chamber become law, the following subjects will become mandatory: Portuguese language and literature, English, arts, physical education, mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry, philosophy, geography, history and sociology. Currently, Portuguese, mathematics, physical education, arts, sociology and philosophy are essential subjects according to the common curricular base.

3. Training itineraries

Upon reaching high school, students need to choose which training itinerary they intend to pursue. In addition to the technical course, the other four options are languages ​​and their technologies; mathematics and its technologies; natural sciences and their technologies; and applied human and social sciences. The government tried to brand the name of the flexible part of the curriculum as “in-depth and integration of studies paths”, but the Chamber returned to the expression training path. Schools “must ensure that all high schools offer comprehensive in-depth study” of the four areas, “organized into at least two itineraries”, as stated in the approved text.

4. Distance learning

The 2017 secondary education reform provided for the possibility of online classes and also allowed schools to sign agreements with distance education institutions. The government, however, sent the project to Congress without this provision, only allowing training itineraries in specific situations. In the end, the Chamber authorized online teaching, but only in exceptional situations and subject to regulation by the Ministry of Education.

5. Enem

Although it does not specifically mention Enem (National Secondary Education Examination), the project states that the federal government must define how knowledge of training itineraries in university access tests will be addressed. “The Union will develop indicators and establish expected performance standards for secondary education, which will be a reference in national evaluation processes”, says the standard.