Unified competition: Courses carry out war operations – 01/26/2024 – Market

Since the first news about the creation of a unified national public examination began to circulate, preparatory courses went into a “war operation”. The objective: to prepare students for the biggest competition in the country, about which little was known.

The buzz started in August, a month before the MGI (Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services) gave some clues about what would become the CNU (Unified National Competition), whose registrations opened on the 19th.

At the time, what was known was that the federal government planned to promote a form of selection similar to Enem, bringing together all public service vacancies in the same test.

The challenge, however, was in the “how”. Competitions are known for their high degree of specificity and, up until that point, the feasibility of bringing together questions from completely different public institutions in the same assessment was unknown.

In total, as was later announced, there will be 6,640 vacancies for 21 bodies linked to the federal government, such as ministries and the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

The solution created by MGI was to divide the competition into eight thematic blocks – each with its own notice –, in order to group similar content and target candidates with a vocation for certain areas, maintaining the possibility of competing for more than one vacancy in the same block .

For the federal government, the initiative will speed up the recruitment of thousands of public servants; for preparatory courses, a headache.

“The students were very apprehensive, because, until then, everything was very black and white: they studied based on old notices”, says Gabriel Granjeiro, CEO of Gran Cursos, an education startup (edtech, in the sector’s jargon) focused on for these selections.

“In addition to the CNU having no precedent, we knew it would be different [dos outros] already with preliminary information from the government. It was announced that there would be eight blocks, so we took the previous notices [dos 21 órgãos federais], the most recurring themes in different thematic blocks and the most sought after subjects for each type of competition. So we set up a ‘pre-announcement’ course”, he explains.

That was what could be done at that point. In the Educational Strategy, edtech for competitions and entrance exams, the action plan was the same: build a “pre-announcement” product based on previous competitions.

“The entire market [de concursos públicos] I only had previous notices and Enem as a parameter. We imagined that it would be very difficult to unite such different areas into similar thematic blocks and axes in a public competition, because we would have very technical careers and more general ones in the same test. We didn’t know how this was all going to happen”, says Wagner Damazio, strategy’s arketing director.

At the same time that doubts were weighed, the number of interested parties grew. Although they do not disclose concrete data, both courses —which are leaders in the market— reported a high demand for candidates, especially those who did not consider a career in public service before CNU.

As they are EAD (distance learning) courses, demand has also expanded outside of large urban centers, as the test will be administered in 220 cities across the country – one of the strengths of “Enem dos Concursos” for mitigating travel and accommodation. The assessment of experts consulted is that, with the CNU, the public service will be more inclusive and representative of the Brazilian population.

Cash-touch production

Now, the test already has an official date: it will be on May 5, 2024. With the publication of the notices, on January 10, the courses began to unravel the contents foreseen in the thematic axes of each block.

Then a fight with the calendar began. There is a consensus among the courses: the eight notices took everyone by surprise.

“Many classic subjects did not come and were replaced by new topics. Labor tax auditor, for example, who has the highest starting salary of all opportunities, will not have labor procedural law, a subject directly linked to the career”, says Damazio.

Another example: Portuguese language, mathematics and logical reasoning, previously stamped cards for all careers, will not be charged in blocks 1 to 7, aimed at candidates with higher education. Instead, disciplines such as Brazilian reality were introduced, with themes such as public policies, human rights, diversity, inclusion and the environment.

The test will require candidates to prove their commitment to public service, “republican spirit” and an understanding of what the democratic rule of law is – without leading to issues of “sealing” and partisanship, according to the MGI itself.

The objective is to attest to the flexibility of those who want to work in the public sector. Experts consulted by Sheet stated that the exam should be designed to extract analytical and technical responses from candidates, not political opinion or general knowledge of Portuguese and mathematics.

This reconfiguration of the program content has forced a race against time between the courses: from the publication of the notices to the date of the test, 116 days are counted.

The first major challenge of the Concursos Strategy was to identify what content was already ready and which teachers would be best suited to produce what was missing. “Topics such as ethics, integrity and challenges to the Rule of Law are very broad, with potential for sociological, economic and legal perspectives. We needed to understand which professionals were best suited to deal with each topic, including interdisciplinary approach”, explains Damazio.

There, 74 teachers were relocated to teach classes and produce support material, which, in some cases, will be more than half written by hand.

“We were careful to open each topic within the thematic axes, so that, in some of them, we will have classes taught by up to four teachers from different subjects”, reports Victor Tanaka, public competition specialist at Estilo.

Gabriel Granjeiro, from Gran Cursos, reports that candidates look for content “for yesterday”, which has accelerated the internal production of digital books and lean materials for review.

“We created a war group for a competition that took on a life of its own and is on its way to being the biggest in history. There are 40 teachers producing daily content to feed the students’ study routine”, he says.

Even with the surprise, experts see the program content positively – especially because it elevates first-time candidates to “professional candidates”, those who are used to the routine of studying for competitions.

The assessment is that, as most of the topics are new and there is no previous test for comparison, the competitive advantage of those who have been preparing for competitions for a longer time has been reduced.

“The ability to plan, organize and absorb knowledge in this final stretch will be a differentiator,” says Damazio.

“The CNU allows new people interested in public service to fight on equal terms with professional candidates, as long as there is commitment and organization.”

Or, in Granjeiro’s words, “the competition, especially the CNU, is not just for those who are ‘heads'”.