PART I Cap 01 Education Novo.Qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 106 Cap 01 Education Novo.Qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 107

Cap_01_education_novo.qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 105 PART I Cap_01_education_novo.qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 106 Cap_01_education_novo.qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 107 1 Education Cap_01_education_novo.qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 108 Cap_01_education_novo.qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 109 1 Education Introduction In the last decade, Brazil’s commitment to improving educational outcomes yielded dramatic gains at an almost unparalleled rate. Now, to consolidate those gains and create an education system that meets Brazil’s needs, the key challenge for the Federal Government, as well as for state and municipal governments, is to intensify their efforts to improve Brazil's educational equity and efficiency while focusing on the improvement of student learning, institutional capacity, and accountability. Brazil is close to achieving universal basic education. There has been a massive expansion in basic education enrollment, significant increases in school grade promotion rates, as well as substantial improvements in equity, all supported by a substantial rise in public expenditure in education at all levels of government. More specifically, the following trends are indicative of these gains: • A dramatic rise in enrollments. During the five-year period from 1996 to 2001, Brazil enrolled an additional 2 million primary school-aged children, raising the net enrollment rate of 7 to 14 year old children to over 95 percent. Enrollment at other levels of schooling also increased: including from 382,000 to 1.1 million children in crèches (0-3 years), from 4.1 million to 4.8 million children in preschool (4-6 years), and from 5.7 million to 8.5 million students in secondary education (grades 9-11). • Widespread reductions in repetition. From 1996 to 2000, student grade promotion rates rose 8.8 percentage points in municipal systems and 5.2 points in state systems. Besides the obvious direct benefits to children and their families, every 1 percent reduction in students in grades 1-4 who are held back to repeat a grade implies a saving of US$240 million. The draft of this chapter was completed by Robin Horn in November 2002. The analyses and sug- gestions contained in this chapter are based on the international technical experience of the World Bank and are presented as a contribution to the debate and formulation of public policies. 109 Cap_01_education_novo.qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 110 110 BRAZIL: EQUITABLE • COMPETITIVE • SUSTAINABLE – CONTRIBUTIONS FOR DEBATE • Significant improvements in equity. Between 1996 and 2000, even as median spending per student increased, Brazil experienced substantial reductions in the variation of per-student spending across states and municipalities. For example, the difference in unit expenditures between the municipalities at the 95th percentile of the spending distribution and the 5th percentile decreased from 22 times higher spending to only 8 time higher spending. Substantial Reforms in the Education Sector Increased financing of education has played a major role in generating these impressive performance gains. Public spending in education steadily increased during the past eight years by about 30 percent, from 4.2 percent of GDP in 1995 to 5.5 percent in 2000. Municipalities alone spent nearly R$24 billion on education in 2000, nearly twice what they were spending, in real terms, in 1995. While the federal government has provided incentives for state and local governments to increase the performance of their education systems, and introduced far reaching education reforms, legions of municipal and dozens of state governments have complemented the federal reforms by unleashing their own cre- ativity and resources to develop important reforms, initiatives and experiments of their own. This combination of actions has dramatically altered the educational landscape in Brazil. The key national reforms introduced during the last decade include the following: In 1996, the approval of the National Education Law (LDB) provided a markedly improved delineation of the roles and responsibilities of the state and municipal governments with respect to the provision of education. This law also supports the establishment of minimum quality standards (including curriculum and teacher qualifications standards), and further decentralizes service provision to sub-national governments, reserving for the Federal government primarily normative, monitoring and financial roles. The Fund for Development and Maintenance of Basic Education and Teacher Valorization (FUNDEF) which began operating in 1998, simplifies and makes more transparent and equitable the transfer of federal funds to finance basic education, and establishes clear cost-sharing obligations for sub-national governments. Resource alloca- tion with states and across municipalities through FUNDEF is based on student enrollment in the respective jurisdictions, and has proven an important incentive for states and municipalities to increase service coverage. The Ministry of Education's Fundescola Program provides technical assistance services and transfers of federal subsidies to help the poorest states and municipalities improve the quality of schooling in their jurisdictions. With this support, sub-national governments Cap_01_education_novo.qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 111 EDUCATION 111 are encouraged to increase coordination, assure minimum quality standards for all of their the schools, and implement more efficient and effective school improvement programs. School autonomy has become a major public education policy objective, which has been supported through the creation in 1995 of the "Money to the Schools"(Dinhero Direito na Escola) program, financed by the Ministry of Education's National Education Development Fund (FNDE), which in turn is funded through the federal share (quota federal) of the Education Salary Tax (Salário Educação). The FNDE transfers federal funds directly to the school bank accounts set up and managed by their school-parent councils, with the amounts based on school enrollment. The creation of the Basic Education National Evaluation System (SAEB) and the annual School Census (Censo Escola) put in place essential instruments to improve the quality and equity in education. The SAEB evaluation and the School Census results are widely disseminated by the Ministry of Education (MEC), contributing to promote social mobilization in support of education reform, and to strengthen the efforts by schools and education authorities in improving service delivery. At the secondary level, graduates are tested on proficiency with respect to the national curriculum parameters by means of the recently created National Upper-Secondary Education Exam (Exame Nacional de Educacão Média -- ENEM). At the tertiary education level, quality assurance has also been introduced with the creation of National Exams (Provão). ENEM and Provão results are widely disseminated and have improved student choice and quality control on the part of schools and universities. Combined education and social assistance policy reforms have created strong incentives to attract children to schools, particularly through conditional cash transfer programs such as the national Bolsa Escola program. These efforts have paid out with impressive enrollment increases at the fundamental education level. At the upper-secondary level efforts are still timid and should be intensified as a key policy pri- ority for the coming years. Understanding the remaining problems of equity and performance The unprecedented gains in performance listed above, supported by these policy reforms and programs, need to be followed up by increases in the efficiency and quality of schooling to improve Brazil’s long-term growth prospects and young people's opportunities. The quality of schooling varies considerably across Brazil. Children attending some public schools in Brazil lack the basic educational opportunities that are available to children attending schools in other parts of the country or even in better endowed schools within the same jurisdictions. Furthermore, Brazilian schools are still not managing to educate Cap_01_education_novo.qxd 10/2/03 3:32 PM Page 112 112 BRAZIL: EQUITABLE • COMPETITIVE • SUSTAINABLE – CONTRIBUTIONS FOR DEBATE most of their students. SAEB test performance appears to have reached a plateau at a relatively low level, with no significant gains since the 1995 test administration. For example, the 2001 SAEB results show that less than half of 4th grade students in Brazil per- form at level 3 on a 10-level mathematics proficiency scale, and this percentage has not increased since SAEB was introduced in 1995. What is behind the relatively poor performance? Much of the failure begins in the first grade, where poor instruction and inadequate monitoring in initial reading skills result in hundreds of thousands of children slowly moving through the school system with an increasingly insurmountable handicap. Most first grade children have never participated in preschool or early childhood development programs. Although the federal government has been promoting improved learning standards—for example, and as mentioned above, by introducing national curriculum parameters, national assessment, and guaranteed provision of textbooks—improvements in classroom teaching practice are slow to material- ize. Research shows that in elementary schools, most teachers continue to rely on tradi- tional "chalk and talk" instructional approaches at all grade levels of basic education—an approach that fails

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