The past, present and future of inequity in Brazil
Claudio de Moura Castro 1
Brazil has had a long history of inequality and education has a lot to do
with it. The legacy of inequality comes from the colonial status in the past
and the carry over from Iberian styles of colonization.
This paper attempts to trace the roots of inequality, present the relevant
numbers to measure it and, then, show what is being done to improve the
situation.
For the record, the entire discussion hinges on the inequitable inequality.
Catholic, Jewish and Protestant schools prepare differently its students.
The outcome will be different, but there is no inequity involved.
As we look back at our history, Brazilian social and racial relations were
tempered by a high degree of miscegenation and blurring of ethnic lines. In
addition, the country escaped from bloody wars, both civil and against
outside enemies. Peaceful solutions to social problems have been found,
mostly by negotiation and other pacific means. One cannot take for
granted these traits of Brazilian society. One cannot say either that they
are altogether positive or negative.
However, educational achievement has been the weakest link in Brazilian
development. This paper claims that this is at the root of Brazilian
inequality. The country inherited from Portugal a very backward system of
education. Very slow progress was achieved throughout the centuries.
Only in the last fifty years did progress pick up and education started
catching up. Despite the outstanding progress, the present situation is not
at all satisfactory.
1
O autor agradece sugestões úteis de Simon Schwartzman. Mas obviamente, continua responsável pelo que
está dito no ensaio
I. The origins
The present chapter reviews the roots of inequality. It also notes that they
are closely associated with educational inequality
A. Historical roots
Portugal colonized Brazil, not by building trading posts and manning them
with a garrison. This happened in Africa or India. This was also the case
with the UK in several African countries, where small enclaves of
expatriates managed the colonies. The Portuguese promoted a significant
migration to the territory, as was the case with the UK and the
Netherlands in South Africa.
For three centuries, Brazil was a colony of Portugal. Then, as a result of
Napoleon’s wars, it became the head of the Portuguese Empire. Therefore,
to a significant degree, the Portuguese inheritance is pervasive, with its
positive and negative consequences.
If Portugal gave Brazil a positive heritage in terms of tolerance and
cohabitation of widely different cultures, the same cannot be said of its
educational legacy. Colonial countries are often criticized for
shortchanging their colonies in education. This is probably the case with
Portugal. However, the main reason that the Portuguese gave very little
education to Brazil was because they did not have much of it themselves.
Therefore, Brazil inherited a very meager education system from Portugal
and this has been one of the most serious problems in the country.
For about four and a half centuries, Brazilian education kept more or less
in line with the overall poverty of the country. During the spirited
economic growth that took place during the XXth century, education
picked up, but was not able to keep up with the economy. As a result, the
country remained far more backward in education than would correspond
to its per capita income.
The rhythm of education expansion accelerated in the second part of the
XXth century. In fact, it became extremely fast in the last decade. But
there was too much catching up to be done in too little time.
Brazilian economy has grown faster than any other country in the world
during the XXth century. Urbanization has been extremely fast, perhaps
one of the fastest in the world. The creation of huge cities brought all the
corresponding tensions.
The rich have become richer and more numerous, no question about it.
While the situation of the poor keeps improving – as measured by all
conventional indicators of well being – the distance has not been
significantly reduced. From a backward and contained society, it has
become a dynamic and turbulent nation, with a serious social gap – ‘social
debt’ as it has been called.
Could better schools mitigate the disruption and anomie generated by
such fast urbanization? Could they help in generating the economic
growth that is indispensable to improve the well-being of all?
B. Inept education bureaucracy
It is naïve to blame bureaucracy for all the evils of education. It must exist
and, in modern societies, the need for a substantial bureaucracy cannot be
denied. The issue is whether the country is being well served by its
bureaucracy.
Brazilian bureaucracy is a direct descendent of Iberian formalism. It still
mixes the delivery of services with self-serving practices of civil servants
and the spoils system. However, it is not a homogeneous system. Some
segments are modern and efficient, as is the case of the bureaucracies
dealing with post-graduate education and science. In contrast, primary
and secondary school systems, particularly at the local level, can be quite
traditional, inefficient and infiltrated by politics.
The critical issue at hand is the direct association between the quality of
the public bureaucracy and the educational achievements of the
corresponding level. Post-graduate education has always had the best and
the most efficient bureaucracy, both in the Ministry of Education and in
the independent agencies that fund research. Higher education suffers
from a heavy and ponderous bureaucracy. But some branches within it
move relatively well.
In contrast, for a long number of years, the bureaucracies dealing with
primary and secondary education have been chronically weak – at federal,
state and local level. They are ideologically more naïve, less informed about
the world and implementation limps along, at a snail’s pace.
A country that needs desperately to improve the quality of primary
education is not well served by the corresponding Federal bureaucracy.
Worse, at the local level, the bureaucratic machinery tends to be even
more inefficient and plagued by political maneuvering and spoil politics.
The best intentions to reduce inequality stumble against immovable and
incompetent administrative machinery.
C. Education expansion is bad for those who have been left out
We always think of education as a good thing and this paper follows the
same line. Yet, there are some perverse aspects of education expansion.
In a traditional society, smart and hardworking individuals can learn a
trade, open a business and move up in society, even with very modest
levels of education. However, modernity progressively closes the doors to
those who do not have considerable levels of education, even if all they
want is to perform very modest occupations.
Brazilian economy has gone much beyond this basic level. Its
sophistication has dramatically increased and schooling levels have
responded. A respectable segment of the economy is modern and highly
competitive, both in manufacturing and agro-business.
One immediate consequence of modernity is that access to just about
every job has now filters for education. The most desirable jobs require
much education. Nevertheless, even those that hardly require any
education at all, such as garbage collection, have selection processes
where education is a requirement.
Granted that such schooling requirements are silly or absurd, the fact of
the matter is that they exist and are pervasive. The consequence is that
individual progress without formal schooling becomes ever more difficult.
Therefore, those that cannot succeed inside schools are automatically
losers outside of it, particularly in the labor market. We all know that the
correlation between schooling level and income is quite strong.
Given those reasons, the most critical determinant of success and failure
in the world of work is school performance. Understanding the filters that
exist inside schools preventing many from moving ahead is critical to
understand inequality – and to develop the requisite policies.
II. The face of inequality
This chapter examines the trajectory of Brazilian education, with emphasis
on those aspects that portray the past and present inequalities.
A. Historical trajectory
By any standards, Brazil is a late bloomer in matters of education.
Nevertheless, the recent transformations are nothing short of spectacular.
By early XXth century, only about 10% of the primary education cohort
was attending school. By the middle of the century, about half were going
to school. At the turn of the century, 97% of the 7-14 age bracket were
attending school. Even more remarkable, enrollment in secondary
education has trebled in the last ten years.
Virtual universalization of 7-14 years cohort was a momentous
achievement, belated, as it might have been. It is, by far, the most
dramatic tool in reducing inequity.
However, the job is far from done. Only 84% of the students conclude the
forth grade and 57% conclude the eight years of elementary education. At
the end of secondary education, only 37% of the cohort gets its diploma.
The most perverse aspect of this pruning down of the school cohort is its
selective nature. Among the 20% poorest students, their presence in
school falls from 95% in the 7-14 age bracket to 73% in the 15-17 bracket
and to 28% for those between 18 and 24. By contrast, the proportion of the
20% highest-income group remains constant thorough all age levels. In
other words, the rich move up the education ladder, with hardly any
casualties, while almost three fourths of the the poor get stuck and leave
school.
Brazil practically did not have public schools of any level in the XIX
century, except for a few higher education institutions. In fact, a small
number of Medical, Engineering and Law schools were created during the
early XIXth century, but expansion afterwards was very slow.
It was only during the late XXth century that systems of public schools
expanded. However, afterwards it did so very fast indeed. From close to
nothing, enrollment now approach 100% of the cohort, at primary level.
Gross enrollment in secondary education corresponds to two thirds of the
cohort (even though too many students are overage).
In contrast to the fast expansion of public education at the elementary and
secondary level, in the last decades, public higher education slowed down.
In fact, it almost stopped growing. The gap in higher education was picked
up by the private sector. It then expanded much faster than the public,
capturing now 70% of enrollment. Notice that this is real private sector,
with no public subsidies of any significance. Students pay full cost for
their education and a growing proportion of the institutions declare their
profit motive.
To sum up, Brazilian backwardness in education comes from the past.
Historic comparisons with Europe show an enormous gap. However, even
compared to countries such as Argentina and Uruguay, the difference was
surprisingly large, since these countries started moving towards universal
schooling by mid XIXth century. Brazil was almost one century behind.
Little changed, until World War II. Nevertheless, what came afterwards was
quite impressive. In less than half a century, Brazil is catching up very fast
to the best performers in the region (Uruguay, Argentina and Chile).
As much as Brazilians should rejoice for such a spectacular performance,
its rough edges are there to be seen. Rapid expansion meant lots of errors,
waste and qui pro quos. Could they have been avoided? Is it possible to
grow that fast and avoid tripping and falling every now and then?
B. The quality gap
While the public education system was small, quality tended to be at least
reasonable. Relatively few enrolled and those were predominantly from
middle-class background. Most schools were located in relatively
prosperous cities and had decent teachers. In fact, teaching was the only
socially-accepted profession for young ladies of good extraction.
The explosive growth during the second part of the XXth century broke
down this traditional and small system. There was relatively little attention
given to quality of basic education during the expansion that followed – all
eyes were glued to the construction of a network of high-profile
universities.
Not surprisingly, it seems that quality of basic education went down
precipitously, even though hard data on that is not available. While
education became vastly less elitist, what was offered to the new clienteles
became sorely deficient.
Contrasting with the previous decrease in quality, the extraordinary
expansion in enrollment at all levels that took place in the nineties
happened with little or no degradation in quality. This can be considered
as one of the most outstanding achievements of the period, as education
could have gotten much worse. In fact, the present author predicted
further deterioration of quality.
From the early nineties on, a reliable measure of school achievement
became available, SAEB. This is a large sample survey that covers the
fourth, the eight and the last year of secondary education. According to the
data, collected every two years, quality remained essentially constant.
At the same time that this was a major feat, one must understand that the
quality levels that remained constant are unacceptably low. At the end of
fourth grade, less than half of the students are fully literate. In principle,
almost all students should be literate at the end of first grade. According to
PISA results, Brazilians perform around four years behind their OECD
counterparts. In fact, Brazil was the worst performer in the 2001 PISA test.
C. The educational framework
As a federated country, Brazil has a central authority, 27 relatively
independent states and around 5500 municipalities, also quite
independent.
The division or responsibilities is rather complex. The Federal Ministry of
Education operates a network of public universities and has a loose
jurisdiction over the local systems. It also allocates funds to supplement
local expenditures. In addition, it has the official mandate to set
educational policies, to evaluate students and schools as well as to collect
and analyze education statistics.
Each state has its own independent Secretary of Education, with its own
teachers, management and tax collection. Increasingly, states operate only
secondary schools but many still have elementary schools under their
direct operation.
Municipalities also have their own Secretaries of Education and the
corresponding tax collection. They predominantly operate elementary
school.
Curricula are national, as well as the rules on number of hours of class
per year and related legislation. But the operation is local, as well as
setting salaries and careers for teachers.
To complicate matters further, some municipalities and states have
secondary schools and a few states have higher education institutions. For
instance, the premier university in Brazil, the University of São Paulo, is a
state institution.
Around 15% of primary and secondary students attend private schools.
Close to 70% of the higher education students attend private colleges and
universities. As mentioned, there are no public subsidies for private
education. Students must pay the full cost of their education.
Private primary and secondary schools are considerably better than their
public counterparts.
At the higher education level, there is a reverse situation. Public
universities have high costs and private colleges are much less expensive,
around one third of what costs public universities.
As shown by a test given at the end of the undergraduate years, the very
best programs are predominantly public. However, for the run-of-the-mill
programs that predominate, let us say, two thirds of the total, the
difference in quality between public and private is minor, if it at all exists.
From an equity perspective, the system is quite unfair. The more affluent
students attend private schools, at the elementary and secondary level.
The remaining 85% attend public schools. When comes time to enter
higher education, those who could afford the private schools are better
prepared for the examinations. They capture more than half of the places
in public universities, even though they add up to 15% of secondary
graduates. In other words, those that could afford a private education are
over three and a half times overrepresented in tuition-free public
universities.
Looking at it from a public subsidy point of view, the university students –
from the middle classes - get a free education that is worth over ten times
more (per year) than what it costs to offer one year of primary or secondary
education.
D. Premature emphasis on higher education
As mentioned before, it took four and a half centuries for Brazilian
education to wake up. Before that, it lingered, being late in all its
dimensions, even compared to the poorer neighboring countries.
Basic education finally started growing, from the fifties on. However, Brazil
decided that it had to develop a network of public universities, doing
research and offering post-graduate courses, in order to prepare more
teachers and leaders for future growth.
At that time, the role of well-prepared leaderships was stressed, justifying
a very heavy investment in creating, at least, one federal university in each
state capital. Even though the implementation of education plans has had
a long tradition of remaining in the paper, in the case of higher education,
the performance of the Ministry of Education was exemplary. Lavish
campuses were built and thousands of the brightest students were sent
abroad for masters and doctorates. Upon their return, beginning in the
seventies, over one thousand graduate programs were launched.
The plans were so successful that the growth and maturation of higher
education created a grave imbalance between levels. Brazil implemented a
serious network of public universities, including some of excellent quality,
long before much more than half of the corresponding age cohort was in
primary schools. One immediate result was that there were not enough
students to allow higher education enrollment to grow much. For around
two decades, enrollment in public universities almost stagnated. Notice
that during the late eighties, more than 60% of the high school graduates
entered higher education. This is higher than just about anywhere in the
world.
There was a foregone opportunity to build the education system from the
bottom up. Instead of starting by the creation of a solid primary school,
them moving up to the other levels, Brazil put almost all its efforts on
higher and post-graduate education.
This policy created a two-pronged equity issue. The first is the decision to
spend with a level of education to which only the more affluent families
had access - because they were the ones that finished secondary. The
second problem was not focusing on the initial levels of education where
the foundations of a more equitable system is built.
Only in the nineties did this quantitative imbalance between an overgrown
higher education and a narrow elementary education disappeared. But, as
mentioned, it vanished only in the quantitative dimension. Quality is still
sorely lacking.
E. Gender is indeed an issue - for boys
Gender equalization has been one of the social themes of the XXth
century. After centuries of imbalance, the richer countries changed gears,
giving women greater political rights and more education. Progressively,
the gender differences in education dwindled and disappeared – in most
cases.
Brazil has taken a similar route, but long before it reached the levels of
education and economic development of industrial countries. Traditionally,
the gender differences were also large, as expected.
The great education revolution happened in Brazil too late, during the
second part of the XXth century. This was a period of very fast economic
growth. During the entire period, urbanization and modernization were
also proceeding at a fast clip.
Since the country was very late, it did not follow the European pattern.
Europeans first developed education systems for boys, while girls lagged
behind. Only later, did girls caught up.
Brazil remained backward for a long time. In those periods, women were
certainly way behind men in education. But above all, both sexes were
behind. When finally education caught on, it brought on board both boys
and girls.
Given the accelerated growth in enrollment, the gender gap was quickly
eliminated. It is instructive to notice that there was no conscious effort to
equalize gender enrollment or any other spelled-out policy. Feminist were
not particularly powerful. Equalization just happened, spontaneously.
But this spontaneous push for women’s education did not stop at equality.
Women now have more schooling than men, at all levels, except doctorate.
The difference of ten percentage points at the end of secondary is
worrisome, as this imbalance can have destabilizing effects on society.
As happened in the West Indies, there may be room for affirmative action
on behalf of boys, particularly at the secondary level.
F. The problem is being black or being poor?
At the time of discovery, the local Indians were nomadic. The booming
sugar business needed manpower. To supply the plantations and sugar
mills, successive attempts were made to enslave the Indians for that
purpose. However, it did not work. Their nomadic temperament made the
task close to impossible.
That led the Portuguese to bring African slaves to work in the sugar cane
plantations. Later on, they were brought to the gold mines in the State of
Minas Gerais. In the second part of the XIXth century they became
indispensable in the coffee plantations. Their number constituted one third
of the Brazilian population in 1850.
However, slave trade became increasingly frowned upon, during the XIXth
century. For reasons that probably involved a lot more than human rights,
Britain took military action against the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean.
Echoes of that in Brazil were, first of all, a scarcity of newly imported
slaves. But the opposition to slavery, progressively, took root, on grounds
of human rights. Legislation restricted the use of slaves, freed all the sons
of slaves and facilitated schemes to make them free. Finally, in 1888,
slavery was totally abolished. By contrast to the United States, this did not
create much of a shake up in society or in the economy.
However, hardly anything was done to support the recently freed slaves.
And even less was offered in terms of education. After all, education was
not being offered to the poor White either.
Therefore, a little more than one century ago millions of slaves were set
free but without an education. They were the poorest segment of society –
that is self-evident. And they were not given the tools to overcome this
situation in the years ahead.
Therefore, it is not a surprise to find that the Blacks, who were the former
slaves, remained predominantly among the poorest groups of society.
Correspondingly, their education level, on average, remained quite low.
This has happened elsewhere, including the United States.
From the point of view of the present discussion, what matters is how
many generations it would take to bring this group on par with society. In
fact, it is taking a long time indeed. Simple comparisons between Blacks
and non-Blacks show, on average, very significant differences. Illiteracy
rates – which heavily reflect the past – were 2.5 higher for Blacks in 1992.
Today the difference is double. Average number of years of study reached
two years in 2004.
Such differences must have been caused for many reasons. In the United
States, Jim Crow laws endorsed several forms of discrimination. They
made it much harder for the Blacks to catch up.
Brazil never had laws that discriminated against blacks. In fact, the official
ideology was one of integration and several laws made discrimination a
serious offense. However, Brazilian education has been, throughout
history, very weak, if it at all existed. And surely, it short-changed the poor
and those who lived far from the capitals.
Since the Blacks started very poor, they had little access to education. The
lack of schools and, worse, the lack of good schools suggests a very critical
question, from the point of view of racial inequity: Are the chances of
school success for a poor Black worse than those of a poor White?
Several researchers have struggled with this question in the recent past.
There are honest attempts to shed light on the issue, in the middle of the
emotional overtones of some advocacy groups.
Researchers introduced more strict statistical controls, isolating the effects
of parents’ education, economic conditions and geography. The results are
quite suggestive. In terms of explained variance, being poor is much more
harmful than being Black. In other words, the sons of poor White are
almost as bad off as the poor Blacks. This much, we know for sure.
The question that remains is the size of this ‘almost’. Studies show that
there is still a difference. How much should we make of it? To what extent
it results from the impact of other socio-economic variables not included in
the analysis? To what extent is it the result of discrimination? To what
extent is it ‘self-discrimination’ or low self-esteem? These questions remain
controversial.
However, there is now a powerful factor at play. The acceleration in school
enrollment in the last few decades brings a significant change in the
situation of Blacks. Since primary schooling has become universal, at this
level, the education distance between blacks and whites has practically
disappeared. In fact, Blacks and Whites differ little today in their
enrollment from 7 to 14, 93% versus 96%.This is a significant advance,
considering that it was 13 percentage points in 1992. But this process is
only at the beginning, as the racial difference in higher levels remains
significant.
G. Where are the Indians?
There are two different ways of looking at the Brazilian Indians. There are
Indians living in tribes, mostly in remote areas. And there are those
Brazilians with Indian blood. The disproportion in the numbers is
overwhelming.
Indigenous populations comprise 225 groups, speaking 180 languages.
The number of Indians still in tribal life or closely associated with their
original nations has been estimated at 600 thousand. Of these, 480
thousand live in reservations – comprising 108 millions hectares (12.7% of
Brazilian territory). Compared with the Brazilian population of 180 million,
they correspond to a very small proportion. It is illustrative to compare it
with Chile where almost ten per cent of the population is Indian.
But there are the other ‘Indians’. In the XVIIth century, the area today
corresponding to the State of Pernambuco was donated to a man by the
name Cavalcanti Albuquerque. He subsequently married the daughter of
the local Indian chief. Therefore, all his descendents are part Portuguese,
part Indian. Such mixing of Indians and Portuguese immigrants had
begun before and continued afterwards.
A safe generalization is that almost all the population of the Northeast has
a significant amount of Indian blood. Therefore, any affirmative action to
benefit Indians, defined as someone with Indian blood, would leave out
very few of the fifty million inhabitant of the Brazilian Northeast. By a
criterion of blood, the entire elite of the region would be entitled to
whatever benefits were offered to Indians. If that were not enough, in this
region of the country, even the Indians living in reservations and protected
by a legal statute have significant White blood.
Therefore, any policy having to do with Indians would become nonsensical
unless it is focused only on those groups that retain their cultural identity
and tribal life. The whole issue is complicated and defies simple answers.
Some Indian tribes hardly retain their original languages and customs.
Others remain ferocious and beyond the reach of civilization. In between,
all possibilities occur.
A significant number of tribes are at the frontier of what generously can be
called ‘civilization’. These are wild and, to some extent, lawless regions.
There is much fighting for land and the White groups are a motley group of
bandits, adventurers and settlers. The Indians are certainly not winning
those disputes.
For a long time, the size of the tribes was shrinking. Prostitution and
alcoholism were serious problems. In recent years, the tribal population
stabilized and is now growing again. Child mortality went down from 75
per thousand to around 50, between 2000 and 2005. These are considered
a major achievements of policies dealing the Indians.
Despite being heavily criticized by many, FUNAI, the agency in charge of
Indian Affairs, has tried very hard to improve the lot of the Indian tribes
they assist. From what we can gather from scattered evidence, it provides
the Indians with decent schooling. In the last few years, school begins in
the native language and progressively changes into Portuguese. It seems
that those Indians assisted by FUNAI schools get a better education than
the frontier non-Indian children who attend regular public schools.
From a quantitative point of view, Indians are a very small part of the
Brazilian population. To sum up, we can tentatively say that in many
reservations, Indians are being fairly well looked after and their schools are
quite reasonable.
Of course, that is not to say that the Indian problem has been solved.
Those that are close to civilization remain very poor and, to some extent,
discriminated by the other local poor. Worse, both they and the non-Indian
poor are somewhat beyond the reach of the social programs that today
benefit almost all Brazilians.
III. Present policies to fight inequity
As will become apparent along the next several paragraphs, much effort is
focused on the reduction of educational inequalities. Some interventions
are quite successful and tackle the issue directly. This is the case with the
universalization of elementary education – already mentioned - and
FUNDEF. Others either are less central or have shortcomings in their
implementation.
A. Basic education for all
By far, the most potent weaponry against inequity of all origins is a good
and universal system of basic education. This, as we all know, is what is
taking longer for the country to achieve.
In fact, Brazil lagged behind even countries that today are amongst the
poorest in the region, like Paraguay and Bolivia. Stock statistics, such as
average schooling, literacy rates and proportion of the population with this
or that level of education still show Brazil behind those countries, since
they reflect what was not done in education more than half a century ago.
It is to the credit of the present generation that this situation has been
reversed in the last two decades. In all flow statistics, Brazil is approaching
Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, the educationally more advanced countries
in the region. As mentioned before, at the turn of the millennium, around
97% of the 7-15 year cohort was attending school. This is a very major
achievement. It means that, in quantitative terms, poor and rich, black
and white are still in school, by the time they reach 15. There is no better
road to reduce inequality. It took much too long to get there, but one
cannot take for granted this major landmark.
Surely, there is much to do ahead. Quality is appalling and the schools
that cater to the poor and to remote areas are much weaker. There is a
long way to go, in order to reduce the differences in school performance
between different groups in society.
Not only that but, at higher levels of education, the differences between
social classes persist. At present, less than two thirds of the age cohort
finishes the eight years of primary school. The dropouts come
predominantly from poorer families. As could have been easily predicted, a
significantly smaller share of the cohort finishes secondary education.
At the threshold of higher education, the pruning down continues. Gross
enrollment in higher education is around 20% and net enrollment is 10%.
This huge difference can have two interpretations. One can say that the
system is so bad that when students get to higher education they are
already adults, beyond the official ages.
But one can also say that the system now allows another previous
generation to have a second chance to enroll in higher education.
Depending on ideological persuasion, one or the other explanation is
chosen.
Nevertheless, these numbers are immensely better than those of just a
decade ago. The path to reduce inequality at higher levels is the same
observed for primary education: schooling for all. As mentioned, the next
step is quality improvement, a very hard task indeed. To sum up, no other
alternative educational policy can replace this overall effort to improve
coverage and quality.
B. Fundef, a fund to reduce inequality in education expenditures
FUNDEF (Fundo de Manutenção e Desenvolvimento do Ensino
Fundamental e de Valorização do Magistério) turned out to be one of the
most powerful tools to reduce the geographic inequality in education
expenditures. It particularly benefited the poorest regions - states and
municipalities.
In simple terms, it created two rules. Localities that spend the
constitutionally-mandated proportion of their budgets in education and do
not reach a given threshold of per capita expenditures are entitled to
receive from the fund what is needed to cover the difference. Municipalities
that fail to spend the legal proportion must pay back to the fund the
difference between what was spent and the legal requirements.
Two thousand municipalities, responsible for 66% of municipal
enrollments, benefited from the transfers. In the poor Northeast,
expenditures increased by 89% and teacher salaries increased by 49%.
Overall, FUNDEF created 153 thousand new jobs, mostly for teachers. In a
country with a strong tradition of regressive public spending, FUNDEF is a
brilliant exception.
FUNDEF is circumscribed to elementary schools. The present government
has prepared a similar project, encompassing pre-school, elementary and
secondary education. Presented to Congress and Senate, it was well
received. At present, final approval of the law is pending and the rules to
split the funds between levels are still unclear.
C. Bolsa-escola - cash transfers for staying in school
Brazil was one of the first, if not the first country to experiment with
transfers to families, conditioned that they keep their children at school. In
Portuguese, these programs are called Bolsa-Familia (that translates as
‘Family-Scholarships’). The program consists in cash allowances to poor
families, as long as they keep their children enrolled in school, with
regular attendance and obtaining acceptable grades. In some cases,
programs include the creation of a savings account for the family - which
only becomes available if the child completes the corresponding
educational cycle.
Such programs started in Brasilia, the capital, and spread around. In the
late nineties, a Federal version was launched. At the transition to the
millennium around 8 million students were attending such programs. In
addition, several Latin American countries adopted similar schemes,
including Argentina. The World Bank and the IDB took a serious interest
in them.
There are two ways to look at them. But first of all, we have to consider
that these are expensive programs. Per student costs can be as high as the
per student costs of public education. In that sense, it doubles what it
costs to maintain a student. This was the case with the earlier versions of
the program in Brasilia.
If an education authority has a large chunk of money, earmarked for
education, it is very likely that such stipends are not the best way to spend
it. Public schools operate at a bare minimum, lacking often the most
indispensable supplies and equipment. The large sums that need to be
mobilized to create significant Bolsa-Escola programs could produce a
revolution in the physical look of classrooms.
In order to be justified, when compared to other forms of allocation, one
would have to demonstrate that it generates massive reduction in dropout
rates. Unfortunately, the evidence for such reductions in attendance is far
from adequate or convincing. To start with, we just do not know how many
of those who receive the stipend would have dropped out if it did not exist.
The best we can say is that, in some cases, there may be some association
between staying in school and getting the stipend. But the numbers are
less than convincing. Consider that between the ages of 8 and 13 close to
100% of the youth attend schools, regardless of such Bolsa-Escola.
Be that as it may, there are other ways at looking at the program that
make it far more attractive. In a poor and inequitable country, such as
Brazil, the government is always looking for better ways to support families
directly. Anchoring a cash transfer program to public schools is a very
efficient way to define and control the clientele that benefits from it. In
other words, the government could simply to set up transfer mechanisms
for the parents of poor children. These programs would compare well with
other alternatives transfer options. But if, in addition to having a foolproof
basis for transfers, the program could create incentives for children to
remain in school, so much the better.
Therefore, as a program to improve schools and attendance, the evidence
in favor of Bolsa Escola is quite thin. However, as a money-transfer
program that, in addition to its intrinsic benefits, it helps reduce dropping
out, then it may become a much more desirable social program.
D. Picking the talented
When public schools covered only a small fraction of the corresponding
cohort, there were several excellent public schools. After all, since they
were few, the country could well afford their costs. In addition, they were
predominantly frequented by the middle and upper classes. Nevertheless,
a small number of talented or lucky children from modest or outright poor
extraction attended them.
Massive expansion in public education was achieved at the cost of eroding
the quality and prestige of such excellent schools. Education for all meant
mediocre public education for all. While the chances of attending school
for the children from poor families increased manifold, the high quality
alternatives for them shrunk precipitously. Quality education became
largely concentrated in the private schools. Since private schools in Brazil
get practically no public subsidies (other than modest tax benefits), they
operate on a strict pay-to-attend basis. Very few scholarships for the poor
are ever offered.
Programs to remedy this situation remained on a stalemate for decades.
Curiously, the left seems partly responsible for this state of affairs. Teacher
Unions and education gurus, from the eighties on, opposed achievement
testing. Yet, they are an almost indispensable tool to pick the most
talented in public schools.
Worse, the educational left – solidly installed in the education
administrations - strongly opposed the idea of picking the talented poor
and putting them in better schools. The prevailing ideology was subsumed
as ‘mainstreaming’ and, in practice, it meant just keeping bright student
in the same environment that lacks the stimulation they need to bloom.
In the last several years, the situation begins to change, thanks to private
philanthropy, rather than government action. Two major business leaders
created programs to select the most talented students in public schools
and place them in top private institutions (Bom Aluno and ISMART
programs). In addition, Embraer, the leading Brazilian aeronautical
manufacturer, paired with the Pitágoras school system to create a model
high school. This institution can only be attended by graduates of the
public schooling system. Every year, it offers 200 places for public-school
graduates, screened through competitive examinations. While creating a
school for the gifted was not the original goal, a 27:1 selection rate ensures
that the chosen few are quite talented.
While it is premature to pass a definite judgment on these programs, the
initial results seem particularly encouraging. Perhaps, as a most welcome
indirect consequence of the thinking and discussions that surfaced with
such initiatives, the very idea of picking the talented and putting them in
better institutions is becoming more acceptable.
Not only that, but also some states are exhumating the old idea of having a
few high quality public schools, with competitive tests to enroll. At least,
Sergipe and Pernambuco are moving in this direction. It is instructive to
notice that private business is supporting the movement, in the case of
Pernambuco.
Overall, this entire discussion refers to the fate of a few thousand
students, in a school population of over forty million. Hence, the issue is
not at the core of the massive problem of equity. However, the matter is
not so simple. To start with, in any population, the truly gifted youth are
few. Considering the lack of good pre-schools and primary education, by
the time the selection takes place, too many will have already been victims
of the system. In that respect, the number of places in such programs is
not so small, compared to the population of gifted children from poor
origins.
Another aspect of the issue is the fact that the existence of such programs
has a symbolic meaning for the poor. It means knowing that if they do well
in public schools, they have a serious chance to attend the very best
private schools in the country. This is no minor incentive.
E. Programs to facilitate access to higher education
From what we know, the proportion of poor children attending higher
education seems to have changed very little indeed in the last several
decades.
To be sure, the data are quite inadequate for such comparisons. Given the
rapid increase in the average schooling of the population, in twenty years,
the mean schooling of fathers of higher education students increases by
several years (and by a different number of years, depending on where we
choose to measure). If today’s students come from families with bettereducated parents, we cannot conclude that higher education is becoming
even more elitist.
Occupational status is a more stable indicator. However, it is rarely
defined the same way in the statistics that would shed light on the social
evolution of enrollment. Family income is an even greater nightmare, due
to uncontrollable under-reporting and to statistical problems to account
for inflation.
Despite the limitations in available data, it seems that the presence of
poorer children in higher education stagnated. This happened, despite
massive growth in a higher education system that enrolled 107,000 in
1962 and reached around 4.5 million last year.
Indeed, the impression we derive from the data is that not much has
changed. Enrollment growth came, initially, from the enrollment of women
(who are now considerably more numerous than men) and, increasingly,
from families that are just a little bit poorer than those that formerly
provided higher education students. In non-rigorous parlance, the lower
end of the lower middle class is the growing segment of higher education.
In fact, with the exhilarating growth in secondary enrollment, graduations
are not too far from half of the corresponding age cohort. This is a share of
the population far bigger than the one third or one fourth considered to be
‘middle-class’.
Therefore, the poor but not the very poor are increasingly coming to the
threshold of higher education. The reason their proportion does not seem
to be increasing faster is quite clear.
Public universities do not charge tuition, even though they have costs
roughly equivalent to those of OECD countries. Therefore, the betterprepared youth from the higher levels of society fiercely compete to ensure
a place there.
In contrast, private education is fully funded by students who pay fees to
attend. Therefore, the poor have few options. They can compete for the
relatively small number of vacancies in the less desirable and competitive
careers in public universities. Or they can pay the tuition in the less
expensive private institutions.
Prestigious careers in public universities are twice closed to the poorer
segments of society, even though they do not charge tuition. First, since
the poor attended public schools of doubtful quality, they cannot compete
well in the entrance examinations - that can have as many as 30
candidates for each vacancy. Secondly, they must work, which is
incompatible with full time university programs.
Private higher education institutions are the alternative for the vast
majority of those who are barely above the threshold of being able to pay
the tuition. The fact of the matter is that most of the courses are offered
during the evenings.
Despite the vast growth in enrollment, it seems reasonable to say that
there is a very significant number of potential candidates to higher
education that are barred, due to their inability to afford the tuition (on the
average, 200 US$ per month).
The above discussion provides the rationale for programs that facilitate
access to higher education by poorer students. This is an issue that has
become more public and more visible in the last five years.
Student loans
Traditionally, the government has operated a student-loan program (FIES)
for several years. It was plagued by low repayment and bureaucratic red
tape, but seems to have improved in the last several years. The major
problem is that it has remained stagnant for a long time, reaching no more
than about 15% of the enrollment in higher education.
Several private higher education institutions have their own student-loan
schemes. But the interests are too high and their coverage is quite modest.
Non-profit institutions offering student loan exist, for a long time. A case in
point is APLUB, from Rio Grande do Sul. In very recent years, a for-profit
institution was created, to offer student loans at reasonable costs. It is too
early to evaluate this initiative.
PROUNI – tuition waivers in exchange for taxes
PROUNI, is a program that essentially gives tax exemptions to private
colleges, in exchange for tuition waivers to poorer students. It was quite an
unexpected move from a left-leaning government to create a program to
fund private education. The left did not really like it, but it chose not to
protest too vehemently. Owners of private higher education liked the
program but quibbled for a long time on the details of implementation.
Finally, the program is in full swing and the first crop of students adds up
to almost 150 thousand.
The critics of the program – right and left – complained that it would bring
down the quality of the student body. Entirely satisfactory evidence is still
not available. However, numbers compiled by some colleges suggest that
PROUNI students are just as prepared and, after admitted, perform just as
well as the others. A major tool of the Ministry of Education to ensure
quality intake in the program is the use of the ENEM test, a technically
very competent examination targeted to the end of secondary education.
Overall, the program is quite a success. Even some of the most acid critics
of the present government believe that it is the most successful initiative
implemented in the last three years.
Quotas for students from public schools
While PROUNI is showing solid results, the idea of quotas for minorities
and students from public schools remains shrouded in controversies and
ambiguities. Let us start with the simpler quotas for student from public
schools – that are much easier to implement.
Equity is served by any fair mechanism that increases the chances of the
poorer students (from public schools) to attend public universities.
However, there is more to the issue than the mere fact that equity
improves.
First and above all, there is a political dimension to the choice of a quota
program at the threshold of higher education. This level commands many
decibels. It is visible and belligerent, bringing much public attention to
government policies.
Yet, by the time the quota mechanisms could take action, around four out
of five poorer students have already been expelled from the education
system. Therefore, it is affirmative action for a small fraction of the target
population.
Many observers, including the present author, have argued that the most
drastic and profound form of affirmative action to the poor would be to
improve the quality of basic education. Whatever the country offers at
higher levels, it is no more than palliative action, unable to reduce inequity
in the system.
The next issue is excellence and meritocracy. All serious higher education
systems have these two principles as their pillars. A quota system that
militates against them defeats the classic purposes of a university.
Therefore, there is a critical question to ask: are the beneficiaries of the
quotas chosen in a way that preserves meritocracy and prevents quality
from falling? Here, what matters are the mechanics of implementation. Are
the formulae to choose students such that one can have equity,
meritocracy and excellence?
The Ministry of Education proposed a simple mechanism of reserving 50%
of the places to students from public schools. At least one estimate of
possible deterioration of academic standards with such mechanism was
produced. Under some plausible scenarios, the University of São Paulo
estimated that the quality in of its medicine and law courses would
precipitously fall. However, there are unsubstantiated claims in the
opposite direction. The confusion worsened, due to the lack of clarity on
whether the quotas would be for each career within the university or for
the aggregate enrollment. The whole question remains murky.
Parallel to these acrid arguments, the University of Campinas and, later,
the University of São Paulo, adopted a much more attractive approach.
Under this scheme, students from public schools are given a 30 point
bonus in the written examination that determines who enters the
university. That bonus brings in students from public schools that were
close to the cutting point between being accepted and being rejected.
Previous research had shown that poorer students with approximately
similar scores at the entrance examination perform at least as well as the
others. After all, they are almost winners in the examinations and clear
winners in the sense that they overcame their lower socio-economic status.
Even more interesting is the program adopted by the University of Santa
Maria, in the extreme south of the country. Instead of lowering the bar, the
University created a large program to support public high schools in their
vicinity. The program beefs up the education offered in these schools and
prepares their students to compete better in the same examinations. As a
result, two thirds of Santa Maria students come from public schools, a
number that is much higher than that of any public university in Brazil.
An encouraging sign is a modification in the revised proposal for a higher
education reform law submitted to Congress by the Ministry of Education.
Contrary to previous versions, it backs up from mentioning mechanisms
and numbers, where it refers to quotas. Instead, it leaves open the forms
by which public universities ought to increase their intake of students
from public schools.
Quotas for Blacks and Indigenous populations
Within the quotas for public education students, the Ministry of Education
also proposed quotas for the Blacks and the Indians. In other words, the
ethnic component is added to the thorny issues of quotas.
There are two issues at stake. The first is procedural: How to determine
who is Black or Indian? According to official statistics, around 5% of the
Brazilians are supposed to be from pure Black stock, displaying all the
visual features of their purely African ancestry. Around half of the
Brazilian population is visually White or Caucasian. The remaining forty
percent is supposed to be mixed, more often than not, European with
Black or Indian.
Recent DNA research messes up such distributions. Hardly any Brazilians
are a ‘pure stock’, whatever that means. In addition, the match between
DNA results and visual aspects is not necessarily obvious. Caucasianlooking individuals turn out to have Black blood and vice-versa. If the
country were to use DNA to implement racial quotas, it would create an
immense confusion.
Hence, a racial quota would have to consider visual aspects or ancestry.
The former is the standard Brazilian practice. Whoever looks White, is
White. And vice-versa. This has been the Brazilian way of dealing with
race for centuries. But who is to look and decide? Where is the borderline?
The University of Brasilia requires a picture of the candidate, to check on
whether the declared race matches what appears in the photo. This has
created strong reactions from many sides, but the university is adamant
on that.
The official policy is to accept self-identification. Whoever classifies him or
herself as Black is Black. No questions asked. Initial implementation of
this policy has shown some abuse, as denounced by the press. The legal
nightmare created by individuals disputing racial identification could
suffocate the legal system.
Unavoidably, the racial quotas are creating much uneasiness in Brazilian
society. Not that this discussion is bad, in itself. But as conducted, we do
not know whether the outcome will be positive overall.
One very thorny aspect of the issue is that it may have a tendency to
polarize the races, something that Brazilian society had wisely avoided.
Some qualified observers seem to believe that Brazil could achieve the
same or better levels of racial equity without destroying the peaceful
cohabitation and the true melting-pot nature of Brazilian ethical relations.
Quite worrisome is the tendency to borrow the American definition of
Black as someone who has any amount of Black blood. Politically, it has
the consequence of increasing the proportion of Blacks from 10% to half of
the population. But how can we consider half of the population a minority?
The overarching concern of many qualified observers is that quibbling and
disputing on who is what color at the doors of higher education may have
a very deleterious impact on race relations. It is too early to know, but
there are enough reasons to worry.
F. Conquering spatial inequity
Brazil has more than seven million square kilometers of surface, being
larger than the United States in continuous territory. While this enormous
space offers a boundless potential, providing higher education outside the
main cities has been an overwhelming challenge.
In the sixties, the federal network of public universities greatly expanded.
In every Brazilian state, at least one federal university was created.
This was an outstanding jump ahead, considering what was available in
the past. The downside is that the country was left with a network of
higher education institutions that only covered the capitals of the states,
in a country where this could mean that the closest university could be
thousands of kilometers away.
The federal system operates with very high per student costs and was
unable to expand further, in order to move beyond the state capitals.
Instead, the private sector took over, moving away from the capitals, in
order to tap a virgin market. This move begun about two decades ago.
Today, there is a total of about two thousand institutions of higher
education, a significant proportion being away from the capitals.
Therefore, reducing geographical inequity began with the initiative of the
federal government to put one university in each capital. But it was up to
the private sector to move to smaller and more distant towns.
In the last few years, another important step is being taken to further
reduce spatial inequity: distance education. Since the early eighties, Brazil
wanted to emulate the Open University and create a distance university.
However, there was much resistance against it, from many sides.
Twenty years later, the push for distance education is coming back, with a
vengeance. In the last five years, the private sector has moved very swiftly
to offer a significant variety of distance education programs. Some years
ago, the Ministry of Education made a attempt that did not go very far. Its
only significant offerings were focused on teacher training. In the very
recent past, a major federal program has been launched, with ambitious
goals.
To sum up, after demurring for two decades, distance education is picking
up and is growing very fast, lead by the private sector. Estimates of
present enrollment show figures around 300 thousand students.
It is interesting to notice that e-learning has remained small. The favored
solution is televised classes, beamed by satellite. This seems to result from
the Brazilian intimacy with television and the past successful experience of
offering high quality primary and secondary education via TV.
IV. Future scenarios
This section offers some concluding remarks. It first comments on the
overall tendency for international competition to become tougher. Any
country that wants to do well and survive the harsher economic
environment has to worry a lot about the level of skills of its workforce.
Indeed, Southeast Asian competitors are eroding Brazilian competitiveness
in traditional areas such as electronics, textiles and shoes. Toys are almost
a lost case. The prosperous and growing automotive industry is already
suffering from the increased strength of East Europe and China.
Keeping this competition at bay is a matter of life and death for the
Brazilian economy. In order to do that, it is almost unnecessary to stress
the importance of higher order skills in the Brazilian labor force.
Increasingly, it becomes difficult to compete with China and even more,
with countries such as Vietnam, in products that depend on cheap labor.
Social costs in Brazil are high and modern industry has jacked up hourly
salaries. In addition, indirect costs - what is called ‘Brazil-Costs’ - increase
further Brazilian products. An overvalued exchange rate may be a
temporary condition, but it has already lasted for a few years.
Therefore, Brazil needs a very well prepared work force, to retain its
present market niches and conquer additional ones, in more sophisticated
products. For high-end products, high-end skills are necessary - very few
would disagree with that.
Under such pressure to compete, what priority could be assigned to fight
inequity? Actually, the response points to a virtuous circle. It is no longer
an ‘either-or’ situation.
There is no longer such a thing as an economy that is driven by high order
skills while, at the same time, the bottom of the occupational ladder is
semi-literate. In today’s economy, a large share of the highly productive
and high tech firms are small. In addition, in the large firms, hierarchies
are flatter. The shop-floor operators have to take many decisions that can
be relatively complex. This all adds up to a workforce that needs
considerably more skills, even at the bottom.
Fighting inequity means improving the education achievements of those
that are at the bottom. This is a meritorious target in itself. It ought to be
done for reasons of social justice alone.
However, under the present conditions, it is also an economic imperative.
To improve efficiency and the competitiveness of the economy requires
considerable, if not drastic, improvements in the education levels of those
at the bottom.
Therefore, the classic trade off, efficiency versus equity, seems to have
vanished. Brazil needs both and the policies that lead to efficiency are not
very different from the policies that improve equity.
The true challenge now is not a priority stalemate but the hard issues of
implementation. The real question is whether, after a long history of
agonizingly slow development in education, at all levels, the country will be
able to move much faster than before. A lot was achieved in the last
decade. Will the process continue? The last four years were not
encouraging, as enrollment growth slackened and not much happened to
quality.