The EFA 2000 Assessment: Country Reports
Brazil

6. Secondary Education

As a matter of fact, in the period between 1990 and 1998, enrollment in this level of education more than doubled, soaring from 3.5 to 6.9 million students. The number of students who concluded the course more than doubled, from 658,000 in 1990 to 1.5 million in 1998. Such growth gave rise to a mighty pressure on the demand for openings in the secondary educational system, as well as in post-secondary professional courses.

There are nevertheless signs that secondary education can expand even more in the next few years, considering that only about 32% of the population aged between 15 and 17 are enrolled at the moment. This picture places Brazil far below the more developed countries, such as France and Great Britain, where over 80% of the population in this age group attends schools. The position is also unfavorable when the Brazilian figures for high school graduates in relation to the population at 17, theoretically the age to complete the course, are compared to those registered in OECD countries (Table 50), or even in Latin-American neighbors like Argentina and Chile.

However, it should be remembered that while 85% of the segment of the population aged 15-17 is served by the school system, the high repetition rates and high rates of students who drop to re-enter later on retain a large percentage of adolescents over 14 in primary schools.

Source: Brazil: MEC/INEP/SEEC; OECD countries: Education at a Glance/1997

Obs.: 1. Data on Brazil refer to 1995

2. Data on OECD countries refer to 1994

Secondary education is also where one finds the biggest gender gap, with a high concentration of female students enrolled, which shows how Brazil needs to develop a policy to stimulate male schooling beyond primary education. With a more regular flow in the educational system and more participation by males, the demand for openings in high schools should continue to grow at a fast pace in the next decade and reach a level of stability only after the year 2008, when INEP estimates that the system will have 10.4 million enrollments.

Another important feature of secondary education in Brazil is that openings in the public system are concentrated in evening courses (Table 51). Although this concentration has positive aspects, allowing as it does access to secondary education to young people who have daytime jobs, there are indications that it might be excessive. Indeed, the availability of secondary education at night is often due to the necessity of using school facilities dedicated to primary education during the day for this purpose.

Source: Ministry of Education/INEP/SEEC

The public network now accounts for 82.4% of secondary education enrollments, absorbing the impact of the expansion witnessed in the 1990s. On the other hand, the private network has seen a reduction in its supply of enrollments at this level of education. This phenomenon has been greatly intensified over the last two decades. In fact, the proportion of secondary school students attending private institutions fell from 46.5% in 1980 to 17.6% in 1998. There was also a reduction in absolute terms, since the figure of 1,310,921 high-school students enrolled in private schools in 1980 dropped to 1,226,641 in 1998.

The rapid growth of secondary education is linked to the socioeconomic dynamics of the country and points to a process of great educational mobility. But there are also intra-systemic factors that are certainly contributing to induce this growth, such as the improvement of primary education, which has led to a considerable increase in the number of students who complete the 8th grade.

In this closing of the 20th century, the labor market has become more selective, demanding secondary-education qualification as the minimum schooling for applicants for a job, regardless of the function to be performed, encouraging students to enroll in secondary schools. This explains the tendency observed in recent years for the number of enrollments in the 1st grade of secondary schools to exceed the number of students who concluded the 8th grade of primary education the year before, since there is a significant number of people returning to the system to complete their basic education. So there will be a need for hefty investments in new school buildings.

If secondary education, from the point of view of expansion of enrollment, has performed remarkably in the 90s, the same cannot be said with regard to the indicators of efficiency, which are still far from desirable (Table 52). Serving a more heterogeneous clientele makes the challenge all the greater. Nonetheless, given the priority attached to secondary education, it is possible to turn that situation around by means of more effective policies to improve the quality of education, as was done with primary education in the last four years.

Source: MEC/INEP/SEEC

As far as age is concerned, it is to be hoped that students will finish secondary school when they are turning 17 or 18 years old. However, more than half of those who graduated (50.36%) were found to present an age/grade gap, with a substantial percentage of students over 21 (25.24%). In this regard, secondary education reproduces a very similar pattern to what is seen in primary schools, as mentioned earlier. Evaluation of those who graduate from secondary school also revealed that the students' performance varies negatively as the age/grade gap increases.

An analysis of the parents' schooling disclosed a scenario of significant educational mobility in the group of students concluding secondary education in 1997, with only 9.02% of fathers and 7.19% of mothers with a level of education higher than that achieved by their offspring. About 50% of the adolescents are children of parents who failed to complete primary education; around 11% of the parents have secondary education, and a mere 5% boast completed higher education.

This confirms not only the well-known fact that adolescents enrolled in evening secondary education are young workers, but also and chiefly the urgent need to review and discuss the current coverage of these students, in terms of curricular structure and methodology, teaching techniques and didactic material.

The expectations of those who conclude secondary education are quite diversified. For 31.5% of the young people, the main expectation was to continue with their studies and enter university. Another chief expectation generated by secondary education is work-related, since, with the exception of the students enrolled in daytime academic courses, secondary school is seen as an instrument that will enable them to enter or to better their opportunities in the labor market.

In a labor market where the level of occupation is growing less than what would be necessary to incorporate the population seeking employment, schooling and prior professional experience differentiate applicants in the hotly disputed competition. Satisfying this yearning for a more stable professional situation means defining training programs in specific activities performed in the labor market. There is a strong repressed demand for computer-science courses, for example. Even those who engaged in no extra-curricular activity expressed interest in this area.

Every two years data are collected not only to check the performance of the students by applying progress tests but also to investigate socioeconomic and contextual factors that interfere in the learning process. These factors are grouped together in four areas under scrutiny: school, school management, teachers and students.

The main results of the SAEB/97 confirm tendencies identified in earlier surveys, the more important ones being as follows:

Heterogeneity of educational systems – there are great differences among schools, both in terms of infrastructure and available pedagogic resources, and with regard to the progress made by students. One can note considerably different averages in proficiency levels between regions, educational networks, urban and rural areas, as well as within each state.⁴

Disharmony between the proposed curriculum and the performance of the students – the results obtained confirm the scant effectiveness of the proposed or indicated curriculum, since it is not being satisfactorily assimilated. Few students present a performance that comes close to what is desirable as far as the curricular proposal is concerned. For the whole of the subjects evaluated, the data point to the wide gap that seemingly exists between what is proposed in the curricula and what the students are actually capable of learning and achieving. In a general sense, the performance shown by the students falls short of what is recommended for the stage of education they are attending. This trend becomes especially pronounced after the second half of primary and all through secondary education.

The age/grade gap impacts negatively on the students' progress – the performance of students older than the age recommended for their grade tends to be inferior to that of students of the proper age. Based on this, it may be stated that failing a student, rather than giving a new opportunity for him/her to learn, eventually becomes a hurdle in the path of his/her development.

The association between the student's performance and the teachers’ qualification - the higher the teachers’ qualification, the higher the average performance of students. However, it is most surprising to find that the average proficiency of students with teachers who have higher education but lack teacher training is higher than that of students whose teachers have gone through regular teacher-training courses but are not college graduates. This phenomenon is common to all the grades and subjects evaluated.

The parents´ educational level bears an influence on the student's performance – one notices a growing tendency in the average proficiency of students in accordance with the father's or mother's level of education, which shows the influence of socioeconomic factors in the learning process.

Little equity in terms of learning - one way to gather information on the degree of equity in the learning process is to check the percentage of students in each grade who are above each of the performance levels in the scales. It is desirable that most, if not all, students should present a similar performance. The results given in the following tables indicate that equity is still a challenge to be met.

Source: Ministry of Education/INEP/DAEB – SAEB/97

It should be stressed that the comparisons are to be made with some caution: in the first place, the two-year gap is too small to show significant differences in student performance, and secondly, there occurred changes in the definition of the sample of student population in the 1997 SAEB, in respect to the 1995 SAEB. So in some cases the different average proficiencies may be put down to changes in the characteristics of the student populations rather than to real changes in performance.

Two positive trends stand out when we compare the results of the 1997 SAEB to those of the 1995 SAEB. On the one hand, there was an obvious improvement in the performance of students in the Northeast region and other states which over the last few years have made advances in educational reform, such as Paraná, Minas Gerais, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. On the other hand, the relative stability of the average proficiency in the other states indicates that the fast expansion of primary and secondary education witnessed lately was not due to any lowering of quality.⁶ Charts 2 and 3 and Figures 1 and 2 below provide a better view of the movement observed in the variation of the proficiency averages in Mathematics and Portuguese from 1995 to 1997.