This Month’s Topic: – In this month’s newsletter the EdInvest Country Snapshot focuses on Brazil.
Brazil suffers from one of the most unequal income distributions in the world, with fifty percent of the country’s income earned by only ten percent of the population. Very high return to education combined with low access to higher levels of education contributes to this inequality: a college graduate earns about three times more than a higher school graduate and only about ten percent of the population possess a university degree (Menezes-Filho et al 2002).
Recent policies have allowed Brazil to achieve universal enrolment in primary education. However, serious problems persist, including a high dropout rate among low income students and poor quality. In addition, adult illiteracy remains high at approximately 16 million, with an additional 30 million functionally illiterate adults (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 2000).
Access
The past decade has seen an improvement in the educational level of children and adolescents. The percentage of children who did not attend school dropped from 42.3 percent to 21.3 percent in the five to six year age bracket and from 11.4 percent to 2.3 percent in the seven to fourteen year age bracket, and from 38.1 percent to 17.6 percent in the fifteen to seventeen year age bracket. The percentage of the population completing secondary education rose from nineteen percent in 1993 to thirty-two percent in 2003 (National Household Sample Survey, 2003).
This impressive improvement in attainment can be linked to several initiatives launched by the government in the late 1990s. The Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Primary Education and the Teaching Career (FUNDEF), established in 1998, was created to ensure a minimum level of spending per student. States and municipalities must earmark fifteen per cent of their revenues for education. The federal government then tops up this amount where the municipal and state contributions do not reach the guaranteed minimum. The impact of this program has been significant: the number of seven to fourteen year olds enrolled in schools rose from eighty-six percent in 1991 to ninety-six percent in 1999. Over the same period, the duration of expected schooling rose from 10 to 12.7 years (OECD, 2000a). In both cases schools with more autonomy seem to have improved most. FUNDEF has also served as a mechanism to reduce inequality in teaching pay by earmarking 60 per cent of spending on primary education to wages and salaries. This led to significant pay increases for teachers, particularly in the municipalities. As well as reforming the inputs to education, FUNDEF set a minimum national curriculum and included resources to improve teaching quality (OECD, 2001).
In addition to FUNDEF, other programs include:
the Literacy Solidarity Program which helps municipalities promote adult literacy;
Fundescola which encourages participation in primary education by channelling resources directly to schools in line with the pupils they attract. In a move to improve childrens’ health and attract and retain poor students;
the Merenda Escolar program provides at least one daily meal for all children in public pre-school and primary education;
the Bolsa Escola, which gives "at-risk" families a monthly cash allowance to keep children aged between 6 and 15 at school; and
Literate Brazil Program which was launched in 2004 and serves 1.9 million youngsters and adults with little or no formal education who had left school or never had a chance to attend one.
While these programs have been beneficial, illiteracy and retention remain serious concerns. In 2003, 26.3 percent of the population, including the 15.2 million illiterates over 10 years old, had either never attended school or had dropped out after three years. Only 82.4 percent of children above the age of fourteen were still in school. In addition, regional disparities persist, with the Northeast, the poorest region of the country, showing an illiteracy rate of eight percent in 2003, compared to the South (0.8%) and the Southeast (1%).
At the post-secondary level, overall enrollment remains low at approximately fifteen percent. Demand for higher education in Brazil continues to grow very rapidly. In 1994, Brazil had 1.7 million students enrolled in higher education. By 2002 enrollment had increased to 3.5 million students, with the bulk of this expansion taking place in private institutions. Encouraged by more flexible accreditation mechanisms, the private system grew from 1 million students in 1994 to 2.4 million in 2002,. The number of private institutions now stands at approximately 1,600. However, despite this significant expansion, Brazil still ranks low in enrollment in relation to other countries. The gross enrollment ratio revealed that undergraduate post secondary education was 14% in 1996 and 20% in 2002. This is below enrollment in other countries in the region (Argentina has thirty-six percent; Chile has thirty-two percent and Uruguay has thirty percent (World Development Indicators 2001) and the OECD country average of 52% (OECD, 2001). With graduation rates from secondary schools rising sharply and working Brazilians seeking tertiary degrees, the public system will not be able to keep pace with demand under the existing conditions (World Bank, 2001).
According to a 2005 survey, one area of enrollment growth is in master's degree and doctoral programs, which have risen eleven percent and fourteen percent respectively over the past eight years. Brazil currently has 1,925 postgraduate programs, a number which the president of the CAPES (Foundation for the Improvement of University Level Personnel), Mr. Jorge Guimarães attributes to students seeking specialization (Brazzil Magazine, April 2005).
Demand for a place in public tertiary education traditionally has been high because it provides high quality education, charges no tuition, and limits the number of places. In general, wealthy students are more likely to secure a place at a public university because they have attended elite private high schools and taken special preparation courses for the entrance exams. Estimates on enrollment by income quintile show that two thirds of students are from the highest income quintile, while only about 5% are from the two lowest. Students from poorer backgrounds are more likely to enroll in private higher education, where they must pay tuition.
Race plays a significant role in access to education at both the secondary and tertiary level. According to a study conducted by the Laboratory of Public Policies (LPP) of the University of the State of Rio de Janerio, only 5.8 million Brazilians have completed college, the equivalent of 6.8 percent of those over the age of twenty-five. Of these few, 83 percent identify themselves as white; 2.1 percent as black, 12.2 percent as mixed race, 0.1 percent as indigenous and 2.3 say they have Asian ancestry. A comparison of these percentages with those of the Brazilian population by colour or race (53.7 percent white, 6.2 percent black, 38.5 percent mixed race, 0.4 percent Asian, and 0.4 percent indigenous in 2000) clearly shows that university graduates are disproportinately white and Asian Brazilians.
Racial discrimination begins at the secondary level. Of the Brazilians graduating from high school, 67.6 percent are white, 4.3 percent are black, 26.5 percent are mixed race and 0.9 percent are of Asian ancestry. Only 0.2 percent are indigenous. Analysis of the wealthier segment of the population (those with a per capita household income higher than five times the minimum wage) found that in the white group with this income, 37 percent had received a university education, while those who call themselves black or mixed race had a university graduation rate of only 20 percent. This confirms that race and not wealth is curbing access to higher education.
Brazil now has affirmative action programs. In 2002, several public universities introduced quotas for admission. At the Federal University of Brasilia for example, 20% of places are reserved for black students, while at the state University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) the figure is 40%. Half of all places must be given to applicants from state schools. By 2004, thirteen public institutions had agreed to quotas, reserving spaces for students who are black, disables, indigenous, low income or those coming from public schools (Brigido, 2004).
This policy has a mixed reaction. Supporters say the quota system is a long overdue intervention to promote access to higher education. Others are not convinced, seeing the quotas as perpetuating racism. One problem is defining race. In the 2001 census only 6% identified themselves as black, however other studies have claimed that around 80% of Brazilians possess African heritage. A major difficulty for racially-based policy in Brazil is defining race or color in a widely multiracial population. Blacks overwhelmingly identify themselves as being of Brazilian, not African, origin (Castro and Levy, 2000).
Quality
Despite the increase in enrolment rates, student performance remains low. Brazil fares poorly in the OECD’s PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test results. In reading literacy, Brazil’s score is the lowest among the participating countries, although not statistically different from those of Argentina and Chile. Performance levels are lower for mathematics and science. Discrepancies in performance can be ascribed to differences within and between schools, the latter explaining 43 per cent of the variation in student performance, a value that is close to the OECD average (OECD, 2003).
At the undergraduate level, the Ministry of Education has a range of mechanisms for the evaluation of undergraduate education. Courses face re-accreditation every three years. The SESU (Secretaria de Ensino Superior/National Council for Education) provides input to the National Council for Education Committee for Higher Education, which recommends renewal, suspension or accreditation for each course.
Quality is also monitored through the Program of Institutional Evaluation of Brazilian Universities (PAIUB). Under the program, committees of peers selected by SESU visit higher education institutions to evaluate staff qualifications, the organization of instruction, the curricula and support infrastructure. Each course receives a grade for each category, and the results are published.
Since 1996, graduating students have taking the National Exam of Courses (Provão) which tests the achievement of all graduating students. For each major program, eight leading professors define the content of the examination and a private foundation administers the multiple choice test. The tests were initially given to the thirteen most subscribed courses, with more being added each year. These results are also published. The majority of the general public and educators favor the testing, including private universities. After a change in the Minister of Education, several revisions Provão were made, including basing its results on samples, rather than on all students and administering the test every third year, instead of yearly (International Higher Education, 2004).
In addition, the National Institute for Education Research (INEP) has been conducting a nation-wide survey of higher education institutions for the past several decades, collecting data on various aspects of the higher education system. At the graduate level, courses are evaluated and accredited by CAPES. In this system, courses are graded by several criteria, and those that do not meet minimum quality standards after a probationary period are denied public funding and lose their accreditation. CAPES has also worked to improve teaching quality. In 1994 only 39 percent of teachers held a Masters or Ph.D; by 2002 the proportion had grown to over 65 percent. Most importantly, private institutions had 25 percent of teachers with Masters or Ph.D. degrees in 1994 and this increased to 50 percent in 2002, despite an increase in the number of teachers of 127 percent. The percentage of teachers who used teaching plans grew from 20 to 31 percent between 1997 and 2002. Student access to computers grew from 23 to 36 percent and student access to libraries increased from 16 to 27 percent.
Private Sector Provision
In 2002, almost seventy-five percent of Brazilian higher education is private. The older universities are mostly religious institutions and tend to be conservative. Newer ones include a share of for-profit institutions. But there is a third and newer category that is also profit-driven but more professional in management. Some of the latter institutions started as cramming courses for elite universities. Cramming courses work in a very competitive market, have clear and public performance indicators (how many students pass the university entrance exams), and therefore compete to offer better teaching and pricing (International Higher Education, 2002).
Financing
At close to the OECD average, Brazil already spends a high share of national income on publicly-funded education programs. The 1988 Constitution requires all levels of government to earmark a share of revenue (eighteen per cent for the federal government and twently-five per cent for the state and municipal governments, including 15 per cent on primary education, in the case of the municipalities) to finance spending on education. Tertiary education accounts for about one-fifth of government spending on education, close to the OECD average. However, the average cost to the budget of higher education per student is about 150 per cent of GDP per capita, almost four times as high as the OECD average. (de Mello and Hoppe)
The Government is making two fundamental changes to the way it funds higher education. For the federal institutions, it would provide block grants, on the basis of performance contracts. The allocation for each institution would be derived using a formula that would reward "behavioral changes" and improved productivity that would support the Ministry of Education’s policy goals of greater access, quality, and efficiency. For the private system, it would provide loans targeted to students who could not otherwise afford to pay tuition. Students will be able to use their loans only at private institutions that have demonstrated that they produce students proficient in their subject areas as shown by data collected from recent Provão outcomes.
Legal Framework
Prior to 1994, higher education institutions were not allowed to define curricula or personnel policies. They could not hire or fire academic, technical, or administrative staff, set salaries, open new courses of study, decide the number of places they would offer, or transfer budget resources among expenditure categories. The Government's National Education Law (Law 9.394/1996) created a new category of institutions, the "university centers", which enjoy most of the same legal privileges as universities, have greater autonomy over curricula and enrollments, and have a mandate to concentrate on undergraduate teaching instead of research. The law also allows universities to define their own personnel policies, to hire and fire staff directly, and to manage budgets according to the needs of the institution, rather than centralized bureaucratic mandates. Implementation of the changes that these laws make possible has been slowed because of existing contravening legislation, and by resistance within universities themselves.
Presently, all university employees are civil servants, contracted under the Unified Legal Regime (Regime Juridico Unico: RJU). The RJU employees are virtually impossible to fire - regardless of job performance - and their salaries are collectively negotiated. However, reform of the Brazilian public service will greatly narrow the jobs that can be defined as RJU, so that only positions like ambassadorships, or similar career public service positions, will qualify. New employees of public higher education institutions will no longer qualify for RJU status. Rather, they will be contracted by the institutions themselves under terms that the institutions determine.
Publications
A Discussion Paper by John Micklewright (University of Southampton and IZA Bonn) and Sylke V. Schnepf (Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute) examines “Educational Achievement in English-Speaking Countries: Do Different Surveys Tell the Same Story?” International surveys of educational achievement are typically analysed in isolation from each other with no indication as to whether new results confirm or contradict those from earlier surveys. The paper pulls together results from four surveys to compare average levels of achievement, inequality of achievement, and the correlates of achievement (especially family background) among the six English-speaking OECD countries and between them and countries in Continental Europe. Our aim is to see whether a robust pattern emerges across the different sources: TIMSS, PISS, PIRLS and the IALS. This paper can be downloaded at: http://ssm.com/abstract=562453
Articles
Growth in private higher education in Mexico has accelerated since the early 1990s, when the government slashed spending on all public services as part of an effort to introduce free-market reforms. Demand is also growing and college enrollments have almost doubled since 1993 and private universities have increased their share of total enrollments to 33 percent, up from 15 percent in 1985, according to the federal department of education. Concerns about quality and accreditation remain. See the entire article in the May 6, 2005 issue of The Chronicle online: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i35/35a04201.htm
Teresa Mendez of The Christian Science Monitor reports on a recent study by Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski, both at the University of Illinois. The study analyzes raw data from the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress for 28,000 fourth- and eighth-graders representing more than 1,300 public and private schools Overall, private school students tend to do markedly better on standardized tests. But the reason, this study suggests, may be that they draw students from wealthier and more educated families, rather than because they're better at bolstering student achievement. See the May 10, 2005 story at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0510/p11s01-legn.html
The study, “A New Look at Public and Private Schools: Student Background and Mathematics Achievement" appears in the May issue of Phi Delta Kappan.
Edison has been awarded contracts to manage an additional two schools in Philadelphia, in addition to the twenty the School Reform Commission gave the company three years ago. The twenty schools were considered among the worst performing elementary and middle schools in the city -- many with less than 10 percent of students at grade level. -- and the district was seeking ideas on how to improve them. Based on a standardized state test, grade-level proficiency in the schools Edison manages has increased from 6 percent to 21 percent of students in the first two years of the contract. See the entire article online in the Washington Post, May 13, 2005:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051500809.html
The Washington Post reports on the enviable school system in Finland which has made it one of the world's most prosperous, modern and adaptable countries. Finland finishes first in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exams that test 15-year-olds in all of the world's industrial democracies. New laws supported by substantial government spending created transformed the system since the 1970s. Now, nearly every young person graduates from vocational or high school, and nearly half of them go on to higher education. See the May 24, 2005 article online at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/23/AR2005052301622.html
In a major setback for American Governor Jeb Bush, the Florida legislature has rejected several of his education initiatives, including proposals to rewrite the state’s class-size-reduction law and to expand the state’s school voucher offerings. The legislature shot down the governor’s proposal to provide school tuition aid for students who have failed the state’s reading assessments for three years in a row. That measure could have given vouchers to more than 170,000 Florida students, in addition to state-funded programs that already help pay tuition at secular and religious private schools. See the entire online through www.edweek.org
Schools in England are raising more than £1.5bn a year from businesses, parents and local clubs. About £244 million of the total comes from donations from parents and businesses and churches. Many schools are making substantial amounts from letting out their halls or rooms, including some state boarding schools that let rooms during breaks. While the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers says: "The stark reality is that under the current funding system, we are not getting enough into school budgets”, Margaret Morrissey, from the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said the figures showed the commitment of the vast majority of parents to their children's schooling. See the article online at BBC news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4543625.stm
Publications
A new publication edited by David Salisbury (Cato Institute) and James Tooley (E.G. West Centre) “What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries” reviews other countries’ experiences with school choice and draw out critical lessons for America. The book can be ordered online at www.cato.org
Events
EDVentures 2005: Standards of Excellence at the Wyndham Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, July 20-22, 2005. View the program, discover promotional opportunities for your business and register on line today at https://www.educationindustry.org/edventures/2005/index.php
The 8th UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development will be held in Oxford for September 13-15, 2005. The theme this year is Learning and Livelihood: taking livelihood holistically, the theme allows for the exploration of how learning enhances individual potential across the lifespan and the well-being of families, communities and societies, in different parts of the world. Offers of presentations are being invited. Please see the website for further details:
http://www.cfbt.com/oxcon2005/index.html