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 Brazil has a public university system and technical schools that meet international standards and a basic, K-12 education system that is among the world’s worst.
Universities and technical schools are federally based and receive federal funds. The elementary and secondary schools are run by the municipal and state governments and can only count upon local funding.
Guaranteeing the same quality education to all its children is what ensures the identity of a country. In Brazil, quality of education depends upon the city where the children are born and live—upon the municipal budget, upon the mayor’s good will.
As a result, in Brazil the school is the cradle of social and regional inequality; it is an instrument of national “disidentity.”
In a country with such inequality and so little priority given to education, there will be no national identity as long as the children’s education depends upon each municipality’s limited resources and political will. It is necessary to break with the inequality of the cradle.
This demands the federalization of K-12 education. Which does not mean centralizing the administration of the 180,000 schools into the federal sphere, or incorporating the 2.5 million state and municipal teachers into the federal workforce, or unifying pedagogical content and norms.
But the K-12 system needs to be a national concern, and it must be able to reply upon three national standards: each governing official’s responsibility towards education; the minimum conditions for each school; and resources from the federal government.
With the law of fiscal responsibility, the country made a great advance in giving serious consideration to public management.
We now need a law of educational responsibility that defines the obligations of every governing official towards the national objectives of education: every child in school; every teacher well paid, well prepared and well motivated; every illiterate adult learning to read.
It is ridiculous to demand that each mayor and governor fulfill his or her responsibility to education by using only local resources.
If education is a federal matter, then the nation must define the financing and establishment of the three minimum requirements necessary to give all Brazilians a quality education:
A “salary and preparation floor” for each teacher, linked to a federal competitive exam to gauge the teacher’s minimum level of qualification;
A “quality floor” with the minimum content to be taught in each school year in all the schools of Brazil in a way that no student will be promoted without the minimum education that the country must give its students;
And an “equipment floor” with minimum requirements for buildings, instructional materials, library, laboratory, computer lab and audiovisual resources for each Brazilian school.
The Federal Government must take care of its children just as it takes care of matters concerning the economy and the wealthy.
The technical schools and the universities— the educational sectors of interest to the latter—have already been federalized.
The K-12 education of the middle class and the wealthy was partially federalized with the transfer of resources through an income tax deduction for those paying for private schooling.
Public schooling was also federalized in the Federal District of Brasília, where the federal government pays the teachers’ entire salary.
There will only be national integration in Brazil with the integration of K-12 education. For this it is necessary to form a political base.
The first step towards that would be a meeting of governors and mayors convoked by President Lula, in which he would proclaim the great Brazilian accord they should establish to federalize our responsibility to our children and to their education.
Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage – www.cristovam.com.br – and write to him at
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Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome -
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