Literature and practical experience indicate that a student's socioeconomic origin is the best parameter to predict their educational level. But if São Paulo's GDP per capita is the same as Chile's, why are the educational rates there better than ours?
One of the reasons is the gigantism of the network. There are more than 5.1 thousand schools, 240 thousand employees, of which 190 thousand are teachers, serving 3.4 million students. It is the largest education system in the Americas, almost twice that of Chile. The largest education system in the USA, in New York, has a thousand schools and serves just over 1 million students.
The São Paulo Department of Education is the largest CNPJ in the country in terms of number of employees. Executing public policies in a network of this magnitude is a tremendous managerial challenge. To overcome this challenge, greater involvement of civil society is necessary, supporting public authorities.
A good example of the articulation between public administration and civil society has been the experience of Parceiros da Educação with the São Paulo State Department of Education, with the support of Movimento Bem Maior, Fundação Itaú para Educação e Cultura and Fundação Lemann . Based on the experience of more than 17 years of partnerships with schools and municipal networks, Parceiros developed together with the State Secretariat a project to work with education boards. These centers are regional teaching centers, responsible for a group of schools. There are 91 across the state.
The project began in two of the most challenging districts of São Paulo: Sul 1 and Sul 2, located in neighborhoods on the outskirts of the capital with high socioeconomic vulnerability, such as Capão Redondo, Cidade Ademar, Jardim Ângela and Campo Limpo. There are 182 schools with more than 180 thousand students – larger than the educational network of eight Brazilian states!
To respond to serious learning issues among students in these regions, the Secretariat and Partners teams developed a program focused on improvements in the pedagogical, management, infrastructure and community engagement fields, in order to enhance and deepen the Secretariat's initiatives.
The execution began at the beginning of 2020 with the collection of data from the two teaching boards and strategic planning workshops. Rescuing students' essential skills stood out among the needs detected. Of the 44 schools identified as priorities, none had more than 4% of high school students with adequate knowledge in mathematics.
The solution constructed by the Parceiros pedagogical team together with the Secretariat's pedagogical coordination was to create a specific recovery program for these schools with the following phases: definition of the set of essential skills; preparation of structured material for the student and teacher; training of all Portuguese Language and Mathematics teachers in priority schools in the use of the material; application of sequences in the classroom; and, finally, assessment of students' proficiency in skills.
Based on a new operating model and investments from Parceiros, it was also possible to support ongoing training for professionals from the Education Departments and all schools. Of these, 40 units now also have an “Entrepreneurial Partner”, that is, an exclusive partner that invests in the specific demands of each educational center.
With regionalized operations, we boost investments by increasing the number of public schools supported and making investments more accessible to partnerships and the number of members of civil society engaged in improving education in the country.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the greatest interruption of classes ever seen, the partnership had to reinvent itself, face challenges and identify opportunities. Some of the priorities defined at the beginning of the year, such as the training of principals, one of the main success factors for a school, and of the teachers who train directors and coordinators, could be carried out remotely or in a hybrid format.
On the other hand, quite unexpected challenges had to be faced. Firstly, the issue of connectivity. Counting on partners such as Magalu, Instituto Península, Carrefour, Votorantim and Credit Suisse, 11 thousand tablets were distributed to schools and passed on to the most vulnerable students. The psychological support axis was also strengthened and, to mitigate the risk of dropout and dropout, a simple but effective solution was developed: involving the students themselves in actively searching for their colleagues.
There is still a lot to be done, but the partnership between society and the State has borne fruit that proves that this support must be increasingly deepened. The main one is related to the recovery program, which was the main pedagogical focus in Sul 1 and Sul 2. Originally designed for 44 schools, the work was scaled by the State Secretariat to all more than 5.1 thousand schools, impacting more of 3.4 million students. This is a gigantic impact and a response to the crisis brought about by the pandemic, unparalleled in the country. And it is exactly the replicability effect expected from a project like this.
Initiatives like this show that there is a possible way to finally take the big step in education that, for decades, has limited Brazil's social and economic development. Civil society and public authorities need to work hand in hand, together, for this to actually happen!
Carola Matarazzo – Executive Director of Movimento Bem Maior
Jair Ribeiro – Founder and CEO of Parceiros da Educação
This article was originally published in Estadão .
