Partnership for Education

Literature and practical experience indicate that a student's socioeconomic background is the best parameter for predicting their educational level. But if São Paulo's GDP per capita is the same as Chile's, why are their educational indicators better than ours?

One of the reasons is the sheer size of the network. It comprises more than 5,100 schools, 240,000 employees, of whom 190,000 are teachers, serving 3.4 million students. It is the largest education system in the Americas, almost twice the size of Chile's. The largest education system in the US, in New York City, has 1,000 schools and serves just over 1 million students.

The São Paulo State Department of Education is the largest entity in the country in terms of number of employees. Implementing public policies in a network of this magnitude is a tremendous management challenge. To overcome this challenge, greater involvement from civil society supporting the public authorities is necessary.

A good example of the collaboration between public administration and civil society has been the experience of Parceiros da Educação (Partners in Education) with the São Paulo State Department of Education, with the support of the Bem Maior Movement, the Itaú Foundation for Education and Culture, and the Lemann Foundation. Based on more than 17 years of experience partnering with schools and municipal networks, Parceiros developed, in conjunction with the State Department, a project to work with regional education directorates. These directorates are regional education offices, responsible for a group of schools. There are 91 in the entire state.

The project began in two of São Paulo's most challenging districts: South 1 and South 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. These districts encompass 182 schools with over 180,000 students – more than the educational network of eight Brazilian states combined!

To address serious learning challenges faced by students in these regions, teams from the Secretariat and Partners developed a program focused on improvements in the areas of education, management, infrastructure, and community engagement, in order to enhance and deepen the Secretariat's initiatives.

The implementation began in early 2020 with the collection of data from the two education boards and strategic planning workshops. Recovering students' essential skills stood out among the identified needs. Of the 44 schools identified as priorities, none had more than 4% of their high school students with adequate knowledge in mathematics.

The solution developed by the Parceiros pedagogical team in conjunction with the Secretariat's pedagogical coordination was to create a specific recovery program for these schools with the following phases: defining the set of essential skills; developing structured material for students and teachers; training all Portuguese Language and Mathematics teachers from priority schools in the use of the material; applying the sequences in the classroom; and, finally, evaluating students' proficiency in the skills.

Based on a new operational and investment model by Parceiros, it was also possible to support ongoing training for professionals from the Education Directorates and all schools. Of these, 40 units also began to have an "Entrepreneurial Partner," that is, an exclusive partner that invests in the specific needs of each educational center.

With a regionalized approach, we maximize investments by expanding the number of supported public schools and making investments more accessible to partnerships and the number of civil society members engaged in improving education in the country.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the longest period of school disruption 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 teacher trainers for the principals and coordinators, were able to be carried out remotely or in a hybrid format.

On the other hand, quite unexpected challenges had to be faced. First, the issue of connectivity. With partners such as Magalu, Instituto Península, Carrefour, Votorantim, and Credit Suisse, 11,000 tablets were distributed to schools and given to the most vulnerable students. The psychological support aspect was also strengthened, and to mitigate the risk of dropout and absenteeism, a simple but effective solution was developed: involving the students themselves in actively searching for their classmates.

There is still much to be done, but the partnership between society and the State has yielded results that prove this support needs to be deepened even further. The main example is related to the recovery program, which was the main pedagogical focus in South 1 and South 2. Originally designed for 44 schools, the work was scaled up by the State Secretariat to all of the more than 5,100 schools, impacting more than 3.4 million students. This represents 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 path to finally taking the giant leap in education that has limited Brazil's social and economic development for decades. Civil society and public authorities need to work hand in hand to make this actually happen!

Carola Matarazzo – Executive Director of the Bem Maior Movement;
Jair Ribeiro – Founder and CEO of Parceiros da Educação (Partners in Education).

This article was originally published in Estadão.

Image Credit: Press Release/MBM