Education in South America: Education Around the World 9781472592460, 9781474243223, 9781472592484

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Education in South America

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Available and forthcoming titles in the Education Around the World Series Series Editor: Colin Brock Education Around the World: A Comparative Introduction, Colin Brock and Nafsika Alexiadou Education in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, edited by Michael Crossley, Greg Hancock and Terra Sprague Education in East and Central Africa, edited by Charl Wolhuter Education in East Asia, edited by Pei-tseng Jenny Hsieh Education in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, edited by Nadiya Ivanenko Education in North America, edited by D. E. Mulcahy, D. G. Mulcahy and Roger Saul Education in South-East Asia, edited by Lorraine Pe Symaco Education in Southern Africa, edited by Clive Harber Education in the Commonwealth Caribbean and Netherlands Antilles, edited by Emel Thomas Education in the European Union: Pre-2003 Member States, edited by Trevor Corner Education in the United Kingdom, edited by Colin Brock Education in West Africa, edited by Emefa Amoaka Takyi-Amoako Education in West Central Asia, edited by Mah-E-Rukh Ahmed Forthcoming volumes: Education in Non-EU Countries in Western and Southern Europe, edited by Terra Sprague Education in the European Union: Post-2003 Member States, edited by Trevor Corner

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Education in South America Edited by Simon Schwartzman

Education Around the World

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 © Simon Schwartzman and Contributors, 2015 Simon Schwartzman and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:

HB: ePDF: ePub:

978-1-4725-9246-0 978-1-4725-9248-4 978-1-4725-9247-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A cataloge record for this book has been requested Series: Education Around the World Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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Contents Series Editor’s Preface Notes on the Contributors Introduction: Regional Overview

1 2 3 4

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Simon Schwartzman

1

Argentina: Public Policies in Education, 2001–2014 Juan Carlos Tedesco

21

Argentina: Rethinking Government Models for Education Silvina Gvirtz, Angela Inés Oría and Esteban Torre

35

Bolivia: Perspectives and Challenges for Multicultural Education Fabricia de Andrade Ramos and Mauricio Blanco Cossío

63

Brazil: The Role of States and Municipalities in the Implementation of Education Policies Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro

97

5

Brazil: Curriculum of Basic Education

6

Brazil: Why José Can’t Read

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Brazil: Costs and Economic Benefits of Education Fernando de Holanda Barbosa Filho and Fernando Veloso

155

Chile: The Evolution of Educational Policy, 1980–2014 Cristián Bellei and Xavier Vanni

179

Chile: Effectiveness of Teacher Education Beatrice Ávalos

201

8 9

Guiomar Namo de Mello

João Batista Araujo e Oliveira

117 131

10 Chile: The Quality of For-Profit Schooling Gregory Elacqua

221

11 Colombia: Upper Secondary Education Reform Martha Laverde Toscano

249

12 Colombia: Public–Private Partnership to Support Decentralized Education Santiago Isaza

269

13 Colombia: Comprehensive Care for Early Childhood Marina Camargo Abello

285

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Contents

14 Ecuador: Learning to Work Together Orazio Bellettini, Adriana Arellano and Wendy Espín

305

15 Ecuador, 2007–2014: Attempting a Radical Educational Transformation Pablo Cevallos Estarellas and Daniela Bramwell

329

16 Paraguay: An Overview Cynthia Brizuela

363

17 Peru: Impact of Socioeconomic Gaps in Educational Outcomes Santiago Cueto, Juan León and Alejandra Miranda

385

18 Uruguay: The Teachers’ Policies Black Box Denise Vaillant

405

19 Venezuela: Political and Institutional Transition, 1999–2014 Mabel Mundó

423

Index

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Series Editor’s Preface This series will comprise nineteen volumes, between them looking at education in virtually every territory in the world. The initial volume, Education Around the World: A Comparative Introduction, aimed to provide an insight to the field of international and comparative education. It looked at its history and development and then examined a number of major themes at scales from local to regional to global. It is important to bear such scales of observation in mind because the remainder of the series is inevitably regionally and nationally based. The identification of the eighteen regions within which to group countries has sometimes been a very simple task, elsewhere less so. Europe, for example, has four volumes and more than fifty countries. National statistics vary considerably in their availability and accuracy, and in any case date rapidly. Consequently, the editors of each volume point the reader towards access to regional and international datasets, available on line, that are regularly updated. A key purpose of the series is to give some visibility to a large number of countries that, for various reasons, rarely, if ever, have coverage in the literature of this field. The region with which this book is concerned is one of the more straightforward to identify. South America is, after all, one of the recognized continents of the world. However, not all of its political geography is included in this volume because parts have had to be placed elsewhere. Guyana is in the volume on the Commonwealth Caribbean and Netherlands Antilles, as is Suriname, while the former French Guiana is now part of France itself and therefore in the European Union. The remainder of South America is divided between its two major linguistic identities, Spanish and Portuguese. The latter is represented by Brazil, by far the largest and most populous country on the continent and one of the world’s rising stars. The former is represented by all the other countries, but it must be remembered that there are innumerable indigenous Amerindian communities with their indigenous vernaculars, as well as areas where other European languages of immigrant groups still remain. Given this diverse and complex picture I would like to thank the editor, Simon Schwartzman, for the skill and care with which he has assembled and presented this important volume in the series. Colin Brock Hon. Professor of Education, University of Durham, UK vii

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Notes on the Contributors Adriana Arellano is Research Director at Grupo FARO, an independent policy research centre in Ecuador. Before joining Grupo FARO, she worked as a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank and The Union of South American Nations (USAN) and began as Education Policy Analyst and then became Director of Policy Management at the Coordinating Ministry of Social Development. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in commercial engineering, with a focus on finances, from the Pontificia Universidad Católica, Ecuador and an MA in Social Work and Social Policy Management from Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA. Beatrice Ávalos is Associate Researcher at the Centre for Advanced Research in Education, University of Chile, where she leads a research group on teacher related topics. She has recently been awarded the 2013 National Prize in Educational Sciences by the Chilean government. Between 2007 and 2010, she coordinated the Chilean application of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics study at the Ministry of Education. She holds a PhD from St Louis University, USA. Fernando de Holanda Barbosa Filho is a Researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Economics (IBRE) of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), Brazil. He lectures on macroeconomics and development economics at the FGV. His most recent work has focused on current labour market developments in Brazil. His main publications and work are concentrated in the areas of development economics, human capital and labour market. He earned his PhD in Economics from New York University, USA. Cristián Bellei is Research Associate in the Centre for Advanced Research in Education at the University of Chile, where he is a sociologist. Previously he worked in the Ministry of Education of Chile and UNICEF. His research, teaching and publications relate to educational policy, educational equity, school improvement and the factors associated with educational attainment. He holds a PhD in education from Harvard University, USA. ix

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Notes on the Contributors

Orazio Bellettini is Co-founder and Executive Director of Grupo FARO, an independent policy research centre in Ecuador. Since his graduation at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, USA, with a Master Degree in Public Administration and Public Policy in 2004, Orazio has advised international agencies, civil society organizations and governments in several countries on issues related to the role of knowledge in the policy process, education, social change and institutional reform. Mauricio Blanco Cossío is Researcher and Co-founder of the AFortiori Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Previously, he worked as researcher at the Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade (IETS), Brazil, and the Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas Aplicadas (IPEA), Brazil. He graduated in economics at the Universidad Católica of La Paz, Bolivia, and holds Masters Degrees in political science and international relations. His research fields are education, poverty reduction and public policy evaluation. Daniela Bramwell has an MA in Educational Policy and Leadership, with a focus on Comparative and International Education, in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, Canada. She has worked as a policy analyst for the Vice-Ministry of Education in Ecuador and has also worked on several research and consulting projects related to education in Ecuador and South America, including the Report Card on Education in Ecuador, 2010 organized by PREAL. She is currently sub-director of Instituto de Enseñanza y Aprendizaje (IDEA), sub-coordinator of undergraduate education programs and professor at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador. Cynthia Brizuela was formerly Vice-Minister of Education, a national consultant, university professor and researcher for the National University of Pilar, Paraguay, with national and international experience in project coordination and administration. She has publications on technical and vocational education issues, as well as challenges in teacher’s training programs and adult literacy. She holds a Doctorate in Education from Northern Illinois University, USA, and a Specialist in Human Resources and Public Administration Management from the École National d’Administration Publique, France. Marina Camargo Abello teaches at the Universidad de la Sabana, Bogotá, Colombia. She holds a Master Degree in Educative and Social Development and a PhD in Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth.

Notes on the Contributors

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Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro is a retired Professor of Political Science at the State University of Campinas, Brazil. Since June 2012, she has been the Executive-Director of the State Foundation for Data Analysis (SEADE) responsible for data production and public policy evaluation of the Government of São Paulo. Previously, she was State Secretary of Education of São Paulo (2007–2009); State Secretary of Science and Technology (2006); and State Secretary for Social Development of São Paulo (2003–2005). Between 1995 and 2001, she was President of the National Institute of Research on Education/INEP and Vice-Minister of Education (2002) of the Brazilian Federal Government. Pablo Cevallos Estarellas is Professor and Researcher in the Education Department at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador. Between 2010 and 2013 he was Vice-Minister of Education of Ecuador. His main areas of research interest are educational public policy, the education of teachers, the overlap of political culture and education, and philosophical teaching as a means to strengthen democratic citizenship. He holds a Doctoral Degree in Education from Montclair State University, New Jersey, USA. Santiago Cueto is Senior Researcher at the Group for Analysis and Development (GRADE), Peru, where he coordinates the Peru component of the international study Young Lives. Additionally, he is a member of the National Education Council in Peru and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He holds a Licence in Educational Psychology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and a PhD in the same field from Indiana University, USA. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of California Davis, USA and the University of Oxford, UK. Gregory Elacqua is Director of the Public Policy Institute at the School of Economics at the Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Chile. His research focuses on education policy, school accountability, teacher policy and school choice. He was the senior advisor to the Minister of Education in Chile between 2003 and 2006. He has also served as an advisor to a member of the Education Committee in the Chilean Senate and is currently a member of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Questionnaire Expert Group at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He holds a PhD in Politics and Public Policy from Princeton University, USA.

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Notes on the Contributors

Wendy Espín is Research Specialist at the Grupo FARO, Ecuador. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Ecuador. Silvina Gvirtz is Executive Director of the General Equal Connect Program in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is also a researcher at the National Research Council in Argentina and professor at the University of San Martin, Argentina. Previously she was Director General of Culture and Education of the Province of Buenos Aires, and Director of the School of Education at the University of San Andrés, Argentina. In 2003 she was appointed a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She holds a Doctoral Degree in Education. Santiago Isaza has been the Education and Project Manager at Luker Foundation in Manizales, Colombia, for more than 10 years, leading innovative initiatives in quality of education improvement, labour insertion, entrepreneurship, scientific interventions, education research, among others. He is an industrial engineer, with postgraduate studies in project management, international business management, coaching and a Master Degree in prospective and strategic thinking. Martha Laverde Toscano is a specialist and independent consultant in education. For twenty years she was Senior Education Specialist for Latin American and Caribbean countries at the World Bank supporting governments in their education reforms as well working in fragile countries and countries in conflict. For more than ten years, she has led Education for Peace Programs in Colombia and in some Central American Countries. She holds a Master Degree in Education from the University of Florida, USA, and has been a professor in some Colombian private universities. Juan León is Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya in Lima, Peru, and a PhD candidate in Educational Theory & Policy and Comparative & International Education at Pennsylvania State University, USA. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Peru, and a diploma in Liberal Arts from the same institution. He is currently an Associate Researcher at the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE), Peru. Guiomar Namo de Mello is President of the State Board of Education of São Paulo, Brazil, and consultant in teacher training and curriculum development at

Notes on the Contributors

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Pearson, Brazil. She was formerly Chancellor of the Municipal Department of Education of São Paulo City; Education Specialist at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, in Washington, DC, USA; and Executive Director of Victor Civita Foundation, a non-profit organization sponsored by the Abril Editorial Group. She holds a Doctoral Degree in Education at the Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil, and attended postdoctoral studies at London University, UK. Alejandra Miranda is Research Assistant at the Group for the Analysis for Development (GRADE), Peru. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Mabel Mundó teaches at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, where she is the head of the Education and Cultural Development at the Centre for Development Studies (CENDES) and is a member of the committee for evaluation and selection of research and development projects of the Council of Scientific and Humanistic Development. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Simón Bolívar University, Venezuela. João Batista Araujo e Oliveira is a psychologist and has a PhD in Education from Florida State University, USA (1973). He has worked as a teacher, professor, consultant, researcher and manager of public, private and non-profit organizations. He has also worked in The World Bank, USA, and the International Labour Organization, Switzerland. He is the founder and president of Instituto Alfa e Beto, Brazil. Angela Inés Oría is Consultant in the Executive Office of the Equality Connect (Conectar Igualdad) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was Executive Director of Schools Bicentennial Project between 2006 and 2008 and worked as an adviser in the Directorate General of Culture and Education in Argentina between 2011 and 2012. She has a PhD in Education from the University of London, UK. Fabricia de Andrade Ramos has been Researcher and Co-founder of Institute AFortiori since 2013 and has worked in the social research field since 2010 at Instituto do Trabalho e Sociedade (IETS) in Rio de Janeiro and IMD, Brazil. Her research fields are education, urban development and public policy evaluation. She is a Masters student of Public Policy and Economics at the Federal University

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Notes on the Contributors

of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and holds a law degree from the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Simon Schwartzman is Researcher at Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho e Sociedade in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was formerly a professor of political science at the University Research Institute in Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ), Brazil, and the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and president of Brazil’s national statistical office, IBGE, 1994–1998. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Juan Carlos Tedesco is Professor and Researcher at the National University of San Martin, Argentina. He studied Educational Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He formerly served as a staff member of UNESCO, where he directed the Regional Bureau of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC), Chile, the International Bureau of Education in Geneva, Switzerland, and the regional headquarters of the International Institute of Planning Education in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was formerly Minister of Education of Argentina. Esteban Torre is Advisor to the Executive Director of Conectar Igualdad, Argentina. He holds a BA in Political Science and is completing his MA in Education. Between 2011 and 2012 he worked as advisor of the Minister of Education of the Buenos Aires Province. Denise Vaillant is Academic Director of the Institute of Education, University ORT-Uruguay and President of the Teaching Profession International Observatory based in University of Barcelona (OBIPD), Spain. She holds a PhD in Education at the University of Québec à Montréal, Canada and an MA in Educational Planning and Management at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is a university professor of postgraduate studies, consultant to several international organizations and author of numerous articles and books on the subject of public policies, teacher education, educational change and innovation. Xavier Vanni is a psychologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Advanced Research in Education at the University of Chile. His work and research focuses on educational policy, school leadership and school improvement. He holds an

Notes on the Contributors

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MA in Policy Studies in Education from the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. Fernando Veloso is Researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Economics (IBRE) at Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), Brazil. He is also Professor at the Graduate School of Economics (EPGE) at FGV. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, USA, and is a former President of the Brazilian Econometric Society. He has organized several books and published academic articles in the areas of Economics of Education, Development Economics and Public Policy.

xvi

Introduction Regional Overview Simon Schwartzman

Context This book deals with the current state of education in the ten countries of the South American continent (not including Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, which are culturally and historically closer to the Caribbean region). These countries were all part of the Iberian colonial empires – Spain and Portugal – until early in the nineteenth century when they became independent, with the Spanish colonies splitting into several republics while Brazil remained unified under a Portuguese monarchy. On the Pacific coast, the colonizers found large and well-established agrarian societies, including the Inca empire, which reached regions of what is today Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and the north of Chile, and, in Colombia, the Muisca confederation. The native population was subdued and forced into servitude (the ‘encomienda’ and ‘repartimiento’ systems) to work in mining and agriculture and forced to convert to Catholicism and speak Spanish, but often kept their languages and many of their cultural traditions. In Chile, the Spanish met the Mapuches, a group of indigenous groups who inhabited mostly the South of the Continent, including Patagonia, and for centuries resisted the encroachment of the colonizers. On the Atlantic coast, there are vestiges of a large and well-organized population, the Cambeba, that may have inhabited the Amazon basin but did not survive the first encounters with the Europeans. Further to the South, the Portuguese found a large number of semi-nomadic tribes – including the TupiGuaraní groups – that were mostly decimated or took refuge in inaccessible places. The Jesuits, who arrived in America with the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers, tried to organize the natives in agricultural settlements (the Indian Reductions), which were later destroyed but had a lasting presence in Paraguay, where most of the population still speaks Guaraní. To work in their mines and 1

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Education in South America

plantations, the Portuguese brought to Brazil millions of African slaves, mostly to the regions of Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. In Argentina and Uruguay, most of the native population was also decimated. The Spanish and Portuguese did not come to South America as settlers, as did the pioneers in New England, but mostly to exploit the actual or imaginary richness of the new world. Many of them did not bring their families, and, even if they did, mingled with the local population and the slaves, creating large, stratified mixed-blood populations that also combined the cultural, religious and linguistic traits of their different origins. By the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Chile received large numbers of immigrants from Italy, Germany and other European regions. Brazil and Peru also received immigrants from Japan, in addition to continuous flows of immigrants from Spain to different countries and from Portugal to Brazil. In spite of significant differences, none of these countries reached full industrialization. Today, they are middle-income countries in comparative terms, with Paraguay and Bolivia being significantly poorer. Their economies depend largely on the extraction and export of primary products, wealth is highly concentrated, and political institutions remain mostly unstable, subject to internecine conflicts and weak institutions. Until the mid-twentieth century, most of the population lived in rural areas, but later moved to the cities, which now suffer with the problems of urban overcrowding and criminality (Table I.1). Education, both in the Spanish and the Portuguese colonies, was limited to the local élites, and was provided by Catholic priests in their parishes. Already, in the sixteenth century, the Spanish replicated their universities in several places in Latin America, but the first university in Brazil was only established in the 1930s. South America never had the traditions of popular literacy stemming from the Reform and Counter-Reform movements that were later incorporated into the public education systems established in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Archer, 1979; Collins, 1995; Ramirez and Boli, 1987), and public education was seldom considered necessary for the production of wealth and the creation of a modern nation state. In the nineteenth century, some countries sought to emulate the European nation states and introduce public, universal education, thanks to the works of Andrés Bello in Chile, Domingo Sarmiento, in Argentina, and José Pedro Varela, in Uruguay (Demarchi and Rodriguez, 1994; Halperín Donghi, 1995; Serrano, 1994). This history led to a nostalgia about a glorious past of excellent public education that may have existed in these countries in the earlier twentieth century that, as Juan Carlos Tedesco writes about Argentina (Chapter 1), is to a large extent mythical, and in any case did not

Introduction

3

Table I.1 South American countries, selected development indicators, 2012

Chile Uruguay Argentina Venezuela Brazil Peru Colombia Ecuador Paraguay Bolivia

Adjusted net national income per capita (constant 2005 US$)

Employment in agriculture (% of total employment)

Employment in industry (% of total employment)

Employment Urban in services population (% of total (% of total) employment)

6,827.37 6,643.31 5,075.77 4,940.28 4,891.63 3,558.11 3,450.93 2,828.37 1,346.64 965.56

— — 0.60 7.70 14.50 — 16.90 27.80 27.20 —

— — 23.40 21.20 21.20 — 20.90 17.80 16.10 —

— — 75.30 70.70 64.30 — 62.20 54.40 56.70 —

89.35 92.64 92.79 93.70 84.87 77.58 75.57 67.98 62.44 67.22

Source: World Development Indicators; Employment data from Brazil based on the National Household Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostragem de Domicilio – PNAD) 2012 (22 June 2014).

survive the expansion of public education in more recent years. Brazil also had some early experiences of good-quality public education, particularly in the state of São Paulo, but this reached just a small segment of its population. In the 1920s and 1930s, immigrants from Germany, Italy and Japan to Brazil created their own schools, but soon teaching in a foreign language was forbidden and the schools closed by the government as a threat to the nation. Public education was just starting to become a national concern, but half of the Brazilian population was still illiterate in 1950 (Schwartzman, 2004; Williams, 2001).

Access, equity and quality of education Gradually, particularly after World War II, as urbanization increased, all countries in the region created or expanded public education, while the Catholic Church also expanded its networks of private schools. Teaching was provided in Spanish or Portuguese in Brazil, according to the curricula copied or adapted from Spain, Portugal and sometimes France. By the end of the twentieth century, all South American countries had reached the United Nations Millennium Development Goals for 2015 in education, with most children enrolled and completing

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Education in South America

Table I.2 South America, fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals in education

Argentina Bolivia Brazil* Chile Colombia Ecuador Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela

Net enrolment ratio Proportion of pupils in primary education starting grade 1 who reached (2011) last grade of primary

Literacy rate of 15–24year-olds

99.1 86.8 93.4 92.7 86.5 96.8 82.6 96.3 99.8 94.4

99.2 99.0 98.6 98.9 98.2 98.6 98.6 98.7 99.0 98.5

93.1 86.2 86.1 98.7 84.7 91.4 80.1 73.9 94.7 93.9

* The data for Brazil is based on the National Household Survey (PNAD) of 2012. ‘Primary Educatio’ refers to children enrolled in grades 1–5 of fundamental education. The completion rate is a comparison of enrolment rates of grades 2 and 5. Source: United National Statistics Division, Millennium Development Goals Indicators; http://unstats.un.org/ unsd/mdg/Data.aspx (latest available figures).

primary education, and basic literacy reaching almost 100 per cent of the young population (Table I.2). However, the quality of education remains critical. Six countries in the region participate in the OECD Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) for 15-year-olds at the corresponding school level, and the results are not good (Table I.3). In all countries, 60 per cent or more of the students perform below the required standards in mathematics, and 40 per cent or more below the standards in language skills. At the other extreme, the number of top performers is very small, not reaching 2 per cent of the students in the best situations. They are at the bottom of the international rankings in student performance and have not changed much through the several assessment rounds, except for Chile, which shows the best results in the group.1 An earlier comparative assessment done in 2006 by UNESCO in Latin America, for third graders, found that the best performers were students from Uruguay and Chile, with Paraguay, Peru and Ecuador at the bottom (Ganimian, 2009: 12), with no information available for Bolivia. In all countries, girls tend to outperform boys in school attendance and reading (Duryea et al., 2007; González de San Román and de la Rica, 2012), religious and

5

29.5 26.5 32.2 31.9 31.6 27.4

Mathematics 2012 Chile 22.0 Uruguay 29.2 Colombia 41.6 Brazil 35.2 Argentina 34.9 Peru 47.0

Source: OECD, PISA.

28.0 37.9 38.7 48.6 41.5 51.2

Language 2009 Chile 1.0 Uruguay 5.4 Colombia 3.0 Brazil 4.7 Argentina 9.1 Peru 12.9

Below Level 1 Level 1 (%) (%)

23.5 23.0 17.8 20.4 22.2 16.1

33.2 27.7 31.6 27.4 27.1 23.0

15.4 14.4 6.4 8.9 9.2 6.7

17.5 12.8 13.7 9.5 10.6 6.9

Level 2 Level 3 (%) (%)

6.2 5.4 1.6 2.9 1.8 2.1

18.9 14.7 12.1 8.9 10.9 5.7

Level 4 (%)

Table I.3 Outcomes of South American countries in the PISA study

1.5 1.3 0.3 0.7 0.3 0.5

1.5 1.4 0.9 0.8 0.8 0.3

0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.1

53.0 49.5 50.0 52.3 53.8 43.5

61.2 65.6 70.3 76.0 68.6 74.2

Level 5 Level 6 Underperformers (%) (%) (1 or less) (%)

1.6 1.4 0.3 0.7 0.3 0.5

1.5 1.5 0.9 0.8 0.9 0.4

Top performers (5 and 6) (%)

44 47 52 53 59 63

44 47 52 53 58 63

Rank (out of 65 countries)

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Education in South America

private schools are better than public schools; to a large extent because they are more selective (Duarte et al., 2010; Menezes-Filho, 2007; Somers et al., 2004) and, most significantly, student achievement is strongly correlated with family socio-economic status and the level of development of their regions. Santiago Cueto, Juan León and Alejandra Miranda, in Chapter 17, making use of the Young Lives longitudinal study for Peru, document many of these gaps, and show that there is a perverse triangle in education, linking individual socio-economic characteristics, education opportunities and the student education outcomes: students from poor families have less education opportunities and perform badly, which thwarts their future chances of moving out of poverty. Cynthia Brizuela, in Chapter 16, also documents the dismaying quality of education in Paraguay, both for Spanish and Guaraní speakers, and lists the issues that may explain this situation: deficiency in teachers’ initial education and in-service training, poor school infrastructure, little use of ICT in the educational process, and insufficient number of effective days and hours of classes in the school year – a list that could be easily applied to all other countries. There is a growing awareness that this vicious circle should be broken at the very early ages, with differential support and appropriate pedagogical methods for pre-schoolers and children at the literacy age, as discussed in the articles by Marina Camargo Abello for Colombia (Chapter 13) and João Batista Araujo e Oliveira for Brazil (Chapter 6).

Education policies After World War II, thanks to the rising demands of the urban population as well as international support and cooperation, all countries extended their education coverage and created ministries and regional secretariats of education to administer and provide support to their schools. There was also a growing realization that education was an essential ingredient for economic development, a notion that is well established in international literature but is still not fully understood in South America. Education, like health, has a value on itself, which cannot be measured in dollars or pesos. However, both the costs and the economic benefits are all too real for society and for individuals who make the decisions to invest their or their families’ resources in education. Fernando de Holanda Barbosa Filho and Fernando Veloso estimate the ‘social internal rate of return’ to education in Brazil (Chapter 7), comparing public costs and benefits of schooling at different levels, both currently and by making estimations

Introduction

7

considering Brazil’s intention of raising public expenditures to 10 per cent of GDP in the next ten years. They find a worrisome trend, namely that, as the public sector increases its expenditures, the social benefits of education come down, a trend that may get worse in the future. On the other hand, demographic changes may allow for greater investments per student without increasing the overall costs of education. In any case, it would be necessary to make sure that the additional resources are used efficiently, so as to maximize its social and private returns. This is particularly important because there is evidence that there is little or no correlation between costs and quality of education, both in Brazil and elsewhere (Menezes-Filho et al., 2009). Public expenditures on education in Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil today are around 6–7 per cent of GDP, and around 4–5 per cent in other countries, except for Peru, which is around 2.5 per cent (no information is available for Venezuela).2 Most of the resources are used to pay teachers’ salaries and to expand and maintain the school buildings. The investments are significant for the country’s budgets, and not very different, in relative terms, to what one would find in developed economies, but are small in absolute values, given the size of the countries’ economies and their tax bases. In the past, the main education policy consisted of opening new schools and making them available to the population. Now, governments have to deal with growing costs, teacher demands for higher salaries and better working conditions, and the growing awareness about the bad quality of the education the students are getting. Education policies are getting more complex. In spite of the large differences between the countries in the region, they all have to deal with similar issues: the questions of governance about the rights and obligations for education provision; the role of the public and the private sectors; the issues of centralization and decentralization; the questions related to teachers, in terms of their training, their careers and the roles played by the teachers’ unions and professional organizations; issues of curriculum, about what the students should learn and how they should be taught, and also the potential benefits of introducing new information technologies in the classroom; questions of social equity, related to the support required for students from underprivileged sectors of society, including issues of multicultural education, particularly in relation to cultural and linguistic minorities; questions of assessment and quality assurance – how to know if the students are learning what they should, if they benefit from what they learn, and how to make use of the information provided by the assessments to improve education quality; and the question of resources, in terms of how much can and should be invested to improve quality, equity and make education useful and productive for society as a whole.

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Education in South America

Governance The prevailing view in South America is that the national state should be the main provider of public education – the ‘teaching state’ – a notion established since the years of independence in the nineteenth century, when the national states were organized and inspired by France and often in conflict with the Catholic Church, which however maintained an important presence at all levels of education in most countries. As public education expanded, bringing in more people from lower socio-economic conditions, its quality, if any, deteriorated, and the upper and middle classes sent their children to Catholic schools and to an expanding private sector. Juan Carlos Tedesco (Chapter  1) writes about the attempts to recover the trust of society in public education in Argentina by introducing a new national education law in 2006 through an elaborate process of public consultation with many sectors of society, followed by significant investments in student grants and school inputs. These policies were meant to move away from what he describes as ‘the neoliberal discourse based on privatization, deregulation, and the market as the solution to all our problems’ that emerged in the 1990s, but never gained legitimacy. The new policies, however, were not enough to reverse the low quality and loss of legitimacy of public education in Argentina, which would require, for him, ‘modifying more complex cultural and institutional variables such as prejudices, stereotypes, and teacher attitudes, work organization and management styles’, all of which should be implemented without losing sight of the leading role of public education in taking care of quality and assuring equity and social justice. In Chapter 2, Silvina Gvirtz, Angela Inés Oría and Esteban Torre agree with Tedesco about the failure of recent policies to improve education in Argentina, and attribute it to failures in the system of governance adopted in the education sector. They also agree that the solution is not to reduce the presence of the public sector and increase the role of markets and the private sector, but to strengthen the links between the national government and society, making public education more public and less bureaucratic, by, among other practices, giving more voice to parents and other constituencies, strengthening the role of school districts and implementing better management practices at the school level. The idea of a national pact on behalf of education is also the central theme of Chapter  13 by Marina Camargo Abello on Colombia’s national policy for childhood education. This policy is being developed through a strategy that

Introduction

9

seeks to bring together all sectors and levels of government and all social groups and movements involved in education in the country. The coordination is carried out by an inter-ministerial commission established at the President’s office level, so as to avoid its capture by the Ministry of Education alone. The implicit assumption is that the interests and motivations of these different sectors converge, and that, differently from Argentina, controversial issues can be overcome by permanent consultation and participation. Since this policy is just starting, it will be interesting to see what is achieved in the next few years. The two chapters on Ecuador – by Pablo Cevallos Estarellas and Daniela Bramwell (Chapter 15) and by Orazio Bellettini, Adriana Arellano and Wendy Espín (Chapter  14) – also refer to the efforts to build consensus in gaining support for the implementation of education policies, which included a national referendum to support the country’s education plan. They coincide in their view that, after a long period of political and institutional instability, the country is finally being able to put together a coherent education policy, thanks to the stability and political support enjoyed by President Rafael Correa and the effort to reach consensus in society about these policies. The current policies, at least on paper, tackle all crucial issues affecting education, including provision of material resources to schools, financial incentives to the families, teacher training, changes in the curriculum and special attention being given to multicultural education. They also note, however, that many goals established in the current legislation and plans are still to be fully implemented, and there is no evidence, so far, that these policies are actually changing the quality of education that the students receive. The disconnect between the official education policies, as present in existing legislation, and what actually takes place is a common feature of many countries, where the legislation is either prepared by qualified experts or results from complicated negotiations between government officers, teachers’ unions and social movements. One striking case is Paraguay, which, as described by Cynthia Brizuela (Chapter  16), has an extremely well-elaborated legislation, including provisions to deal with multilingual education for the Guaraní speaking population, without, however, any detectable impact in the quality of education the population receives in any language. Like Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador, Brazil also has experience of trying to build consensus by mobilizing teachers’ unions, academics, non-governmental organizations and local and state education bureaucracies in national education conferences and, more recently, in the preparation of a National Plan for Education, enacted in law in 2014, which includes, among its 20 targets, that the

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Education in South America

country should spend 10 per cent of its GDP in education, and that 50 per cent of the schoolteachers should have masters or doctoral degrees by 2024. Similar to what happened in Argentina, the plan avoided controversial issues that displeased the unions, related for instance to improvements in the content of teacher education or the introduction of performance-based teacher careers and accountability, turning it into more of a wish list than an actual framework for effective policy making (Ministério da Educação, 2014; Congresso Nacional, 2014; Castro et al., 2011). Brazil is also similar to Argentina in the sense that growing investments in public education in the past decades did not lead to significant improvements in education quality, although it did lead to improvements in access. Brazil is a federation with 27 states and more than 200 million people, and, historically, some of the most developed states, such as São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Minas Gerais, have taken the lead in expanding public education, while the national government sought to set the broad legal and pedagogical framework and to provide assistance to the poorer states and regions. The 1988 Constitution granted more autonomy to municipalities in education as well as in other areas, consolidating a complicated three-tier system of education governance, which is the subject of Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro’s contribution (Chapter 4). To play its coordinating role, the National government, since the 1990s, established an effective funding mechanism for states and municipalities, a national system of education statistics and assessment, and several programmes to support education nationwide, from the distribution of free textbooks to the conditional cash transfer programme for poor families with children of school age. There are, however, many instances of overlap and lack of coordination among the three levels of government, leading often to competing demands that affect the daily activities of public schools. The same tensions between centralization and decentralization happened in Colombia, where, as shown by Santiago Isaza (Chapter 12), education is formally decentralized to local authorities, but, in practice, strongly controlled by the central government, which manages the budgets and establishes most of the contents that students should learn. Isaza also describes the experience of a successful partnership between local government and the private sector, as a means of strengthening the capacity of local governments to improve the quality of their schools. There are many other examples of public–private partnerships in education in many Latin American countries, and Brazil has several important experiences that should be known better (Schwartzman et al., 2010), one of them mentioned in more detail by João Batista Araujo e Oliveira on the issues of literacy in Brazil (Chapter 6).

Introduction

11

The most dramatic attempt to move away from state dominance and the prevalence of public education took place in Chile in the 1980s, under the military government of Pinochet, which adopted the free market theories of the Chicago School. As described by Cristián Bellei and Xavier Vanni (Chapter 8) and also Gregory Elacqua (Chapter 10), the government transferred all public schools and teachers from the national to local governments and introduced a voucher system open both to public and private schools, for profit or not, inducing the schools to compete for students in an open market. The reform also deregulated the teaching career and allowed schools greater flexibility in devising their course programmes. To provide information about the schools’ qualities, the government introduced a system of student assessment, which, however, took several years to be implemented. The rationale was that, free from the government’s bureaucracy and the power of the teachers’ unions, the schools would compete for quality and the education sector would attract private investments, reducing the need of the central government to increase its subsidy to the education sector. The only clear effect of these policies was to increase the presence of private education in the country: the private, subsidized schools did not perform significantly better than the public ones, while inequality increased. The centre-left coalition that ruled Chile after Pinochet, from 1990 to 2010, followed by the conservative government of Sebastián Piñera, did not change this institutional design, but very significantly increased the public investments in education and introduced policies to reduce inequities in school access, to improve the qualification of teachers, and to reform the school curriculum, among others. Data from OECD’s PISA shows that Chile was the only country in the region to show consistent improvements in its education, which is now the best in South America, although still well below OECD standards. In spite of these achievements, the current Chilean government, headed by Michelle Bachelet, was elected with the promise to eliminate for-profit education in the country, as demanded by strong student protests and street demonstrations in recent years. A careful analysis of the student performance of public, for-profit and non-profit private schools, presented by Gregory Elacqua (Chapter  10), shows that private, not-for-profit schools tend to perform better than both public and private for-profit schools in Chile. The differences, although significant, are not large, which suggests that the end of the for-profit sector is not likely to affect much the conditions of Chilean education in the future. At the other extreme, Venezuela, in the past fifteen years, as shown by Mabel Mundó (Chapter  19), is trying to revolutionize its education by replacing or combining the conventional school system with a highly politicized parallel

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Education in South America

education movement based on government ‘missions’ and grassroots collectives, as part of a project to build what is being called ‘Socialism of the Twenty-First Century’. The main goal of this policy is to include as many people as possible in education, which is done, among other things, by brushing away all barriers for admission, promotion and graduation related to competence and academic achievement. In a highly polarized society as is Venezuela today, this policy may have been useful to rally political support to the government, but the general impression (since there are no data) is that the education system is rapidly deteriorating, and the quality of education in the country is moving backwards.

Teachers The tradition in most countries was that primary school teachers would get their education at secondary level normal schools, which offered one of the few or only professional opportunities for middle-class women willing to work. Teaching in the few existing, public or religious secondary schools was also a prestigious activity, mostly for men with higher education degrees. This situation changed dramatically as basic education became universal and the expansion of higher education brought new professional alternatives for men and women, offering more prestigious and better-paying jobs. Again in most countries, the old normal schools were replaced by faculties of education or pedagogy, which recruited people aspiring to university-level careers but had difficulties following the more demanding courses in prestigious fields such as medicine, engineering and law. This situation led to two important and negative outcomes for the teaching profession. First, the new, university-trained teachers did not have the middle-class culture and values and good quality general education that was taken for granted for the older generation; and second, they had to deal with a much larger population of students often coming from illiterate families and poor neighbourhoods, which they did not know how to handle. The recently created faculties of education and pedagogy were not prepared to deal with this situation, and tended to develop study programmes that dealt more with the broader interpretations of the problems faced by the schools and the teacher profession than with the preparation of teachers to deal with their students. Denise Vaillant, writing on Uruguay (Chapter 18), and Beatrice Ávalos, writing on Chile (Chapter 9), refer to the predicaments and crucial importance of teachers and teacher education for the improvement of education in the region, an issue that is also discussed by Guiomar Namo de Mello in her chapter

Introduction

13

on curriculum reform in Brazil (Chapter 5). Vaillant analyses in detail the issues relating to the teaching profession in Uruguay, making use of the results from a comparative survey carried out in seven Latin American countries. Ávalos describes the different programmes implemented in Chile to improve the quality of the teacher profession since the 1990s. In spite of significant achievements, not found in any other country in the region, she is critical of the focus on quantifiable performance indicators and the use of competitive funding to induce improvement and of incentives to attract highly performing school leavers into the profession, leaving aside the issues related to the substantive contents of teacher education. She concludes by saying that the real conditions that make for better teaching and teacher applicants have not yet been fully addressed. As the number of school teachers in public education increased, teachers tended to get unionized and developed political orientations and attitudes reflecting the low recognition and loss of prestige they perceived in their careers, blaming society, or the governments, for the daily difficulties they found in their jobs (Oliveira and Schwartzman, 2002). Fabricia de Andrade Ramos and Mauricio Blanco Cossío (Chapter 3) refer to the resistance of Bolivia’s teachers’ unions to the implementation of education policies that could limit their political power, a situation that exists in all other countries and helps to explain the efforts of governments to build political consensus for their policies while avoiding more controversial issues.

Curriculum, teaching methods and ICT The education culture in South America is mostly dominated by a mixture of theories about the oppressive nature of the conventional schools, inspired by Bourdieu and Foucault, with the libertarian, constructivist pedagogies inspired in the writings of Paulo Freire and Emilia Ferreiro, combined sometimes with the contributions of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky of the 1920s, but very little beyond that. Guiomar Namo de Mello (Chapter  5) argues that the old dichotomy between the content-based, traditional education and the studentcentred, constructivist approaches that are typical of the New School (which are far from new, having their origins in the writings of John Dewey, Édouard Claparède and Adolphe Ferriere, also from the earlier twentieth century) has been superseded by the competence-based approach that is prevalent today in most developed economies, in which students are stimulated to acquire the

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Education in South America

knowledge and skills necessary to learn and make use of their knowledge to solve problems in real life. She shows that, although this new perspective has already been incorporated in Brazil in the education law of 1988, it was never implemented – in part for ideological reasons, and in part for the lack of proper leadership and coordination between the national, state and local administrations, as shown also by Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro in Chapter  4. Another issue raised by Mello is Brazil’s inability to deal with vocational education. The early legislation of the 1940s created separate tracks for academic and different types of vocational education, which never took hold. In the 1970s the military decided to force all secondary schools to become vocational, a policy that failed and was cancelled some years later. In the legislation today, vocational education is an option in addition to the academic track, which is already overwhelmed by fifteen or more mandatory disciplines the students are required to learn, in spite of the prevailing constructivist and anti-curriculum ideologies among the educators (Schwartzman, 2011; Schwartzman, 2013). The resistance to a national curricular core, vocational education and competence-based pedagogies is often expressed as a principled defence of freedom of education against the state and the encroachment of the market, but in practice is a movement to keep the teachers and schools free from external oversight, which ultimately leads to the prevalence of bureaucratic formalisms over content, leaving the children poorly educated. In the same vein, João Batista Araujo e Oliveira (Chapter  6) looks at the alarming rates of functional illiteracy among Brazilian students, and attributes it, to a large extent, to the wrong approaches adopted by the country’s education authorities in literacy, eschewing the established international evidence supporting phonic methods in favour of vague constructivist approaches that confuses learning to read with understanding contents of what is being read. Through a careful analysis of the country’s main official documents, he concludes, ironically, that ‘Brazilian students cannot read because government policies – especially the recommendations of the Ministry of Education and the Schools of Education associated with it – have been successfully implemented’. His analysis also shows evidence demonstrating that, when proper, structured approaches to literacy are implemented, there are good results, pointing the way to move forward. In recent years, all countries in the region introduced new information and communication technologies in their schools. Denise Vaillant (Chapter  18) describes Uruguay’s programme to deliver one laptop for every child and teacher in the country’s schools, which was started in 2007. Different assessments have

Introduction

15

shown that this investment has not led to significant improvements in teaching practices and student achievements. Similar studies in other countries show that, if the school works well, the introduction of ICT can have positive effects in its performance, but is far from having an independent impact if the schools perform poorly (Barrera-Osorio and Linden, 2009; Beuermann et al., 2013; Sorj and Lissovsky, 2011).

Multicultural and bilingual education There is a clear perception, in all countries in the region, regarding the strong correlation between the socio-economic and cultural conditions of the children’s families and their achievements in education, as documented for Peru by Santiago Cueto, Juan León and Alejandra Miranda (Chapter 17). There is also a growing awareness that these differences start to affect the children at the very early ages, leading to a growing emphasis on the importance of pre-school education and care, as discussed in detail by Marina Camargo Abello for Colombia (Chapter 13). In many countries, these differences in achievement are also strongly related with cultural and linguistic differences, leading to several attempts to introduce multicultural or bilingual education. Fabricia de Andrade Ramos and Mauricio Blanco Cossío (Chapter 3) describe the opposition that has existed for a long time in Bolivia between the traditional intent to compel the indigenous population to be educated in Spanish, thereby assimilating them into the dominant culture, and the efforts to educate them in their own language and culture, enhancing their own traditions and values. The issue of multicultural education is present and relevant for all countries with large native populations, including Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Paraguay; and is also present to some degree in Brazil, but, in Bolivia, it was brought to the very centre of the country’s political organization, when it changed the country’s name to ‘Plurinational State of Bolivia’. The authors discuss in detail the current education legislation in the country, fully based on the rhetoric of plurinationalism and decolonization and in favour of the culturally oppressed indigenous minorities, and compare it with the previous legislation of 1994, which also gave relevance to the need for multicultural education, but in a very different political context, less centralized and more open to local variations and experimentation. They argue that this rhetoric, although powerful in political terms, does not reflect the actual reality of Bolivian society, which is today highly urbanized and with most people in the country speaking either Spanish or a combination of Spanish and one of the

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Education in South America

native languages, mostly Quechua or Aymara. They show also that, beyond the rhetoric, the education policies in Bolivia have been shaped mostly by the political conflicts and interests of trades unions, political parties and political groups, and have seldom been actually implemented, with little or no impact in the life of the population. In spite of its importance and its presence in the education legislation of many countries, there is little empirical evidence of the way multicultural education has been implemented and its effects. A case study of a programme of multicultural education in Puno, Peru, showed that the government did not have fully qualified teachers and materials to teach in the native languages, and that very often the population preferred to be educated in Spanish, as this provided them with an instrument for social mobility. They conclude that the programme has apparently been successful only in the communities that have decided to enhance their languages and cultures and have done so through concrete actions (Cueto and Secada, 2003). Most of the articles in this book deal with primary education, which is considered, for good reasons, as the foundation for everything else. However, as the issues of primary education are being tackled – and they are, to a limited extent – secondary education looms as a major obstacle in allowing the countries to come closer to what is being called today a knowledge-intensive society. This is the central concern of Martha Laverde Toscano’s contribution on Colombia (Chapter 11). The problems of secondary education are, in many ways, similar to those that affect primary education: lack of well-qualified teachers, lack of appropriate installations and teaching resources, poor management of the schools, and so on. In addition, however, there are two main problems that are specific to secondary education. The first is that the students are adolescents that have more freedom to remain or drop out than when they were in elementary school, and, in fact, in most countries they tend to leave school in large numbers, never completing their degrees, which today are required for most jobs in the industrial and service sectors. The second is that there is a huge gap between what these adolescents want and can do, considering the limitations of their previous education, and the curriculum offered in the schools, which tend to be formalistic and academic in the bad sense of the word. The traditional solution to this situation was to divide secondary education into academic and vocational streams, the first to prepare students to enter higher education, and the second to prepare them for work. In practice, vocational education tended to become some kind of second-class education for poor children, which led to the opposite trend, as in Brazil today, where all students are required to complete the academic

Introduction

17

stream to get a secondary school degree, to which they can add a vocational qualification, either at the same time or in subsequent years. A similar trend can be seen in Ecuador, where a highly stratified upper secondary system that included one academic track and four vocational tracks gave way in 2011 to the new Bachillerato General Unificado (BGU), which is now the only one available. The BGU, whose declared goal is that all students will be prepared for exercising citizenship, for entering the workplace and entrepreneurship, and for continuing learning, offers a common core of academic subjects obligatory to all students, although they can still choose an extra academic or vocational focus. One of the main arguments for unification, both in Brazil and Ecuador, is that it is more democratic, but, in practice, it becomes highly stratified, since only the students able to attend the best private or the few selective high-quality public institutions have any chance of actually entering a good-quality university for a wellestablished career. The problem of how to provide secondary education to a highly differentiated population is not limited to the South but affects also the developed economies. The preferred solution is to create more options for the students at the secondary level, both academic and vocational, without disregarding the need to strengthen the basic skills of language, communication and quantitative reasoning, and to avoid education bottlenecks by creating multiple paths of education advancement for people with different backgrounds, competencies and interests. These issues, however, are barely starting to become part of the South American education agenda.

Conclusion This overview of education in South America shows, on the one hand, an impressive improvement in the provision of access to basic education to most of the population in the region, compared with the extremely high rates of illiteracy of the previous generation in most countries; but, on the other hand, that all countries are still struggling to improve the quality of the education the students get, and to reduce the extreme inequities in achievement that are related to high levels of inequality that prevail also in the economy. The national chapters show also the different attempts to deal with this situation, from working to build national education laws, agendas and plans based on political consensus to specific policies to improve the curricula, introduce new technologies, give more autonomy to local authorities, bring in (or reject) the participation of the private sector and increase the budgets for

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Education in South America

education. One important trend, which was not considered in detail in any of the chapters, is the introduction of external assessments of education achievement, used both for diagnostics and for sorting students for entering higher education, as in Brazil and Chile. These assessments have been extremely useful for making the countries more aware of the problems of the education quality they face, and for identifying with more precision the regions, groups and subject matters more affected by these problems. On the other hand, they have yet to become useful instruments to actually promote the required transformations, and run the risk of becoming an end in themselves, which happens when preparation for the tests becomes more important than learning (Elacqua et  al., 2013; Murnane and Ganimian, 2014; Schwartzman, 2013). Perhaps the most sobering conclusion one can get from this overview is that, while international agencies, governments, political parties, teachers’ unions and social movements try to put forward their education agendas, sometimes reaching consensus, investing more money and writing up wellintended legislation, this is seldom followed, as it should be, by changes in the classrooms, where teachers meet students every day and where education, in the proper sense of the world, does or does not take place. Perhaps it is just a matter of time – cultural changes do not happen quickly, and may eventually materialize if the broad policies are correct. But it is also an alert to the fact that education, to improve, has to be built from the bottom up, looking carefully at the learning processes as they take place, making use of the best possible evidence of what works and what does not, turning the schools into stimulating environments for teachers, students, their families and their local communities, and protecting them from the harassments of ideologies, party politics and government bureaucracies.

Notes 1 Compared with the OECD standardized scores of around 500, Chile went from 410 to 441 points in reading between 2000 and 2012, and smaller improvements in mathematics and science. There were also some improvements in Brazil in mathematics, going from 367 to 393 points between 2003 and 2012, and for Peru in reading, going from 322 in 2000 to 385 in 2012 (OECD, 2013). In the case of Brazil, the atypical improvement in mathematics seems to be related to changes in the age composition of the student sample (Klein, 2011). 2 Data from the Unesco Institute for Statistics, http://www.uis.unesco.org/DataCentre/ Pages/BrowseEducation.aspx [accessed 9 September 2014].

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19

References Archer, Margaret Scotford (1979) Social Origins of Educational Systems. London and Beverley Hills: Sage Publications. Barrera-Osorio, Felipe and Leigh Linden (2009) ‘The use and misuse of computers in education: Evidence from a randomized experiment in Colombia, Volume 1.’ World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series, Report No. 4836. Beuermann, Diether W., Julian P. Cristia, Yyannu Cruz-Aguayo, Santiago Cueto and Ofer Malamud (2013) ‘Home computers and child outcomes: Short-term impacts from a randomized experiment in Peru,’ NBER Working Paper No. 18818, National Bureau of Economic Research. Castro, Cláudio de Moura, João Batista Araujo e Oliveira and Simon Schwartzman (2011) ‘PNE É Lista de Papai Noel’, Folha de São Paulo, https://archive.org/details/ PlanoNacionalDeEducacaoListaDePapaiNoel [accessed 15 December 2014]. Collins, James (1995) ‘Literacy and literacies’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 75–93. Congresso Nacional (2014) ‘Plano Nacional de Educação – Lei 13.005/1014’, Diário Oficial da União (6 June 2014 (Edição Extra)), https://http://www.planalto.gov.br/ ccivil_03/_ato2011-2014/2014/lei/l13005.htm [accessed 15 December 2014]. Cueto, Santiago and Walter Secada (2003) ‘Eficacia escolar en escuelas bilingües en puno, Perú’, ICE – Revista Electrónica Iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación 1(1), http://www.ice.deusto.es. Demarchi, Marta and Hugo Rodríguez (1994) ‘José Pedro Varela’, Perspectives XXIV(3/4): 733–49. Duarte, Jesús, María Soledad Bos and Martín Moreno (2010) ‘Enseñan mejor las escuelas privadas en América Latina? Estudio comparativo usando los resultados del SERCE’, Vol. 5, Notas Técnicas. Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. Duryea, Suzanne, Sebastian Galiani, Hugo Ñopo and Claudia Piras (2007) ‘The educational gender gap in Latin America and the Caribbean’, IDB Publication Working Papers 6721. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and Washington University, St. Louis. Elacqua, Gregory, Matías Martínez, Humberto Santos, Daniela Urbina, Ernesto Treviño and Kate Place (2013) Los Efectos de las Presiones de Accountability sobre las Políticas y Prácticas Pedagógicas en Escuelas de Bajo Desempeño: El Caso de Chile. Santiago: Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL). Ganimian, Alejandro J. (2009) How Much Are Latin American Children Learning? Highlights from the Second Regional Student Achievement Test (SERCE). Washington, DC: Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL). González de San Román, Ainara and Sara de la Rica (2012) ‘Gender Gaps in Pisa Test Scores: The Impact of Social Norms and the Mother’s Transmission of Role Attitudes.’ Vol. 6338. Discussion Paper series, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit, http://nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-201205026042.

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Halperín Donghi, Tulio (1995) Proyecto Y Construcción de Una Nación: 1846–1880. Buenos Aires: Compañia Editora Espasa Calpe Argentina: Ariel. Klein, Ruben (2011) ‘Uma re-análise dos resultados do PISA: problemas de comparabilidade’, Ensaio – Avaliação e Políticas Públicas em Educação 19(73): 717–42. Menezes-Filho, Naércio Aquino (2007) Os Determinantes do Desempenho Educacional do Brasil. São Paulo: Instituto Futuro Brasil. Menezes-Filho, Naércio Aquino and Luiz Felipe Amaral (2009). A Relação Entre Gastos Educacionais e Desempenho Escolar. São Paulo: IBMEC. Ministério da Educação (2014) Planejando a Próxima Década – Conhecendo as 20 Metas Do Plano Nacional de Educação. Brasilia: Ministério da Educação. Murnane, Richard J. and Alejandro J. Ganimian (2014) ‘Cuáles son las lecciones de las evaluaciones de impacto rigurosas de políticas educativas para América Latina?’ Documento de Trabajo PREAL. Washington, DC: Inter-American Dialogue. OECD (2013) PISA 2012 Results: What Students Know and Can Do (2 volumes). Paris: OECD. Oliveira, João Batista Araujo and Simon Schwartzman (2002) A Escola Vista Por Dentro. Belo Horizonte: Alfa Educativa. Ramirez, Francisco O. and John Boli (1987) ‘The political construction of mass schooling: European origins and worldwide institutionalization’, Sociology of Education 60(1): 2–17. Schwartzman, Simon (2004) ‘The challenges of education in Brazil (Introduction)’, in S. Schwartzman and C. Brock (eds), The Challenges of Education in Brazil. Oxford: Triangle Journals Ltd. Schwartzman, Simon (2011) ‘Academic drift in Brazilian education’, Pensamiento Educativo. Revista de Investigación Educacional Latinoamericana 48(1): 14–26. Schwartzman, Simon (2013) ‘Uses and abuses of education assessment in Brazil’, Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education 43(3): 69–288. Schwartzman, Simon and Claudio de Moura Castro (2013) ‘Ensino, formação profissional e a questão da mão de obra’, Ensaio: Avaliação e Políticas Públicas em Educação 21(80): 563–623. Schwartzman, Simon, Sueli Torres and Liu Fat Kam (2010) Uma Contribuição Pedagógica para a Educação Brasileira – Programa de Educação Integrada Desenvolvido Pela Fundação Romi Desde 1993. São Paulo: Adonis. Serrano, Sol (1994) Universidad y Nación: Chile en el Siglo XIX. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria. Somers, Marie-Andree, Patrick J. McEwan and J. Douglas Willms (2004) ‘How effective are private schools in Latin America?’, Comparative Education Review 48(1): 48–69. Sorj, Bernardo and Mauricio Lissovsky (2011) ‘Internet nas escolas públicas: Políticas além da política’, Working Paper No. 6 (March). Rio de Janeiro: Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas em Ciências Sociais. Williams, Daryle (2001) Culture Wars in Brazil: The First Vargas Regime, 1930–1945. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Argentina: Public Policies in Education, 2001–2014 Juan Carlos Tedesco

Introduction The following text is organized in three main sections. The first section intends to present a brief historical balance of education in Argentina. This historical evocation is justified because educational traditions play a relevant role in the explanation of the present behaviour of the different actors within the political– educational process. The aim of the second section is to analyse the main lines regarding policies designed and applied over the past decade, according to two core hypotheses. First, the hypothesis that the law was envisaged to be one of the prime tools used by the central government for designing and defining policies. Based on the above, changes in national educational laws and the processes through which these laws were formulated and passed are described. The second hypothesis refers to the fact that the educational policies were essentially intended to improve the material living conditions of the population that have access to education as much as the material inputs for learning. As a result of the experience, and given the limited impact of these policies on educational quality and equality over this decade, the third section is intended to assess the pending challenges. Without ignoring the relevance of sustaining those policies regarding material supplies, the hypothesis sustained in this section refers to the necessity to place the cultural dimension at the centre of future processes concerning educational change. This part of the text acquires much more of a proposal nature, and therefore it assumes an explicit political voluntarism.

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1 The weight of history Although it may seem an excess of academicia, the debate around Argentine education and its future perspective requires to be looked at from a vision of the past. Nostalgia about the excellent education Argentina had up to a little more than the first half of the twentieth century is a crucial constituent in the assessment of the present structure. This nostalgia is based on an imaginary, according to which our public education guaranteed high learning results, the teachers’ authority was respected, and the system complied with social mobility and cohesion. In this respect, it is interesting to highlight that this imaginary is not sustained by the analysis of experts in education – who for several decades have been pointing out the significant deficit of the traditional model in terms of educational justice. According to these studies, imposing a unique cultural model within a context of strong social inequality and cultural heterogeneity implied the failure of those who did not adapt to the standard pace of the positivist pedagogy. However, that traditional model was also subject to strong criticism from the point of view of the political actors. To express it in a very concise and simplified manner, it is possible to state that the political left criticized the model for its social reproduction capacity; the catholic and the authoritarian right did so due to its laic rationalism, and the linkage between education and ideological subversion; and the sectors associated with modern economic developmental projects criticized the model for its detachment with respect to the needs of the productive system. Literature about this issue is wide and well known.1 We do not know much, however, about the processes through which – in spite of the criticism – that cultural representation of the glorified past of education in Argentina gained acceptance by large sectors of the population. This is not the place to settle this issue. It is interesting to highlight, instead, that this kind of ‘symbolic heritage’ plays an ambiguous and complex role at present. On the one hand, it has strong potential for restoring two central tenets of any political project based on the goal of building fairer societies: the centrality of education for social justice, and its public feature. This dimension of the educational tradition has played a relevant role in recent times to ensure that policies of privatization and tuition fees attained social legitimacy, as was the case in other countries in the region. The clearest example of this phenomenon are the educational policies of the 1990s, when the neoliberal model was in full force regarding the economic policies, but faced huge problems in the educational arena. On the other hand, these same traditions create significant difficulties for introducing notions of efficiency and result accountability in the State management

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of education. In this respect, debates in the past decade, in particular with teachers’ union organizations, are an indicator of the resistance against including basic result-evaluation and teacher-performance monitoring mechanisms. In order to explain the design of, and reactions to, the recent educational policies, it is necessary to add, to the long-term historical traditions, the material and cultural consequences of the profound crisis during 2001. That crisis significantly changed the agenda of discussion about educational policies, placing as top priority the issue of how to educate within a social emergency context. In this respect, it is worth briefly recalling that during those years seven out of ten children under 14 years old were poor. Within the city outskirts of Buenos Aires, 78 per cent of primary and secondary education students lived in poverty, and that share increased to 86 per cent in the case of public school students. Poverty always brings about a strong deterioration of the conditions involved in the cognitive and affective development of children and young people that enter school. But, apart from basic deprivation of food, health, housing and other dimensions of material living conditions, the fall into poverty is associated with other more intangible, but significantly important, effects in the educational process. From the pedagogical point of view, the crisis of 2001 abruptly changed the conditions under which children and young people entered school, whose homes had to undergo social decline. The magnitude and novelty of this phenomenon allow us to assume the existence of very diverse situations, but in all of them we can identify elements of anomie, difficulties in defining projects for the future, and low levels of confidence and self-esteem – all of which factors directly affect the teaching-learning process. The deterioration not only affected students but also teachers, as salaries, family income, and working conditions deteriorated. From this point of view, the 2001 crisis was a systemic crisis, which entered the school and affected all actors – students, teachers, families and authorities – and led to responses that altered the very meaning of educational action. The school became, in the context of poverty, a space for social support rather than one of teaching and learning. In order to understand the rationale by which policies were planned in the past decade, it is necessary not to lose sight of this historical heritage as a whole.

2 Recent strategies The analysis of educational strategies planned and implemented in the past decade can be organized into two major categories, which are articulated but

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have their own relevant specificities. The first refers to normative changes. The second analyses the policies intended to improve material learning inputs.

Law as a tool for educational transformation From the political point of view, within a federal country scenario, where the responsibility for guaranteeing the right to compulsory basic education falls on provincial jurisdictions, the central government favoured the modification of the legal framework as one of its top strategies for change. The contents of the new regulations passed during this period define social justice as the concept that provides purpose to educational tasks at all levels, establish that High School be compulsory, and provide for sustained financing and forms of government that ensure social participation. Additionally, a set of norms has been established in order to reposition technical education as a priority modality for economic development, and new contents have been included to the curricula regarding respect for human rights, comprehensive sexual education, and living-together norms aimed at encouraging dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution.2 Apart from the contents, though, it is important to analyse the process by which laws were elaborated and passed. From this point of view, the law can be regarded as a particular way of the fundamental processes of construction of social consensus needed to guarantee continuity of the educational policies. It is very well known that many important educational issues are not legal problems. This is the reason why the law has serious restrictions regarding the substantial content of the agreements that may be expressed in its text and the actors and institutions involved in its planning and debate – the Congress and the political parties. Despite these limitations, the legislation holds virtues that must not be underestimated. First, it is important to remember that, according to the Argentine political–educational tradition, the law does not sanction existing practices but constitutes an action plan and an important source of legitimacy/ illegitimacy for transformation policies. The clearest example of this tradition can be seen if we compare Act 1420 – sanctioned in 1884 – and the Federal Education Act (Ley de Educación Nacional) – sanctioned in 1993. Act 1420 declared the seven-year primary school as compulsory, but it was only in 1960 that the country could achieve full coverage at that level. During the late nineteenth century, Act 1420 was a ‘utopia’, but for many decades its text worked as a source of legitimacy for popular-education policies and social demands. The Federal Education Act, instead, was identified as one of the education

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deteriorating factors and, in this sense, it was regarded as socially illegitimate by large sectors of the population. In spite of the fact that this law declared schooling between the age of five and up to the end of the basic nine-year education as compulsory, it was not used as a supporting element of social demands and very few people attribute the coverage improvement experienced by the Argentine education system in recent years to this law. This comparison illustrates the significant importance assumed by the overall political project in which the creation of an education law is involved. The text of this law demands a definition of the purpose of the educational action or, in other words, the project of society that education wishes to construct. In the case of Argentina, the discussion of the National Education Act (Ley de Educación Nacional) expressed the need to overcome the purpose defined by Act 1420 in the late nineteenth century – based on the project of constructing the National State – and to break away from the prevailing concept in social consciousness according to which the Federal Act responded to the neoliberal model of society. The new law considers education and knowledge as public assets, and assumes that education is a key strategy in the process of the construction of a fairer society. The fact that there has been broad social consensus regarding these goals should not be underestimated, and leads to an analysis of which only now can some issues can be pointed out. First, this consensus indicates that there has been a major change in the ‘ideological environment’ compared to that in the 1990s. The experience of implementing neoliberal formulas left the country with a painful balance, which translated into – among many other consequences – the termination of the discourse based on privatization, deregulation, and the market as the solution to all our problems. However, the achieved agreement does not imply that adhesion to social justice principles is a profound and general phenomenon, particularly in the middle and high social sectors of society. This opens up to question the degree of real commitment to the values of social justice existing in these social sectors. Second, it is necessary to reflect on the very process of the elaboration of the law. The assumption on which the agreement strategies rely is that the more diverse the ways of participation, the greater the degree of legitimacy of the achieved result. In this respect, it is important to highlight the possibilities and differences of two of the most important ways of participation used in the case of Argentina: surveys and debate. Much of the participation process referred to in the drafting of the new law was carried out by consulting citizens and teachers, debate sessions, and opinion

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surveys. Surveys hold obvious limitations, since they only allow people to choose among the different options defined by the organizers. However, experience suggests that we should not underestimate their importance, for their main feature is to avoid socially outdated debates. For example, the study showed the high degree of consensus that existed in society about a number of proposals: such as the need for compulsory secondary school, the unification of the system structure, the strengthening of the national mechanisms of government, universal access to new information technologies, the resource allocation for equality and inequality compensation programmes, the compulsory teaching of a foreign language, and the creation of the National Teacher Training Institute (Instituto Nacional de Formación Docente) among others. With respect to other issues, however, surveys are insufficient and debate becomes necessary. Such is the case, for example, of religious education, financing the demand for education, evaluation and merit-based payments for teachers. Unlike surveys, however, debates are less likely to promote agreements. Topics debated often have a strong ideological component: the different sectors have no intention of, or possibilities to change, their stance, placing emphasis on general principles rather than on specific policies and programme implementation. Faced with these issues, the solutions adopted were diverse. In some cases, the political orientation of the majority prevailed; in others, the issues were left out of the legislation, allowing the debate to continue and eventually reach an agreement in the future; in some other cases, finally, intermediate and compromising solutions were adopted and accepted by rival sectors. Due to the limited space of this chapter, it is not possible to develop each of these options. However, it is important to note that when negotiation takes place through debate, participation tends to be restricted to organized sectors through their experts or representatives. Additionally, negotiation through debate changes the role of the National Education Ministry. In some cases, the Ministry must settle differences based on its own political choices, while in others, it must act as a mediator and look for a compromise solution. Taking this into account, the public nature of education grants the State a central role in defining objectives and strategies that cannot be a mere reflection of the demands of each sector in particular. This way, the State assumes its responsibility not only for constructing education pacts, but also for representing the general interests as well as those in the excluded sectors. Only the State has the possibility of speaking for those who are not represented by corporatist organizations.

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The third important issue to analyse is the role of political parties. Unlike other methods of agreement, a law has to be discussed by Parliament, which represents the voice of citizens through political parties. Beyond the representation crisis and the low level of trust political parties show today in Latin America in particular, the educational agreements highlight the tension between encouraging social agreements and agreements among political parties. The strategy used by the government for the National Education Act was to start with surveys and consultations, and only at the introduction of the discussion in Parliament. This process went through three main stages: first, a discussion took place regarding a document prepared by the Ministry of Education that included proposals referred to the main lines of educational policies; second, a draft bill was prepared taking into account the results of the surveys and consultation and brought to consultations. Finally, the third phase took place in the National Congress, where it was presented, debated, and approved by both legislative chambers. During the first two stages, the actors of the discussion were teachers, citizens, organizations of different types (unions, churches, parents’ groups, business groups, non-governmental social organizations, etc.), while only in the third stage were the actors the political parties, through their representatives and senators in their corresponding chambers of Parliament. This methodology allowed for the bill proposed by the Executive and submitted to Congress to be empowered by a broad social consensus, since it was the result of surveys, debates and negotiations among the different parties. Though several representatives and senators concerned with educational issues participated in the activities of surveys and debate conducted prior to the presentation of the bill, the fact is that the Congress and the political parties as such were not the main actors in the design of the law.

Improving material inputs of educational supply and demand In addition to laws, recent strategies focused on improving material input regarding educational supply and demand. From the point of view of the demand, and within the social framework generated by the consequences of the crisis of 2001, policies were aimed at providing economic subsidies at both ends of the educational system structure. At the bottom end, the main strategy was the Universal Child Allowance (Asignación Universal por Hijo – AUH). At the top, the most important programme was the Bicentennial Scholarships (Becas del Bicentenario) to provide access to scientific and technical careers in higher education.

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The Universal Child Allowance programme was created in October 2009, and its main objective is to improve the living conditions of young people under 18 years old belonging to one of six specific groups of the population: family groups that do not benefit from the Family Allowance System (Régimen de Asignaciones Familiares); employed workers whose household incomes are below the established minimum salary; unemployed people or workers in the informal sector; beneficiaries of social assistance programmes; individual taxpayers (monotributista social); household employees, and people with disabilities, as long as they fall within the aforementioned conditions. Apart from the discussion about how this programme was implemented, it is important to highlight that the subsidies were conditional to demonstrating compliance with health check-ups and vaccination plans for children under 5 years of age; and children and adolescents at school must exhibit a certificate of compliance with the corresponding school year. The available information suggests that this benefit currently covers more than 3,670,000 children and adolescents, around 70 per cent of whom belong to the lower 20 per cent of the country’s income distribution, and 60 per cent living in conditions of poverty. This programme allowed 65 per cent of children and adolescents to make it out of extreme poverty and 18 per cent to overcome poverty.3 The results of this policy have been subject to partial evaluations. The recent most important one is the study carried out by the Social Debt Observatory of the Argentine Catholic University (Observatorio de la Deuda Social de la Universidad Católica Argentina) on 3,500 cases comparing the situation within the period 2010–2013. According to this assessment, the programme has shown a positive impact in reducing school dropout rates, but had no impact in improving learning achievement or reducing repetition.4 At the other end of the education ladder, policies designed to improve the conditions of low-income students interested in pursuing higher studies were designed, promoting scientific and technical careers. The Bicentennial Scholarships are intended for students who have completed their secondary education – all subjects passed – and are applied during the year of Convocation for a university career, college degree or teacher training in a National University, or National University Institute, or institutes under the authority of the National Institute of Teacher Training (Instituto Nacional de Formación Docente – INFD) or of the National Institute of Technological Education (Instituto Nacional de Educación Tecnológica – INET). In addition, students attending the last two years of Engineering in a National University or a National University Institute, and having three to fifteen subjects left before graduating, can apply for the

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scholarship. As a main requirement, they should belong to households whose income does not exceed a basic amount defined according to income parameters for the different regions in the country. We have no information that enables us to assess the impact of this programme on higher education enrolment. As for scientific and technical careers, the enrolment has increased. However, there is a high degree of failure during the first year. Additionally, there is a low level of interest with respect to these careers among school graduates to the point that the quota of 30,000 scholarships offered by the programme is not completely fulfilled. On the supply side, the policies concentrated on four key components: teacher salaries, infrastructure, school time and technological equipment – computers. The analysis of teacher salary is extremely complex because of the significant number of variables involved: the participation of the national government and provincial governments, union diversity, salary differentiation according to location, seniority, system levels, bonuses, etc. There is a paradox, however, that deserves deeper analysis, the regular increase of teacher salaries in real terms and the persistence of strikes as a strategy for union demands, particularly in state education. The investments in infrastructure are historically unique in their magnitude. The estimation is that 1,580 schools were built in the past decade, considering the different school building plans, and another 550 are undergoing construction or in the bidding processes. Despite this effort, there are still important deficits, given the new educational goals: universalization of primary education, compulsory mid-level education, and extension of the daily school hours, all of which require a significant expansion of the existing infrastructure. The increase in daily learning hours is another factor associated with quality of education. Taking this into account, the recent policies have proposed extending school hours, which is very difficult to achieve. According to the Education Financing Act (Ley de Financiamiento Educativo) the goal is that 30 per cent of elementary education students should attend extended-shift or double-shift schools. This goal was ratified by the National Education Act, which also intends to universalize this system. The improvement, however, has been very slow. In 2010, only 8.4 per cent of students enrolled in primary schools were under either of these systems (5.5 per cent in double-shift schools and 2.9 per cent in extended-shift schools). These overall averages conceal significant inequalities both by region and by type of administration. The private sector outperforms the public sector; the urban sector outperforms the rural sector; and there are significant differences among provinces. While in the city of

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Buenos Aires, 35 per cent of students attend either the extended- or double-shift school system, in Santiago del Estero and Corrientes, they do not exceed 1.5 per cent. Additionally, the information available indicates that the extension of the school-day shift does not favour the most vulnerable social sectors. It is only in five provinces (Catamarca, Formosa, La Pampa, Mendoza and La Rioja) that a positive correlation can be seen regarding the poorest students.5 The situation may have improved since 2010, particularly in some provinces. The main obstacles to expanding this policy have been the lack of infrastructure and of teaching staff. Finally, investment regarding information technology through programmes intended to provide all High School students with computers nationwide, as well as primary school students in some provinces, occupies a significant place in education funding and has allowed public schools to attain very adequate levels from the point of view of equipment. A recent national survey of a representative sample of primary and secondary schools indicates that practically all schools have computers, television sets and DVD players. This is a significant improvement in terms of equality, since, according to a report prepared considering the National Census of School Infrastructure (Censo Nacional de Infraestructura Escolar – CNIE) of the National Education Ministry (Ministerio Nacional de Educación) in 1998, only 39 per cent of primary schools counted on computers, while at secondary level this number rose to 85 per cent.6 In terms of connectivity, 57 per cent of schools have Internet access for teachers and students, and about half of the educational institutions have an internal network – intranet – that connects the computers and allows for collaboration and the sharing of digital resources. In both cases, these ICT resources are more widespread among secondary schools than in primary schools. Similarly, the availability of a school server is clearly greater at secondary level, which is an important aspect when assessing the usefulness of the internal network, since the presence of a server allows for remote access to a number of digital resources, even without access to the Internet. As regards secondary education, the differences between State and private schools are generally less noticeable, which implies a higher level of equality in terms of access to ICT devices and resources in both types of management sectors. There are also significant differences favouring the private sector with respect to the Internet connection used by teachers and students, and the availability of projectors. The other devices and resources analysed show no significant differences between sectors. There is even a greater supply of school servers at State secondary schools compared to private schools.7

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3 Pending challenges In Argentina, experience confirms that improving the living conditions of schoolchildren and providing better learning materials is a necessary, though insufficient, condition for improving the quality of education and breaking away from the social determinism regarding learning outcomes. Sustaining and eventually increasing the current level of financing will be, undoubtedly, a very demanding challenge. It will require sustainable economic growth, and the ability to show that additional investments would have a clear impact on educational outcomes, particularly for the most vulnerable sectors of society. To achieve this impact, however, would require designing strategies aimed at modifying more complex cultural and institutional variables such as prejudices, stereotypes, and teacher attitudes, work organization and management styles. Above all, it will also be necessary to generate levels of support for social justice that go beyond the mere rhetoric. These challenges involve all social actors and not just educators. Following the analytical framework defined for this chapter, it is possible to point out the importance of the cultural aspects from the point of view of both education demand and supply. With respect to the former, it would be necessary that financing aimed at improving the living conditions of the poorest sectors go hand-in-hand with policies that encourage or strengthen their capability to translate educational needs into better-qualified demands. The political class, in turn, should again prioritize education in their discussion agenda, and assume that education is crucial for economic growth with social justice. In order to fulfil this goal, however, it is necessary to face the paradox of demanding from the political class that they overcome the short-term logics that run both governmental administration and the search for electoral support. Entrepreneurs should realize they cannot continue with the double discourse of, for example, claiming a culture of effort from the education sector while, at the same time, financing trash television shows that directly impact on the socialization of the new generations. Teachers’ unions should change their practice of using strikes as their sole struggling strategy, since it directly impacts on the quality of the public schools, and of systematically rejecting proposals for professionalism, career path and greater accountability for results. In terms of the educational supply, the dominant hypothesis in past decades has been that changes in institutional and organizational patterns were the key variables that could allow the investments in inputs to lead to improvements in

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quality and equality. Accordingly, strategies were introduced to grant more autonomy to schools, implement performance-based strategies for students and teachers (affecting their salaries and careers), privatization, and so on. The discourse on institutional change was strongly associated with the values of efficiency and efficacy, which caused great resistance on the part of the internal actors in the educational system, who were accused of being responsible for the poor results. The challenge here is to articulate institutional changes with social justice. There is no contradiction between efficiency and social justice. Assessing results to break with social determinism is different from assessing results to establish rankings and rivalry among schools or among teachers. Granting autonomy to schools in order to promote ghettos or particularized curricular responses is very different from granting autonomy in order to define relevant processes to achieve common goals. The institutional changes for promoting social justice cannot ignore the significance of pedagogical variables. In this respect, as already discussed in previous papers, it is necessary to accept the key role of some contents – reading and writing literacy, digital literacy, scientific literacy – and the required renewal of knowledge and values with which teachers practise their profession.8 We know that future teachers do not acquire, during their initial training, the basic tools they need to teach the children how to read and write in the first year of school or how to work in specific environments such as native communities, single-teacher rural schools, areas of extreme poverty and many others that exist in our country. There might be no other profession with such a huge gap between what should be taught during the training period and what is later on required when teaching. Last but not least, it is necessary to take on the challenge of enhancing the trust in the public school in the collective imagination. The middle and upper classes have deserted public schools since the 1960s. Now the deteriorating image of public schools is reaching low-income sectors. Evidence for that comes from the AUH, a benefit devised for families with poor children in public schools. According to estimates, there are 280,000 children in about 700 private schools that have enrolled and benefit from the AUH. In the same line, according to information provided by the Permanent Home Survey (Permanente de Hogares – EPH) from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos – INDEC), of the total amount of children who qualify to benefit from AUH, 15.5 per cent attend a private school. Enhancing the trust of public schools is also a cultural challenge. This probably involves overcoming the high levels of anomie perceived in its

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functioning but, above all, the public school needs to make sure that students attending them will actually learn.

Notes 1 Juan Carlos Tedesco (2003) Education and Society in Argentina (1880–1945) (Educación y Sociedad en la Argentina (1880–1945)). Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno (Argentina editors). Adriana Puiggrós (ed.) (1991) Civil Society and State in the Origins of the Argentine Education System (Sociedad civil y Estado: En los Orígenes del Sistema Educativo Argentino). Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna. Cecilia Braslavsky (1985) Education Discrimination in Argentina (La Discriminación Educativa en Argentina). Buenos Aires: FLACSO/GEL. 2 The main education laws passed during this period were: Education Financing Act 26075 (Ley de Financiamiento Educativo), 21 December 2005; Technical-Professional Education Act 26.058 (Ley de Educación Técnico-Profesional), 7 September 2005; Guaranteed Teacher Salary and 180-Day School Period Act 25864 (Ley de garantía del salario docente y 180 días de clase), 4 December 2003; National Education Act 26.206 (Ley de Educación Nacional), 14 December 2006; National Comprehensive Sexual Education Program Act 26150 (Ley Programa Nacional de Educación Sexual Integral), 4 October 2006. See: Official Record National Administration (2008) Legislative Compendium 2003–2007. Education (Compendio Legislativo 2003–2007. Educación). Buenos Aires: Official Record National Administration (Dirección Nacional del Registro Oficial). 3 CIFRA – Centro de Investigación y Formación de la República Argentina (Argentine Republic Investigation and Training Center) (2010) ‘The Universal Child Allowance a year from its implementation’ (‘La Asignación Universal por Hijo a un año de su implementación’). Paper document No. 7, November. 4 Agustín Salvia, Ianina Muñón and Santiago Poy (2014) ‘Theoretical and methodological challenges of studies assessing the impact of social programmes: the case of the Universal Child Allowance in Argentina’ (‘Desafíos teóricometodológicos de los estudios de evaluación de impacto de programmeas sociales: el caso de la Asignación Universal por Hijo en la Argentina’). Fourth Latin American Meeting on Methodology of Social Sciences (Cuarto Encuentro Latinoamericano de Metodología de las Ciencias Sociales), 27–29 August. Costa Rica: Heredia, National University of Costa Rica (Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica). 5 A comprehensive study about the significance of learning time in quality of education and policies implemented to extend the school daily hours can be found in Cecilia Veleda (2013) New Times for Primary Education; Lessons about the Extension of the School Daily Hours (Nuevos tiempos para la educación primaria;

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lecciones sobre la extensión de la jornada escolar). Buenos Aires: CIPECC/UNICEF Foundation, Argentina. 6 CIFRA (2010) ‘Universal Child Allowance a year from its implementation’ (‘La Asignación Universal por Hijo a un año de su implementacion’). Buenos Aires, Work Document No. 7, November. F. Repetto and F. Potenza del Massetto (2012) Social Protection Systems in Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina (Sistemas de protección social en América Latina y el Caribe: Argentina). Santiago de Chile: CEPAL, December. 7 UNICEF (2014) ICT and Basic Education Programme (Programa TIC y Educación Básica). Buenos Aires: UNICEF. 8 Juan Carlos Tedesco (2012) Education and Social Justice in Latin America (Educación y Justicia Social en América Latina). Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

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Argentina: Rethinking Government Models for Education Silvina Gvirtz, Angela Inés Oría and Esteban Torre

Introduction The object of this chapter is to offer a description of the nature and outputs of the Argentine education system. Additionally, we explore possible ways to pursue its improvement. Our argument is that transforming public education requires transforming the structural conditions that go beyond the technical, curricular or pedagogical dimensions. Reform processes have been occurring in Argentina since the 1960s, always applying to substantive aspects of schooling but never reviewing the system’s forms of governance. We pay particular attention to the analyses of governance structures, the location of power and the arenas for voice and participation in policy design and administration. The first section of the chapter offers an analytic framework to describe Argentine education, based on the system’s internal and academic performance. The second section describes alternative forms of government and analyses their viability within the specificities of the Argentine context. We argue that if funding and provision are to remain in the hands of the State, then the key to improvement is to rework regulations, roles and power logics within the bureaucratic model to enhance quality and accountability. In the third section, the concept of ‘publification’ is deployed, as understood within the writings of Cunill Grau, as a way to go beyond both the approaches of bureaucracy and the market, toward a system of public services focused on expanding the ‘public sphere’ within the State and society. We thus suggest two policy issues that are central to an agenda of educational improvement: territorialization; and the strengthening of educational management capacities. Finally, we offer some reflections about recent trends in educational discourse that favour the participation of new actors in different aspects of educational policy and their actual translation into practice. 35

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A diagnosis of the Argentine education system At least two main dimensions should be considered in order to analyse the Argentine education system:

a internal performance (enrolment, repetition, drop out, etc.); b academic performance (students learning results).

1 Internal performance Enrolment In the first decade of the twenty-first century, all countries in Latin America experienced a significant growth of the net enrolment rates at all levels of education. The average enrolment rate on pre-primary level was 41.4 per cent in 2000, and reached 61.1 per cent in 2010 (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] Institute for Statistics, 2011). Bolivia and Paraguay have the lowest coverage (32%), while Mexico (84%), Uruguay (78%), Peru (78%) and Argentina (73%) show greater progress. The enrolment rates for primary schools reached up to values higher than 90 per cent in all countries of the region. Argentina reached 98.4 per cent according to the last National Census (INDEC, 2010). Enrolment rates for secondary schools increased from 62.7 per cent in 2000 to 72 per cent in 2010 (UNESCO, 2011); while Ecuador (59%) and Paraguay (60%) have the lowest rates, Chile (83%), Brazil (82%) and Argentina (82%) achieved the highest. The growth in net enrolment rates at all levels of education experienced by Latin American countries was in part due to national policies requiring compulsory education, which favoured the inclusion of disadvantaged groups.

Grade repetition Grade repetition is defined as ‘the practice of holding back a student in the same grade for one or more school years’ (Brophy, 2006). It is a key indicator of the internal performance of an education system. Thus, it incites research and policy elaboration both in developing and developed countries (Brophy, 2006: 5). A problematic aspect of repetition is that it often occurs in the early years of primary school. In 2010, Latin America’s average repetition rate on primary

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school was 4.8 per cent; while Argentina had 5 per cent, Brazil showed the highest value (19%), and Bolivia and Chile only very low rates (1%). For secondary schools, repetition rates have remained fairly constant during the past decade. However, while the average rate in Latin America is 7.1 per cent, Argentina reached 12 per cent in 2010 (UNESCO, 2011). This is particularly alarming considering that grade repetition is often a prelude to student drop out.

Drop out School drop out occurs both at primary and secondary levels, although it affects the latter more significantly. In 2010, on average, 4.6 per cent of Latin American students dropped out from primary education (UNESCO, 2011). In Argentina, the dropout rate for primary schools has been steadily decreasing. While in 2003 it reached 5.1 per cent, the last measurement in 2009 reported 1.9 per cent. Secondary schools, indeed, are quite alarming: 9.3 per cent of the students drop out during the first three years, showing an increase of almost two points since 2002. Additionally, it crops up significantly during the final three years of schooling, reaching up to 15.4 per cent (Ministry of Education, Argentina, 2010).

2 Academic performance Argentina’s academic performance can be analysed through international and national assessments. We consider the country’s performance in PISA, SERCE and TERCE, from UNESCO, as well as the results of ONE (Operativo Nacional de Evaluación), the Argentine National Assessment. PISA 2012 suggests two main conclusions about academic performance in Latin America. Countries that participate in PISA (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay) perform below average on Reading, Maths and Science. Besides, the seven countries of the region that had consistently improved through the years have now ceased this positive trend, and Argentina is no exception. Figure 2.1 shows Argentina’s performance in PISA from 2006 to 2012. In mid-2008, UNESCO’s Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE) published the results of the Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE), which evaluated Maths, Reading and Science skills on 3rd and 6th graders in sixteen countries of Latin America. The performance of Argentina was above average in Reading (3rd grade) and Maths (6th grade), while there were no significant differences between the mean score of Argentina and the regional mean in Maths (3rd grade) and Reading

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Figure 2.1 Evolution of Argentina’s performance – PISA 2006 to PISA 2012. Source: OECD, 2006, 2009, 2012.

(6th grade). Finally, the results of Argentinian students were below average in Science (6th grade). Argentina’s National Assessment (ONE) is a national evaluation carried out every three years for primary (3rd and 6th grades) and secondary (2nd and 6th years) students in Reading, Maths and Science skills. It considers a sample of primary and secondary schools, but it also assesses the whole universe of students in their final year of secondary school. Students are classified into three levels of learning: low, average and high. At primary level, ONE 2010 shows improvement in 3rd grades compared with 2007, especially in Science and Maths. In Social Science, most students achieved an average level of learning, and there is also a trend towards improvement in Reading, both in 3rd and 6th graders. As regards the results of ONE’s universal test on secondary students in their final school year, there is a significant improvement in three of the four disciplines, compared to the previous assessment in 2007 in Maths, Science and Social Science. However, there has been a decline in Reading. Having analysed the indicators of internal and academic performance, there is evidence of the important challenges Argentina has to face in order to build quality education for all and guarantee educational justice. In sum: ● ● ● ●

continue increasing enrolment in pre-primary schools; lower repetition rates in primary school; lower dropout rates in secondary school; better academic performance in all levels.

Figure 2.2 ONE 2007–2010 – Primary level, 3rd grade: (a) Maths performance; (b) Reading performance; (c) Social Science performance; and (d) Science performance. Source: ONE 2007/2010.

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Figure 2.3 ONE 2007–2010 – 6th grade: (a) Maths performance; (b) Reading performance; (c) Social Science performance; and (d) Science performance. Source: ONE 2007/2010.

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Figure 2.4 ONE 2007–2010 – 6th year, Secondary School: (a) Maths performance; (b) Reading performance; (c) Social Science performance; and (d) Science performance. Source: ONE 2007/2010.

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This clearly calls for the attention of policy makers and, as we shall argue later, society. Argentina in fact has been heavily investing in education, designing policies and even passing educational laws during the past ten years. The Education Financing Act in 2005 established a goal of 6 per cent of the GDP to be reached by 2010, and this has been accomplished. Argentina’s National Education Act passed in 2006 made secondary education compulsory, favouring the inclusion of the most disadvantaged groups. Moreover, significant investment has been made on infrastructure in order to expand coverage and provide schools with modern technological equipment. Conectar Igualdad is one of the largest one-to-one educational computing programs in the world. The Government of Argentina embarked on a massive initiative to provide computers to every student, teacher and administrator in the country’s public secondary schools and teaching colleges. However necessary, these initiatives do not seem to be sufficient. Why, therefore, is Argentina unable to provide quality education for everybody today? One way to understand why this is so, and discuss possible solutions, is to describe the nature of the system that produces such results, understand the way it is governed, and know who makes the decisions and how. We argue that the transformation of public education requires the transformation of conditions that go beyond the technical, curricular or pedagogical dimensions, the main one being the structural improvement of its forms of governance. In the following section, we describe alternative forms of government of education systems and their possibilities within the specifics of the Argentine context.

Alternative models of educational governance Following Dale (1997), governance activities can be classified into three categories: regulation, funding and provision. Based on historical evidence, regulation is always coordinated by bureaucratic logics where the State plays the major role. Funding and provision can fall either into the hands of the State or the market. With the usual reservations concerning the simplification involved in such illustrations, four alternative types of governance may be viewed graphically in Figure 2.5. We begin by describing Bureaucracy. In the educational systems that show this kind of governance configuration, the State embodies both funding and provision of the educational services. Education bureaucracies are financed

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Figure 2.5 Ideal types of governance of educational systems. Source: Gvirtz, 2009; Gvirtz and Minvielle, 2008.

through public funds and educational services are provided by State-managed schools, where teachers are public servants, and Argentine education has been governed through this type of scheme for over a century. However, as shown in the previous section, today the system finds it difficult to meet the goals of quality and equality for all. Continuing with the pure forms of governance, at the other end of the chart is the Market. Opposed to Bureaucracy, both funding and provision are coordinated by market logics. This means that private individuals who demand education are those who fund education. Such services are provided by private offer, i.e. institutions that individually decide to provide education to whoever requests it. Since funding of education is left to private agents, in Argentina this kind of arrangement – private education – is normally reserved for mediumand high-income families. Consequently, educational markets in Argentina generally serve an enclosed school population. However, private enrolment has grown between 1940 and 2000 at a rate of 4.7 per cent per annum, compared to 1.6 per cent per annum in the State sector (Narodowski and Andrada, 2001: 588). Between 2003 and 2010, enrolment in public schools increased less than 1 per cent, while in private schools this rose to nearly 20 per cent (Ministry of Education, Argentina). One quarter of the school population, on average, attends private institutions. Since the number is fairly relevant, the Bureaucracy framework described above has been defined as ‘Bureaucracy with exit to the private sector’.

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However, in view of the social and economic conditions of Argentina, it is not feasible to extend the pure market system to a greater portion of the population. As a consequence, the Market type of governance model will remain as a minor possibility, at least in the mid-term, while sharing the space with other arrangements that hold most of the student population. We now move on to analyse the mixed arrangements. Quasi-bureaucracy, as shown in Figure 2.5, is an institutional arrangement where funding is private, i.e. coordinated by individuals within a private environment; and provision is coordinated by a bureaucratic–hierarchical logic, where the State plays the leading role. This type of model does not exist in Argentina today. Historical evidence also shows that this type of institutional arrangement failed to prevail and eventually disappeared in the past (Gvirtz and Oría, 2004). Quasibureaucracies based on private funding have a low probability of becoming applicable on a large scale in Argentina today. In the fourth quadrant, Quasi-markets emerged in the later decades of the twentieth century as attempts to transform the ‘vices of market in public virtue’ (Vanderberghe, 1999: 272). That is, a system of provision that combines State funding and regulation with modes of provision oriented to market and competition. This arrangement of competition and choice locates education within a ‘market’ framework where consumers ‘vote with their feet’ (Vanderberghe, 1999) and are invited to apply the very well-known and neat mechanism of ‘exit’ as a response to the institution’s performance (Hirschman, 1970). The Quasi-market is a now well-developed but much-debated model. However, rarely, if ever, can one find all the necessary ‘conditions of possibility’ for Quasi-markets to work in most national settings. Key variables such as ‘perfect information’, ‘transport’ and ‘surplus spaces’ are usually not fulfilled. A great deal of research suggests that this version of ‘public schooling’ may be unachievable, as in the Argentine case (Minvielle, 2004). Additionally, the literature on school choice, according to a review by AndréBechely (2005: 5), makes one thing clear: when mothers and fathers or guardians make decisions about where their children will attend school they enter into a relationship with schooling institutions known for inequitable organizational structures and practices, as well as unequal educational opportunities. Choice arrangements provoke a shift from a state of tension between ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ standpoints to an almost completely personal perspective (Nagel, 1991; quoted in Oría et al., 2007). A study of English education policies, particularly of parental choice, competitive school enrolment, performance league tables, and school specialisms and diversity, suggests they create an ethical framework that

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encourages ‘personal’ values and legitimize parents in the pursuit of competitive familial advantage through education. These policies produce a specific version of parents, which authorizes or celebrates these kinds of actions. Parents are to act as ‘citizen-consumers’ (Clarke, 2005) choosing a school that best fits the needs and interests of their child by collecting information, comparing performance and interrogating teachers. Thus, the reflexive engagement with the social in terms of responsibility to the public good and the needs of ‘others’ that matter as much as the individual needs (the impersonal standpoint) is replaced almost entirely by a focus on the needs of specific children and the families in relation to imagined futures (the personal standpoint). Opportunities for other forms of public engagement with schooling are, concomitantly, closed down. However, these policies misread or homogenize the urban middle class and produces for many families, especially of the liberal/aesthetic middle classes, tensions and dilemmas with which they would prefer not to have to deal (Oría et al., 2007). However, in Argentina there is increasingly an option to choose a non-State school. The long-established consensus about the value of State public education seems to be therefore breaking down at the local level. Rather than attempting to engage in critical dialogue for the recovery of State schools, parents from a variety of social-class fractions are fleeing towards the private sector. This suggests serious limitations to the content and possibilities of parents’ and school communities’ participation. There is a challenge for policy makers to develop voice mechanisms at the micro- and mezzo-levels of State schooling politics. We will return to this issue later. Under these circumstances, neither the Market, the Quasi-bureaucracy nor the Quasi-market seem to have relevant chances to work on a big scale within the Argentine socio-economic environment, at least in the mid-term. We must thus return to the starting point: although Bureaucracy, as shown throughout the work, does not seem to produce the expected results in terms of quality and educational justice, it is the only model that can serve all members of the system and not only the portion that can afford to pay. The core of this chapter focuses on developing ideas on how a bureaucratic system can improve education services for everybody. If funding and provision are to remain in the hands of the State, the key should be reworking regulation, roles and power logics in order to enhance quality and accountability within the bureaucratic model, as well as grasping the adequate incentives for actors to assume changes in roles and functions. In this sense, Argentine educational governance has a peculiar play of roles and interests that should be considered. Two actors prevail within the scene: the

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State and teachers’ unions. The State is in charge of providing and funding education, while the unions broadly focus on defending the interests of the workers. Other audiences are virtually absent from the educational scene: within the macro-level of State policy, e.g. for the judicial power (potentially capable of exerting pressure over the executive in order to safeguard the right to education); and within the local level, parents and the communities (local lay voices struggling to raise educational issues). Within this scenario, the State receives external as well as internal corporate pressure to focus on solving salaries, political and labour issues, over and against the long-term goal of guaranteeing quality education for everybody. In other countries, parent associations and social organizations have an active role and interest in the daily functioning and output of the education system, putting pressure on both schools and teachers. Here, the State is compelled to moderate the tensions between parents, teachers and schools through an active response to the citizens’ demands (Gvirtz and Minvielle, 2008). In spite of certain attempts to include parents and civil society in the processes of educational policy making and implementation, Argentina has a long way to go in terms of building a place of relative weight for parents and the broader public sphere. We will come back to this issue in the final section of this chapter. Cunill Grau suggests that the objective of contemporary administrative reform requires the ‘publification’ of public administration; ‘this means turning it into being truly public and democratic’ (Cunill Grau, 1997: 22). Public matters, according to the author, are placed upon the State, but they should also increasingly involve society. Therefore, ‘to bring about the issue of public matters is to refer to society and to the State at the same time’ (Cunill Grau, 1997: 297). We argue that a possible way to this structural issue is based on the idea of ‘publification’, as defined by Cunill Grau. In the following section, we describe the concept and suggest a few practical challenges for an educational agenda in Argentina.

Publification A great deal of the current education policy and sociology of education debate converges with discussion about the role of the State and civil society. Since the middle of the 1970s, the social, political and economic context in which education systems operate has changed substantially. Roger Dale (1997) suggests

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that following a broader trend in relation to changing conceptions on the role of State, the community and the market, education systems have been subject to transformations in crucial aspects of public policy such as regulation, provision and finance. We might therefore say that while education remains a ‘public’ issue, in common with many other State activities, its coordination has ceased to be (at least formally) the sole preserve of the State or government. Instead it has become co-ordinated by a range of forms of governance, among which decentralization and privatization figure prominently. (Dale, 1997: 274)

Proponents of more decentralized models are challenging the traditional centralized State direction and control. Does this mean a displacement of the public sphere, finally into the social? It depends on the principles underlying these positions. The de-centring of the State may have different sorts of consequences. Some may be ‘emancipatory’ in principle; others may jeopardize the construction of a true public education (Oría, 2013). Following Cunill Grau (1997), the ‘public’ matter is always twofold: there is a normative and a topographic aspect. The normative aspect refers to what belongs to everybody, and therefore involves society and citizens. The topographic aspect refers more specifically to the sites where public matters develop. Where are decisions that affect the common interest made? Who is responsible for producing and protecting public issues? Cunill Grau introduces the concept of ‘publification’ to argue ‘public administration should move from a State-centred to a socio-centred matrix, and thus rearticulating the relations between the State and society’ (Cunill Grau, 1997: 255). This idea serves as a start to go back on the road of improvement of the educational system in Argentina within the bureaucratic framework. The challenge would therefore be going beyond both the approaches of bureaucracy and the market towards a system of public services focused on expanding the ‘public sphere’ both within the State and society. A first question thus is what tools does society have to work for the improvement of bureaucratic educational systems? Following Hirschman (1978), citizens may usually make use of two mechanisms to channel their requirements with the purpose of improving any situation: exit and voice. In the education systems where market forces act as a coordinating mechanism of actions (the Market and the Quasi-market, in accordance with the models defined above), system players have an exit mechanism available. When making

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use of such exit mechanisms, the member or user of an organization shifts to another one, exits the organization using the market to defend his/her welfare, improve his/her situation, or in this case, looking for a better quality education choice. Then, it is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition that several choices of a similar service (educational services in this case) are available for the user or member to be able to exit effectively. This action channel, according to Hirschman, is impersonal and determining: either it exists or it does not, but it cannot be partially exerted and it clearly belongs in the realm of economics. Now, since this mechanism can only be developed in educational systems where the market forces act as coordinators of actions and, as explained above, systems having market institutional arrangements are not applicable – at least in the mid-term – on a large scale in the Argentine educational system, as the required conditions are not available, exit cannot be a practical tool to deal with the problem of quality without equality in Argentina (Gvirtz et al., 2005). The other mechanism to which those affected by the education issue can resort is the use of voice. This is defined as an attempt to change an objectionable status instead of exiting or moving out. This attempt to change is channelled through an individual or a collective petition to those directly involved in the matter, or appealing to a higher authority, using different kinds of actions and claims, including such steps conceived to mobilize public opinion – but all of them involve participation. The use of the voice is frequent when one cannot exit because there are no available alternatives. The lack of options and consequently the impossibility of exit are characteristics of the Argentine system, where it is normal to find coverage problems, in addition to lack of material and sociocultural resources. Under these circumstances, it seems the participation of citizens could be a viable alternative answer for the problem of the frequent divorce between educational policies and citizens’ educational needs and demands (Gvirtz et al., 2005). What does it mean when citizens participate in educational issues? To participate, as proposed here (even when it does include the concept of accountability), implies a relationship between State and the educational community beyond that of the client–service provider link, as frequently promoted by the ‘New Public Management’ during the past decade. We argue that, in order to publify education and achieve a substantial improvement, players must have the opportunity to take part not only in micro-political decisions provided by their status as users, but also in macro-decisions. This has to do with regaining the predominance of the political aspect of handling the educational direction, not through increasing control by clients, but rather by citizens.

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Recovering the political management of education by those affected by the educational problem calls for a number of definitions that will enable these modifications to become materialized into practice. First, it is necessary to determine who is affected by the educational issues and consequently who is entitled to play the education political game. Who are the members of the educational community? Civil servants, parents, teachers, students? Are neighbours? Are NGOs? Along with these questions comes a second definition that refers to the nature of the topic under discussion: what kind of issue is the education issue? Can it be handled by whoever feels affected? Or, due to its technical complexities, should it only be approached by experts? The publification of the educational environment, with a view to recovering the public component of education, requires the discussion of possible answers to these questions, the definitions of which will largely determine how feasible it would be to broaden the educational environment. In this process, new perspectives in education emerge. Drawing on notions of ‘Empowered Deliberative Democracy’, new trends appear as alternative responses to nineteenth-century forms of liberal democracy. These have ‘the potential to be radically democratic in their reliance on the participation and capacities of ordinary people, deliberative because they institute reason-based decision making, and empowered since they attempt to tie action to discussion’ (Fung and Wright, 2001: 7). One of the particular forms in which these alternatives developed in the education field is the increase of participation by non-professional members of the education community in the decision-making processes; especially parents and other members of the education community, such as students and neighbours. Participation by non-professional members has increased both in number and diversity, and forms of participation are becoming not only vast but complex. Carol Vincent (2000) looks at the ‘subject positions’ open to parents in the current education system, and suggests two dominant common-sense understandings of the parents’ relations to State education: parents as consumers and parents as partners with education professionals. But the terms of reference that posit consumerism and partnership as viable and valid options for framing parents’ relations with education leave out a broader angle; that is, the consideration of parent–school relations as an exemplar of relations between citizens and State institutions (Vincent, 2000: 7). Drawing on Mansbridge and Fraser, Vincent admits that ‘counter-publics’ will not inevitably be egalitarian or democratic, but she argues that the general principle – the expansion of public discursive space as a result of counter-public activity – is a worthy one.

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A common second objection is that encouraging parental voice in relation to educational decision making will simply pit the particularistic views of parents concerned with their own children against the universal concerns of teachers. ‘But working with, starting with, particularity is the key to deliberative democracy’ (Vincent, 2000: 19). This is the very scenario that ‘subaltern counter publics’ are designed to avoid, as marginalized voices begin to enter into the public. Education, a crucial determinant of individual life chances, would appear to be a highly appropriate field for the formation of alternative public arenas. According to Vincent, ‘they could offer a “way-in” for lay voices struggling to raise educational issues’ (Vincent, 2000: 19). Now broadening participation as a means of working on the improvement of the educational bureaucracy will not be possible unless the necessary institutional arrangements to channel and receive claims are fixed. This is where the second key player of publification enters: the State. Publifying education requires recovering the State as a leading figure, precisely because the State is the player who may channel demands from whoever feels affected by the educational issue. However, in order to ensure its reception capacity to face today’s challenging demands, a series of definitions should be designed and discussed to create an environment as demanded by ‘publification’. In the following section, we suggest a few possible starting points.

Challenges for Argentina’s educational agenda We may distinguish a political dimension and a technical dimension in an educational policy agenda. The political dimension refers to the ability to coordinate decision-making processes within a complex organization, containing multiple levels of government, multiple actors and interests, as is the case of the Argentine education system. This ability requires the mobilization of political resources in order to strengthen the strategic and adaptive capacities of the education system. Mobilizing political resources allows preserving the consistency of State policies. The technical dimension refers to knowledge and skills necessary to achieve the expected results from established strategies and actions. Mobilizing technical resources contributes to strengthening the efficiency of State policies. We thus wish to focus on two issues that could be the keys for an agenda of improvement: within the political dimension, (1) the territorialization of educational policies; and within the technical dimension, (2) the strengthening of local educational management by means of an information system.

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1 Territorialization of educational policies Despite numerous initiatives and increasing annual public spending on education, the question of how to achieve excellence on a broad scale – at every school in a district – remains unanswered. Following Childress, Elmore and Grossman (2006), one reason is that educators, researchers and policy makers often see the district office – the organization headed by the superintendent (inspectors) that oversees and supports all the schools in the district – as part of the problem and not as a crucial part of the solution. According to these authors, ‘this is a mistake (. . .) school-based solutions, while important, aren’t enough. Achieving excellence on a broad scale requires a districtwide strategy for improving instruction in the classroom and an organization that can implement it’ (Childress et al., 2006: 1). Only the district office can create such a plan, identify and spread best practices, develop leadership capabilities at all levels, build information systems to monitor student improvement and hold people accountable for results. There are some confusions and simplifications within the field of educational research and politics that ignore the diversity of decisions made in the education system and, therefore, the possibility that policies can be developed at different levels of government. Some consider subnational governments as mere operational units depending entirely on the decisions taken above at the national level. Others place the national government and subnational governments as autonomous units with limited interaction, not sharing functions or competences. Between these antagonist models is the overlapping authority model, which holds that actors of different levels of government interact through negotiation processes, both at the stage of preparation and implementation of public policies (Gvirtz and Dufour, 2008: 28). Furthermore, a significant amount of research has shown how the relationship between the macro-level and the micro-level is not linear. Most of the educational reforms in Latin America have rested on the assumption that it is possible to initiate ‘top down’ reforms, designed in the macro-levels to be put forward without interventions in the micro-level. Nevertheless, the complexity of multiple levels of government has demonstrated the failure of this assumption. Other proposals focus on schools as the units of change. Although these contribute to improving particular schools, they fall short in terms of guaranteeing equality, as their impact is confined to a reduced number of institutions. Working on mezzo-levels as mediators between the macro- and micro-levels of educational government is critical. Mezzo-level actors, far from being neutral

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‘transmission belts’, can have both positive and negative impacts in redefining policies and sectoral demands, and consequently in the performance of the education system (Gvirtz and Dufour, 2008: 14). Supervisors, for instance, can develop a wide capacity to shape the results of the education policies that are designed in the macro-level of the system, and impact on the improvement of every school in their locality. Their decisions, although often considered less relevant than the ones taken in the macro-level of decision making, have a critical impact on the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of the educational policies. However, the mezzo-levels need their own framework for creating successful strategies and coherent organizations. The concept of territorialization helps to visualize this more clearly. Rather than discussing whether or not decentralization and autonomy are to be undertaken, territorialization encourages us to reflect over what aspects would these policies be adequately applied and how to help the local spheres build this capacity. Strengthening the district government allows for: ●

●

● ●

building local consensus around a plan of educational improvement for all the schools in the district; building a greater bond and coordination among local authorities and other organizations, as well as between local and macro-levels of authority; offering supervisors practical tools of district management; building a corps of specialists capable of collaborating with the pedagogic and technical role of the inspection.

The intermediate level of government is thus a privileged site to pursue quality and equality of education. We argue that education policy thus needs to focus more on helping district offices to play this role. Publification of the educational environment calls for discussion about the necessary skills for the State administration to be able to receive, process and act in tune with the citizens’ demands. Opening a space for discussion, as we believe should exist between the State and the community within the educational arena, makes it necessary to build two-way avenues between the central and local players. These channels will only be possible if the educational management is strengthened. The second point for an educational policy agenda is thus enabling education officials to play their role, by offering and transferring to them the abilities to improve educational management.

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2 Strengthening of local educational management While policy actors tend to take up and leave government roles following the political sways, bureaucracies hold most of the administration’s critical functions. They have records and lessons learned from historical policy initiatives and are regularly in charge of adjusting policies to the available resources and infrastructure. This turns them into key members of the educational policy organization. The educational bureaucracy involves a wide spectrum of State agents in charge of diverse policy actions, such as the management, control and assessment of the education system. As described in the previous section, inspectors have a key role within the multilevel government. We thus wish to focus on this role, and more specifically, on how its functions could be strengthened through an information system.

The strategic role of the Inspection The role of the Inspection is twofold: (a) offer support and pedagogic guidance to the schools (focus on processes), and (b) supervise key indicators of internal efficiency (IE), academic performance (AP) and necessary material conditions (NMC) (focus on results). As said previously, the Inspection is also the intermediary agent between central level policies and the schools, they act like spokespersons and representatives. Last but not least, Inspectors have a key role in pursuing educational justice, by taking care of every school in the district.

What should an Inspector regularly examine? 1. Results indicators (IE, AP and NMC), which show how schools improve after different periods of time: a the internal efficiency indicators (e.g. enrolment, repetition rate, dropout and promotion rates) are worth tracking every year; b the academic performance indicators (such as ONE assessments, or base line vs. final assessments) only appear over longer periods of time (e.g. three years).

2. Progress indicators, which show how schools tend to improve every month, two months or trimester. Examples of these kinds of indicators are:

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a the rate of approved/disapproved students in each subject every two months (this progress indicator has a direct relationship with repetition rates); b the rate of student absences every trimester (this indicator has a direct relationship with dropout rates); c the results of assessments at the beginning, mid-term and final term of the year.

How can an Inspector advise schools? 1. Making a diagnosis of each school in the district. 2. Working with each school in the district and: a analysing the results of the diagnosis together; b reviewing indicators together (internal efficiency, academic performance, inputs); c helping principals build an Annual Plan of Action for the school; d developing improvement strategies for principals to enact within schools. To serve in this capacity, district officers will have to transform themselves. A way of helping districts and Inspectors to fulfil this role is by providing and institutionalizing an information system.

The strategic role of the Education Management Information Systems Information is a key resource for strengthening the strategic and administrative capacities of the State. It works like a sensor of the organization’s functioning and the results it produces. It provides crucial input for decision-making processes, and allows timely intervention to solve problems and conflicts. Information is crucial in order to coordinate the collective action of the multiple actors and levels involved in the system. Additionally, information can offer a strategic advantage in negotiations with the different educational audiences. Countries, including Argentina, allocate important resources to collect and process information. However, they often pay scarce attention to guaranteeing the effective use of information for the above purposes. Empirical analysis rarely grounds the decision-making processes. Political feeling replaces the rigour of research-based policies, often leading to erroneous actions that end up being ‘solutions in search of new problems’ (Rivas et al., 2013: 50).

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Hua and Herstein (2003) argue about the need of an Educational Management Information System (EMIS), capable of collecting, storing, integrating, processing and organizing statistical information in a timely and reliable fashion. The definition of an EMIS has at least three main components: ●

●

●

EMIS as an institutional service: a unit that produces, manages and disseminates information within a Ministry or Department of Education. EMIS as a formalized process: this includes agreements and procedures through which information about schools, teachers, students and activities are regularly shared and integrated to decision-making processes at different levels of the system’s hierarchy. EMIS as a part of institutional culture: an environment conducive for the demand, circulation and use of information.

The processes and dynamics that underpin the work of an EMIS awake expectations in the actors who play key roles within the organization. An applied study carried out by a team of advisors of the acting Education Minister of the Province of Buenos Aires in 2012 offers extraordinary insight. Geared to analyse the feasibility of installing an information system to help running the education system, the study presents a classification of expectations according to the actors involved (Table 2.1). This study also systematizes the status of the current educational information system into a chart (Figure 2.6) that shows the way information is produced, and its consequences and implications. The case of the province of Buenos Aires may as well apply to the majority of the provinces in Argentina, with the exception of a few. Following Hua and Herstein, an EMIS should activate information-based decision-making processes in order to increase the efficiency of central, local and school government. According to these authors, the three key effects of an EMIS are: ● ● ●

timely and reliable production of data and information; data integration and data sharing among departments; effective use of data and information for educational policy decisions.

As a result of the analysis, we argue information management in most provinces of Argentina is not effective. Data is obsolete by the time it is used, and this leads to missed intervention opportunities and distrust on the quality and consistency of information. Moreover, data produced by multiple units within Ministries of Education and levels of government is rarely integrated and shared

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Table 2.1 Educational actors and expectations Actors

Expectations

Ministry

Access timely information for strategic planning and policy feedback Access timely information for efficient use of human and technical resources Access timely information to acknowledge the results of substantive policies and identify the need for support for both schools and students • Improve information about schools and enrolment • Reduce time of production and analyses of information • Reduce uncertainty provoked by redundancy and/or juxtaposition of the unintegrated existing information systems Access timely information in order to monitor the internal efficiency and academic performance of schools Analyse and react to the information they produce on internal efficiency and academic performance of schools and students

Administrative departments Educational departments

Planning and information department

Intermediate level actors (Inspection) Principals and teachers

Source: Ulitzky, 2012.

in common databases. Without effective coordination, it is difficult to set monitoring practices and offer feedback to policy initiatives. Educational policy could benefit from building an institutional culture of research and informationbased policymaking.

Final Reflections The meaning of ‘public’ education is thus rich in theoretical implications and can hardly (or only erroneously) be defined as education regulated, funded and provided by the State. Publification is based at least on four pillars:

1. cooperative work, or partnership (Cunill Grau, 1997: 272); 2. professionalization of the public service (Cunill Grau, 1997: 276); 3. new administrative sensors guaranteed by citizenship access to information and voice, or receptivity (Cunill Grau, 1997: 277); and 4. at the core of the process, mechanisms capable of turning public administration socially responsible, or accountable (Cunill Grau, 1997: 286).

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Figure 2.6 Information production and accessibility. Source: Ulitzky, 2012.

In Argentina, until very recently, the prevailing governance discourses were articulated in stark opposition to the participation of private and socialvoluntary organizations, either in discussing and defining the policy agenda or in delivering services. Only in recent times are we beginning to glimpse the possibility of new forms of publicness. The role of the State is reinforced, but there is a conceptual framework for the participation of other actors in several aspects of the educational agenda. A consensus among academics, specialists and policy makers seems to prevail around the idea that education is a ‘public question’, and, as such, it is not the State’s exclusive responsibility. On the contrary, ‘the presence of other subjects that dispute, agree, contribute to and discuss its meaning, is essential’ (Perazza, 2008: 47). According to Perazza, both spheres of discussion are developing and there is an increasing integration between them. This translates into a version of ‘public education’ that reintroduces elements of

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the tradition and myth of State–public education, but through a discourse that incorporates ‘participation’ and ‘diversity’ as its main symbols. A new common sense around the idea of public-ness is being articulated. Academic contributions to this issue, however, are pretty general and mainly conceptual. Very little is elaborated in terms of concrete schemes and instruments for ‘public’ governance. Thus, the distinction between rhetoric and practice is also necessary to understand the case of Argentina: how things ‘sound’ like and how they are in practice. There is a clear distance between new meanings of ‘public’ education – inflected by diversity and participation – and actual modes of government. The institutions that govern education in Argentina are still guided by uniformity and central control, the key pillars of the traditional education system. Although the 1990s did bring about a displacement from the national-state sphere to the provincial-state sphere, for the most part power remained within the centralized level of State governance. In fact the single case of Charter Schools in San Luis not only did not prosper, but it is hard to trace any facts, discussions or analysis about what were the grounds of this initiative, who were involved, what went wrong and why. Even now there are very few experiences of Public Private Partnerships (PPP); not to say privatization, which in fact records a single case (Sangari), applying to only three jurisdictions over a small number of schools, and has already ceased to work. ‘Co-labouring’ or ‘network governing’ at a general level cannot be seen as an Argentine phenomenon. A State-centred matrix clearly prevails in practice. In a similar way, Barrenechea and Beech (2011) argue that pro-market reforms implemented in Argentina during the 1990s were visible only at the level of official rhetoric. Current reforms do put forward notions of participation, diversity and the democratization of the educational administration. ‘Towards Public Education for a Just Society’ (Ministerio Nacional de Educación, C. y. T., 2006), the policy text that served as a basis for the discussion of the New National Law (a) requires the inclusion of different actors in defining the orientations of educational policy and decision making; and (b) the assurance that the governance of education would facilitate the participation and collaboration of families. It could be argued that the voice of teachers, parents and the broader public sphere found a place of relative weight in defining Argentina’s latest reform process. This is mainly what has been emphasized in the media coverage and valued most from the processes related to the Law. However, more thorough analyses suggest ‘participation’ was linked more to a State power strategy geared to strengthen its social legitimacy, than to a genuine and efficient process of social construction.

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Although the text of the law seems to indicate a step forward in terms of including a broader constituency in the educational debate, there is still a long way to go in order to adjust actual structures and organization to enable a growing role for parents and the community in each school. To think about ‘the public’ in these terms requires considering a lot more than allowing participation during the elaboration of a law. Genuinely ‘public’ spaces, that express these conceptual, political and social attributes, need to be constructed by the State and within civil society, each in accordance with its purpose and role. The challenge is to establish ‘publicness’ both in educational policy and school life: a priority among the numerous themes that affect the educational agenda in Latin America and around the world. The debate on education reform needs to acknowledge the issue of ‘publicness’ and reveal a more profound understanding of the public nature of public education, in order to:

(a) Reconstruct education and educational governance as fields for the potential expansion of the ‘public sphere’, and contribute to prevent its further undermining. (b) Recover ‘voice’ both in practical terms, as a mechanism of institutional recuperation (Hirschman, 1970); and in substantial terms, to allow people to engage in ‘practical discourse’, creating procedures so that those affected by general political decisions – the public – can have a say in their formulation, stipulation and adoption. Following Habermas, ‘Publicness is apparently more and other than a mere scrap of liberal ideology’ that social democracy could discard without harm: If we are successful in gaining an historical understanding of the structures of this complex that today, confusedly enough, we subsume under the heading ‘public sphere’, we can hope to attain thereby not only sociological clarification of the concept but a systematic comprehension of our own society from the perspective of one of its central categories’ (Habermas, 1989: 5)

References André-Bechely, L. (2005) Could it be Otherwise? Parents and the inequities of public school choice. New York: Routledge.

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Barrenechea, I. and J. Beech (2011) ‘Pro-market educational governance: Is Argentina a black swan?’, Critical Studies in Education 52(3): 279–93. Brophy, J. (2006) ‘Grade repetition’, Education Policy Series. International Academy of Education, International Institute for Educational Planning, UNESCO. Childress, S., R. Elmore and A. Grossman (2006) ‘How to manage urban school districts’, Harvard Business Review 84(11). Clarke, J. (2005) ‘Creating citizen-consumers: New Labour and the remaking of public services’, Public Policy and Administration 20: 19–37. Cunill Grau, N. (1997) Repensando lo público a través de la sociedad: nuevas formas de gestion publica y representacion social [Rethinking the Public Sphere through Society: New forms of governance and social representation]. Caracas, Venezuela: Centro Latinoamericano de Administracion para el Desarrollo-CLAD: Editorial Nueva Sociedad. Dale, R. (1997) ‘The State and the governance of education: An analysis of the restructuring of the State–Education relationship’, in A. H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown and A. S. Wells (eds), Education: Culture, Economy and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 273–82. Fung, A. and E. O. Wright (2001) ‘Deepening democracy: Innovations in empowered participatory governance’, Politics & Society 29(1): 5–41. Gvirtz, S. (2008) Equidad y niveles intermedios de gobierno en los sistemas educativos. Un estudio de casos en la Argentina, Chile, Colombía y Perú [Equity and Intermédiate Level of Government in Education Systems. A case study of Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru], Buenos Aires: Aique Grupo Editor. Gvirtz, S. (2009) De la tragedia a la esperanza. Hacia un sistema educativo justo, democrático y de calidad [From Tragedy to Hope. Towards a fair, democratic and quality educational system]. Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de Educación. Gvirtz, S. and L. Minvielle (2008) ‘Participation of the civil society in school governance: Comparative research of institutional designs in Nicaragua and Brazil’, in D. B. Holsinger and W. James Jacob (eds), International Handbook on the Inequality of Education. Hong Kong: Springer, CERC University of Hong Kong Press, pp. 485–505. Gvirtz, S. and A. I. Oría (2004) ‘El Gobierno de la Educación: Revisando el concepto de centralización programática y descentralización financiera’ [‘The Government of Education: Revisiting the concept of financial centralization and decentralization program’], in Malu Almeida (ed.), Modernidade e Escola: Saberes, praticas e instituiçoes. Campinas: Alínea Editora, Brasil. Gvirtz, S., L. Minvielle and A. I. Oría (2005) ‘Reconstructing Argentine education. alternatives to the crisis of “State monopoly”’. Presented at the ESRC Seminar (Economic and Social Research Council) at the IOE (Institute of Education, University of London), 27 January. Gvirtz, S. and G. Dufour (2008) ‘Lineamientos teóricos para entender los niveles intermedios en el gobierno de la educación y su influencia en la equidad’

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[Theoretical guidelines for understanding the intermediate levels in the governance of education and its influence on equity], in S. Gvirtz (coord.), Equidad y niveles intermedios de gobierno en los sistemas educativos .Un estudio de casos en la Argentina, Chile, Colombía y Perú [Equity and Intermédiate Level of Government in Education Systems. A case study of Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru]. Buenos Aires: Aique Grupo Editor. Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hirschman, A. O. (1970) Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hirschman, A. O. (1978) ‘Exit, voice, and the State’, World Politics 31(1) (October): 90–107. Hua, H. and Jon Herstein (2003) ‘Education Management Information System (EMIS): Integrated Data and Information Systems and Implications in Education Management.’ Paper presented at the Annual Conference of Comparative and International Education Society, New Orleans, LA. Ministerio Nacional de Educación, C. y. T. (2006) Documento para el debate. Ley de Educación nacional. Hacia una educación de calidad para una sociedad más justa [Discussion paper. National Law of Education. Towards Quality Education for a Just Society]. Buenos Aires. Minvielle, L. (2004) El cuasi-mercado educativo. Acerca de sus condiciones de posibilidad [Quasi-markets in Education. About its conditions of possibility]. Buenos Aires: School of Education, Universidad de San Andrés, MA. Nagel, T. (1991) Equality and Partiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Narodowski, M. and M. Andrada (2001). ‘The privatisation of education in Argentina’, Journal of Education Policy 16(6). Oría, A. (2013) ‘Changing meanings of public education in Argentina. A genealogy.’ Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Institute of Education, University of London. Oría, A., A. Cardini, S. Ball, E. Stamou, M. Kolokitha, S. Vertigan and C. Flores-Moreno (2007) ‘Urban education, the middle classes and their dilemmas of school choice’, Journal of Education Policy 22(1): 91–105. Perazza, R. (2008) Pensar en lo público [To Think of the Public]. Buenos Aires: Aique. Rivas, Axel, Florencia Mezzadra and Veleda, Cecilia (2013) Caminos para la educación. Bases, esencias e ideas de política educativa [Foundations, Essences and Ideas of Educational Policy]. Buenos Aires: Granica. Ulitzky, B. (2012) Planeando una solución para la Gestión Educativa [Planning a Solution for Educational Management]. La Plata: Ministry of Education of Buenos Aires Province. Vanderberghe, V. (1999) ‘Combining market and bureaucratic control in education: An answer to market and bureaucratic failure?’, Comparative Education 35(3): 271–82. Vincent, C. (2000) Including Parents? Education, citizenship and parental agency. Buckingham: Open UP.

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Sources INDEC, National Census 2010, Argentina. Ministry of Education, Argentina. PISA, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] Institute for Statistics, 2003–2012. UNESCO’s Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE).

3

Bolivia: Perspectives and Challenges for Multicultural Education Fabricia de Andrade Ramos and Mauricio Blanco Cossío

Introduction: The multicultural phenomenon and the plurinational state of Bolivia Multiculturalism can be defined simply as the existence of cultural diversity among communities within a given societal boundary, such as the State; as such, it is a worldwide reality. Historically, assimilative processes – contemporarily identified at the macro-level as globalization – shaped countries with different demographic compositions, through which some have managed to keep alive deep-rooted diversities. The idea of Nation-States characterized by territory, sovereignty and a single language and culture shared by all its citizens has been and will continue to be a fictitious construct. The uniformity it implies is unlikely among any human grouping, given the multitude of differences in ethnic, territorial, socio-economic, religious, political, organizational and other dimensions that have shaped specific cultures and customs both in the past and in the present. A common understanding of multicultural societies is the existence of distinct traditions, in which minority cultures function in their own private space with variant levels of dependence on the dominant culture for their endurance. Although closer to the contemporary complexity of societal and cultural compositions, this idea still does not grasp real life situations, since it ignores the power of mutual and interactive influences among these distinct traditions. Sociologists must not ignore the active participation of individual action and choices in blurring boundaries between cultural or ethnic groups, creating plurality within minority groups and opening symbols, values and customs to negotiation, contestation and change. Thus, multicultural societies are not patchworks of several fixed cultural identities, but networks of crosscutting relations, interactions and identifications 63

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(Byram, 2009: 4–5) which are, simultaneously, fixed and fluid, situated and dynamic, since the heavy dependence on context is balanced through deliberate human interests and encounters. Culture, in this sense, assumes a more demotic1 than normative discourse, focused on cultural making as a quotidian activity structured through language education, which is the natural mediator for communication and mutual comprehension between people from different backgrounds. Thus, as a major constituent of culture, language education plays an essential role for either suppressing or preserving multiculturalism, virtually defining the possibility of participation in discussions, decisions and projects of mutual interest. In this new perspective, education no longer upholds its original role of confirming or assimilating subjects to dominant, established cultures; it is now identified with familiarization with cultural difference, diversity and alterity, assimilating other perspectives of the world alongside one’s own views or even others’ perceptions of one’s beliefs, values and behaviours that conform these views but are often taken for granted. Language, in this sense, becomes the ultimate tool and common ground for multiculturalism, depending on the acceptance of multilingualism by society and on plurilingual individuals to sustain it. Finally, there is a conceptual difference between pluricultural and intercultural notions of analytical importance for this chapter’s discussion of multicultural education in Bolivia: while the first ‘refers to the capacity to identify with and participate in multiple cultures’, the second ‘refers to the capacity to experience and analyse cultural otherness, and to use this experience to reflect on matters that are usually taken for granted within one’s own culture and environment’ (Byram, 2009: 6). Although intertwined, different contexts may result in the development of only one or both of these capabilities. In theory, pluricultural and intercultural individuals are both more likely to come from backgrounds of ethnic, social or cultural minorities, rather than majorities, since the first are commonly obligated to engage with several aspects of the dominant culture, especially if the latter represents what is ‘national’. However, people from dominant or homogenous cultures have become increasingly pluricultural and intercultural, allowing them to belong to and identify with more complex groupings, some of which are temporary and interconnecting networks, while others are stable and traditional. Either way, the development of these capacities in individuals through education, and especially language education, has become central to international and national agendas around the world. For contemporary Bolivia, multiculturalism is both historically symbolic and ideologically appealing, given the political and social factors that have shaped it

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into a high-contrast country – from its natural and physical formations, through its departments’2 socio-economic development, to its enduring multiethnic population. Mostly indigenous in its descent, the population has been engaged in miscegenation through political agreements or conquests, slavery, necessity and intermarriage over hundreds of years. This was long before Spain colonized Bolivia for the extraction of its natural resources and established a social hierarchy based on indigenous exploitation. Despite the gradual loss of territories and the significant efforts towards castellianization3 in the twentieth century, the people of Bolivia have managed to maintain its extreme cultural diversity. The country’s contemporary ethnic and linguistic demographic composition allows the identification of two different phenomena that are basic for this chapter’s analysis: ●

●

clear distinctions between human groups based on self-declared ethnic belonging and on language – spoken, read/written or considered primary – have always been inadequate due to the intrinsic incompatibility between normative or classificatory exercises and real life dynamics, aggravated by sociocultural factors such as migration movements, miscegenation, urbanization and globalization; sociocultural processes and transformations, even if consciously implemented through collective action, are always incomplete because both the individual and the institutions are essentially habitual and conditioned to time–spatial context, requiring continuous incentives to change that are often exposed to discontinuity, distortion and other factors that may produce various results.

Based on these understandings, this chapter will analyse perspectives and challenges of the two multicultural proposals for the Bolivian educational system that have been officially adopted by the State. The first, which proposed interculturality and bilingualism, will be referred to as Código de la Educación Boliviana of 1994 (CEB/1994); the second and most recent, which emphasized plurinationalism and plurilinguism, was approved in 2010 as the Ley ‘Avelino Siñani y Elizardo Pérez’ (ASEP/2010). The main objective of this analysis is to identify, on each proposal, the core similarities and differences, both in general – as abstract models – and for Bolivia’s sociocultural reality, contributing to the discussion of multicultural education. Such a goal requires the analysis to be construed based on a historical and political review of the country’s educational foundation, which contemplates the contextualized evolution of basic indicators, sociocultural tendencies and pedagogic developments and policies.

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Methodologically, the available data from the 1950, 1976, 1992, 2001 and 2012 Censuses and from other official statistics and studies by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE)4 have few variables (i.e., there is no data on income) and almost no comparability due to different questionnaires and inconsistent application. There are also no periodic national evaluations, surveys or monitoring of the educational systems, albeit some indicators were found in annual frequency for the period of 2000–2011. The statistical information available, therefore, does not allow for impact assessments of the reforms, which was compensated for by data that illustrate and contextualize the interpretations presented. Following this introduction, the chapter is structured into two parts: a contextualizing historic and political perspective on Bolivian educational development, followed by the descriptive and analytical approach of the CEB/1994 and the ASEP/2010. In conclusion, both reforms will be discussed as models for contemporary multicultural States and specifically for Bolivia’s social and ethnic composition.

Part 1 – Education in Bolivia: historic and political perspectives The history of Bolivia is characterized by cultural diversity and major demographic transformations produced by autochthonous coexistence throughout the Incan Empire, the Spanish colonization, the Bolivarian independence and subsequent territorial losses, conflicts and events that shaped the modern Bolivian Nation-State. Recently renamed and restructured through the 2009 Constitution as a Plurinational State that recognizes all ethnicities as ‘nations’ in their own right under a Republican Presidential regime, multiculturalism has become the ultimate ideological rhetoric in Bolivia. However, a critical approach to conservation and production of cultural diversity through complex processes such as exclusion, miscegenation, castellianization or the conscious preservation of traditions is instrumental in achieving effective results, as well as analysing policy based on such rhetoric. In this context, this section will focus on understanding the paradigmatic shift from castellianization to multiculturalism that occurred in Bolivian education during the transition of the twentieth to the twenty-first century, beginning with an openly liberal and rightist government with strong democratic commitments and culminating with the present-day openly pluralistic and leftist government of Evo Morales.

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During the colonial and early republican period, education was unavailable or inaccessible for most of the population. For members of the indigenous populations, the only option was missionary schooling or a few other exceptions, while Spanish schools were incipient and exclusively for European immigrants, the Bolivian-born Spanish-descendant criollos and, exceptionally, indigenousdescendant mestizos favoured by enrichment, miscegenation or social ascension. In the nineteenth century, indigenous people increasingly related education to land-based conflicts between the 1820s and 1850.5 Thus, the indigenous claims for Spanish-speaking schooling during the nineteenth century were based on an instrumental view of education that would allow them to stop, contest or reverse the expropriations of their lands, thereby obtaining social justice. According to Bolivian historians, the indigenous peoples of both the highlands and the valleys, during the years 1825 to 1870, reclaimed education to reach their most urgent goal: the elimination of illiteracy. They expected that social unification through the reading and writing of Spanish would bring about equality between races and social groups. (Mesa et al., 1999: 423)

By the 1900s, these indigenous claims and their understanding by Spanishdescendant and westernized dominant groups had produced two equivalencies: between the schooling and learning of Spanish, and between the learning of Spanish and learning to read and write. There are three important benchmarks in the twentieth century that shaped both the 1994 and the 2010 educational reforms, as roots of their similarities and differences:

1. the pedagogic dispute between two schooling models that gained visibility in the 1930s; 2. the educational agenda put forward by the 1952 revolution, represented by the 1955 CEB; 3. the revival of the educational agenda mobilized by indigenous and syndical movements during the 1970s.

Early educational models: Escuela-Ayllu and Caquiaviri Up until the Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–1935) – in which casualties were high for indigenous peoples forced into army enrolment by the Bolivian criollo

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élite, dying mostly from altitude issues, malaria and combat-related wounds – the existing educational system was still only for the privileged Europeandescendants and the mestizo rural oligarchy and urban bourgeoisie. Illiteracy was high among indigenous peasants and industrial workers, both in mining and other sectors. By this time, rural and urban differentiations had made their way into societal class structure and culture, intensifying indigenous issues under new socio-economic and political organizations that frequently revolved around land conflicts and labour issues. Although in the early 1900s minimal efforts rendered an élitist and Eurocentric escuela normal for training teachers in 1909 and a timid Decreto de Educación Indígena that officially extended education to the indigenous populations in 1919, it was only with the re-edition of the latter in 1931 that educational experiences with Indians gained impulse, scale and visibility. In this context, two rural schools from the central La Paz Department – the Escuela-Ayllu6 of Warisata and the Escuelas para los Indigenas of Caquiaviri – were perceived as alternative models for education provision to the indigenous and rural people, generating pedagogic and political disputes. The Escuela-Ayllu school was a short-term and small-scale experience whose legacy and continental influence was guaranteed by its leaders, educators and advocates through newspaper articles, documentations and systematizations, and the participation in congresses, movements and organizations. The Caquiaviri school was described as the ‘criollo [Bolivian bourgeoisie] movement that pushed for the schooling of indigenous people with the objective of civilizing through castellianización and literacy, assimilating them to the national society’ (Sichra et al., 2007: 8). The relevance of the Escuela-Ayllu created in Warisata in 1931 lies in its originality and in the influence it exerts on the ASEP/2010 educational reform now in place in Bolivia, which carries the names of the school’s founders: community leader Avelino Siñani and mestizo educator and State representative Elizardo Pérez. Functioning until 1940, the Escuela-Ayllu’s political and pedagogic approach to indigenous and rural schooling began with Pérez’s attitude towards the people, which led him to build and run the school from within the community, in terms of location, administration, contents and methods. In this perspective, the school no longer represented the gateway into the established culture, but rather the place for democratic learning, for autonomous development and for heritage protection and flourishing. In Warisata, long before Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed,7 education meant liberation from constraints over the human development of ethnic and social minorities within their own cultures.

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Another of Warisata’s distinctions was its intent to offer education that was both adequate for, and transforming of, the autochthonous condition. Taking into consideration the Quechua and Aymara traditions, the school tried to bring together intellectual, creative, technical and productive experiences to develop abilities and, ultimately, to allow for self-determination and self-reliance, through which colonial and paternalist constraints would be overcome. As described by Elizardo Pérez: We have approved the organic statute that regulates the functioning of the rural schools, whose doctrine and philosophy is inspired in the basis of our pre-Hispanic culture, on one part, and, on the other, in the organization of autonomous nucleus with purpose and orientation that tend to give unit to a collective work. The restoration of the Incan organization referred to the land based on the ‘kulakas’, ‘comunidades’ and ‘ayllus’. (Pérez, 1934: 1)

The Escuela-Ayllu converged with the nineteenth century’s indigenous claims for education as a political instrument that could transform individuals into social actors and the State into a democratic institution, through the organization, strengthening and recognition of (i) legitimate indigenous movements, (ii) indigenous and traditional authorities and knowledge, and (iii) the right over the land from which they were being, or had been, expropriated (Pérez, 1934). This original and alternative educational experience, although located in a rural, indigenous and relatively remote area, had visitors and absorbed teachers of neighbouring countries that contributed to the influence the Warisata model exerted in the continent. The Escuela para los Indigenas of Caquiaviri, used in most of the indigenous schools such as Caiza, Caquingora and Casarabe, followed the dominant educational discourse of ‘civilizing’ indigenous people, who were perceived as an inferior race in need of guidance, discipline and westernization. Criticized by Churata and other Warisata defenders, these schools reproduced and sustained the cultural and ideological colonization of the indigenous population, promoting acculturation and assimilation justified as means for their integration to the State and society through ‘Boliviarization’ (bolivianización). To portray its objectives, Ministry of Education delegate Rafael Reyeros (1937: 60, 90) described: The ultimate objective is to ‘Boliviarize’ the native. Homogenize the human element, creating a national type. Only through the human strengthening and capacitation, living better, may we aspire to the creation of superior

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cultural states (. . .) and readapt the Indian, would be to reincorporate our lives to the social, economic and political modalities. That is to say, make the Indian what we are, us, adapted beings to the western culture, with all of its material commodities, with all its virtues and vices.

In the 1940s, the dismantling of the Escuela-Ayllu’s autonomist project and the predominance of the Caquiaviri model developed from within the indigenous movement, both at the international8 and domestic levels. In Bolivia, the Warisata schooling project did not find support in any of the new political actors that appeared in the 1930s and 1940s, not even among those with leftist, indigenous or minority-related agendas such as the Partido de Izquierda Revolucionária (PIR) and the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionário (MNR), founded respectively in 1940 and 1941. Although the 1938 Constitution reflected a leftist and democratic stance, with the primacy of the common good over private property and by legally recognizing indigenous communities, its motivation was, above all, the creation of a Nation-State. In this sense, the Escuela-Ayllu was strongly opposed by both the agrarian oligarchy (organized as the Sociedad Rural Boliviana) and the central Government, especially during the attempts to dismantle the reformist movements of conservative presidencies between 1939 and 1943.

Education for the masses: a trade-off between autonomy and diversity The growing acceptance and mobilization towards educating the rural and indigenous population, despite multiple and often contradictory interests, was part of another emergent inquietude towards the authoritarian, conservative and oligarchic governments that had remained in power after the Chaco War. The major opposition at the time, which came to power with Gualberto Villaroel López’s presidency (1943–1946), was the result of an alliance between a military reformist movement (Radepa) and the modern nationalist Movimiento Nacional Revolucionário (MNR), founded in 1941. Their effort to congregate peasant and indigenous support through multilevel mobilization that led to the 1st National Indigenous Congress held in 1945 revolved around: (i) the end of indigenous serfdom in the oligarchic labour and land structure, (ii) education for indigenous and rural communities, and (iii) the provision of other public services. These new intentions, however, were interrupted by economic tribulations and social unrest that led to Villaroel’s violent deposition and pushed many of his MNR

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cabinet members and leaders – such as Victor Paz Estenssoro and Hernan Siles Zuazo – into exile. While conservative governments insisted on stemming all reformist attempts, sustained economic and social instability during the period, known as Sexenio,9 allowed the MNR’s opposition to grow in popular acceptance. The MNR-led revolution of 1952 was based on intensified syndical organization among miners, peasants and other labourers that conjured a series of massive strikes that spread across the Bolivian Departments towards La Paz, peaking in 1951. Central to this revolution, the CEB/1955 stood between the MNR’s dual agenda, which, on the one hand, pursued a democratic and equalitarian State by proclaiming universal suffrage, the end of indigenous serfdom and a far-reached agrarian reform. On the other hand, it aimed at strengthening the central State by nationalizing all mines and resource reserves, co-opting the armed forces and creating the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), as the highest and exclusive channel for labour unions’ representation. Understood by the revolution as the State’s main obligation, the educational proposal revolved around two axes: (i) the structuring of the public educational system; and (ii) its expansion on the basis of a universal, free and mandatory primary schooling. This structure was provided by the CEB/1955 and by the Regulation of National Education Service Roster (Reglamento de Escalafón Nacional del Servicio de Educación) of 1957, which defines and organizes the teaching and administrative professions and is still valid today. The expansion of this system was promoted through investments of different kinds, dedicated to inclusion-by-numbers, which focused its efforts on building and adapting schools in rural areas amid the new agrarian configuration and incentivizing peasant communities to create and organize their own schools through local educational committees (juntas). Data from the Census of 1950 indicated that the MNR Government faced a literacy rate of only 32 per cent of the population. Studies that influenced this educational reform pointed to a large adolescent and adult illiterate population of indigenous descent in rural zones and the incipience of schooling establishments in those areas. Also, non-attendance in school, which points to a system’s capacity to attract and attend to individual and social educational demands, was extremely high among children from 5 to 14 years of age, reaching 72 per cent. The proposed solution was a schooling model that followed the principles expressed in the 1938 Constitution of the Escuela Única, that envisioned an egalitarian education, which offered the same tools and led to equal opportunities

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for all Bolivian individuals with Spanish as its common ground. The aim was to ‘produce and distribute material, technical and circumstantial means that are favourable to nurture the future citizen in productive functions, capacitating him to destroy class privileges and converting him in active and efficient elements of the national liberation process’ (CEB/1955, Art. 115). The MNR criticized what they called ‘caste education’, defending ‘education for the masses’ as the sole means for an authentic, stable and functional democracy by levelling all citizens through quality education in artistic, scientific, productive and intellectual areas that allowed for a multitude of human developments. The MNR saw the 1955 Código as an instrument to build a grand and truly democratic republic, and, as such, they attempted to reach both the new generations through compulsory primary schooling, and the older ones through alternative literacy campaigns. The ambitious objective to incorporate all Bolivians of schooling age to the regular educational system was to be met by a coordinated and unitary push on all cycles of the system, leading to significant rises in pre-school and secondary enrolment and establishments, albeit largely through private investments that represented, by 1964, 51 per cent of the former’s and 47 per cent of the latter’s establishments. For the MNR’s educational project, major efforts towards mandatory primary schooling and adult literacy generated relevant results. Table 3.1 shows significant increases in enrolment and educational establishments for the primary cycle and that was done mostly through the public system, with only 5 per cent participation by the private sector. Also, by 1976, non-attendance among those between 5 and 15 years of age had gone down to 36 per cent. For the older population, in spite of the aim of mobilizing all major social forces and resources in a progressive

Table 3.1 Educational enrolment and the number of establishments by cycle – 1951/1964 Enrolment Enrolment Change Establishments Establishments Change 1951 1964 (%) 1951 1964 (%) Pre-school Primary Secondary

5,882

20,113

242

28

183

354

199,619

500,000

151

2,585

5,963

13

22,788

Adult Literacy

—

Total

228,289

88,788

290

12,530

—

—

110

621,431

173

2,723

Source: Ministerio de Educacíon y Cultura, 1967, see Cajías de la Vega, 1998.

387

252

213

—

6,746

148

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and participative campaign to teach adults literacy through alternative education, the data for 1964 clearly show meagre results, with just over 12,000 persons enrolled in 200 establishments during the 10-year period since the reform. A better way to observe this system’s achievements is through the analysis of illiteracy rates by age group. Figure 3.1 indicates the achievements of compulsory primary schooling, which are illustrated through the ranges of 20 to 39 years of age, since they were newborns or children at the time of the 1955 reform. On adult illiteracy, with the expected decreasing impact as the age increases due to natural growing learning impairments and difficulties, the CEB/1955’s efforts to teach literacy to those outside schooling age can be observed in particular among those between 40 and 59 years of age in 1976, representing those who, at the time of the reform, were over 20 years old. In absolute numbers, which do not reflect the population’s growth over the same period, the drop in adult illiteracy between 1950 and 1976 accounted for only 100,000 people, representing a 10 per cent drop from over one million individuals. Illiteracy among those over 15 years of age, however, has reduced significantly from 68 per cent to 37 per cent. The CEB/1955’s proposed objective was to go beyond reading and writing and include the general betterment of working conditions and national culture for adults. The indigenous populations,

Figure 3.1 Illiteracy rates by age range and differences – Census, 1950 and 1976. Source: INE, Resultados de los Censos de Población y Viviendas de 1950 and 1976, see Cajías de la Vega, 1998.

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which composed most of these illiterate adults, were to be approached in their native languages as a vehicle to the immediate learning of Castellaño as a necessary element of the linguistic national integration. This, however, was not accomplished: discriminated by gender, it becomes clear that the 1955 educational system was not able to reach indigenous and rural women successfully, since they increased their participation among illiterate adults in the period between the Censuses.

The 1970s and 1980s: rethinking education in popular movements Between the Censuses presented above, the Bolivian political scene changed dramatically: the MNR lost its grip over the Government in 1964 with another military coup that lasted, albeit in constant turmoil, until 1981. The long-lasting military regime was maintained largely by a political alliance between them and the peasant movements, which were struggling to sustain the agrarian reforms of 1952. During this period, the Revolution’s impetus in the countryside had lost its strength, focusing on its urban, industrial and corporatist political bases. The Bolivian Workers Union (COB), headed by MNR leader Juan Lechín, mobilized strikes, marches and resistances among mining, urban and industrial syndicates against the military presidents. By 1978, repression, violence and other negative factors intensified, with massive strikes led by the miners pressuring President Banzer Suárez to call democratic elections. The educational system established in 1955/1957 had suffered counterreforms during the military period, and the COB played an important role by organizing National Pedagogic Congresses with teachers’ syndicates in the years immediately before and after being outlawed by Banzer Suárez between 1971 and 1978. In 1970, the 1st Congress called for the strengthening of the CEB/1955 educational system, for the need to decentralize administration, and for the unification of rural and urban systems as basic means to overcome infrastructure and human resources shortcomings and their consequent socio-economic and sociocultural inequalities. By 1979, the COB focused on criticizing the counterreforms and their consequent exclusion of indigenous, rural and minority populations and on demanding the rescue of the CEB/1955 as the better system that should be strengthened. The regime’s change in 1981 radically reorganized Bolivia’s political scenario with old and new actors distributed in over thirty parties. Each of the MNR’s original leaders had their own political party and formed different – and sometimes opposing – coalitions, which included indigenous, peasant and other

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minority formal representations, such as the Movimiento Revolucionário Tupak Katari (MRTK) and the Movimiento Indio Tupak Katari (MITKA). Democracy, however, was accompanied by severe economic crisis and hyperinflation, which eventually led to the replacement of President Siles Zuazo (1981–1985) by the MNR’s Paz Estenssoro, who implemented deregulation, liberalization and privatization programmes. The privatization of the mining sector led to the debilitation of COB, reducing its influence over the State and the consequent strengthening of other syndical actors, such as the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB)10 and the Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia (CIDOB). Despite the unpopular economic reforms, the 1980s had an intense production of political proposals from these new social actors, which between 1983 and 1989 presented reform proposals for the educational system. Among these, the Confederación Nacional de Maestros de Educación Rural de Bolivia (CONMERB), the Confederación de Trabajadores de Educación Urbana de Bolivia (CTEUB) and others defended an educational system based on indigenous approaches, revolving around bilingualism and interculturality. The COB united all proposals as the Popular Education Project (Proyecto Educativo Popular), signed during the 1st National Educational Congress organized in 1989 as a synthesis of each organization’s proposal, which emphasized bilingual education and efforts towards the valorization of indigenous languages and culture. By the 1990s, the indigenous issue was totally distinct from the peasant reality: even though most rural workers were of Indian-descent, there was a cultural difference between those who identified with peasantry and those who preserved indigenous traditions. Yet another portion of the population had adapted to the gradual urbanization of Bolivia, representing 43 per cent in the Census of 1976 and 66 per cent in the Census of 2012. This meant that by 1994, when both the Constitution and the CEB were reformed, the multicultural population of Bolivia could no longer be defined simply in ethnic bases due to transformations of lingual, social and cultural nature.

Part 2 – Multicultural education: CEB/1994 and ASEP/2010 reforms In the 1990s, Bolivia’s situation was similar to most Latin American countries, in which urbanization had rapidly developed both as a territorial and cultural

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phenomenon while Governments still faced large-scale social challenges. The western and urban preponderance over rural and indigenous cultures was a product of the CEB/1955’s system, albeit combined with other factors, and had the Escuela Única and castellianizante as its central pillar. In this context, the language, methodologies and schooling materials were the principal means for cultural assimilation of the dominant way of life, which did not contemplate rural, native and indigenous cultures. Changes in the educational system of the 1950s came only with the consolidation of a democratic agenda in the 1990s, when right-wing governments that promoted agendas of economic reforms through privatization and deregulation were faced with social demands for public goods and policies that took account of the extremely unequal and diverse Bolivian society. These changes were carried out through two major constitutional and educational reforms that took place in 1994 and in 2009/2010, respectively. The available data do not allow any impact analysis of these reforms, but it will be used to illustrate the educational situation when possible.

The 1994 reform and its Código de la Educación Boliviana (CEB/1994) Politically, the democratic period inaugurated in 1982, and the unpopular economic measures implemented by the MNR Paz Estenssoro’s Presidency throughout the mid-1980s, led to the election of the leftist candidate Paz Zamora (MIR) in 1989. Amid social turmoil, Paz Zamora opened a far-reaching and participative dialogue that shaped a new public agenda and became a major commitment for the succeeding government of MNR Sánchez de Lozada (1993– 1997), responsible for the CEB/1994. During the previous decade, alongside the educational proposals of syndicates such as the CSUTCB, CONMERB and CIDOB, Bolivia developed important projects at national and international levels – such as the Servicio Nacional de Alfabetización y Educación Popular (SENALEP) and the Proyecto de Educación Intercultural e Bilingüe (PEIB) – which had a version put forward by the Comisión Episcopal de Educación and another, on a larger scale, elaborated by the Partnership between UNICEF and the Bolivian Ministry of Education. Both the syndical projects for education and the experiences and partnerships developed before the 1994 reform were clearly convergent in terms of the need to promote intercultural and bilingual education as both a philosophical choice, and as a specific demand given Bolivia’s social and cultural characteristics. In

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terms of educational indicators, by 1992, the literacy rate was 79.9 per cent – compared to 32 per cent in the Census of 1950 – while the non-attendance rate had fallen to 25.7 per cent and the dropout rate to 19.7 per cent for those between 6 and 19 years of age. With mandatory primary schooling and investments to increase infant, secondary and adult participation in education, the system produced two major groups: those who had become totally assimilated in linguistic terms, speaking only Spanish, and those who had become bilingual or multilingual. In the Census of 1992, the first group represented 41.7 per cent, while the second composed 46 per cent of the total population of 5.2 million people. Those who spoke only their native language were predominantly Quechua (8.1%) and Aymara (3.2%), followed by Guaraní (0.2%), while the other native languages composed only 0.08 per cent of the population. By 1992, although literacy had expanded significantly, the Escuela Única was not producing sustainable and egalitarian socio-economic conditions for the rural and indigenous populations as was pointed out by the major unions such as the CSUTCB (1991: 4). This issue, as the main educational challenge, was part of the democratic and participative platform assumed by both Paz Zamora and Sánchez de Lozada’s presidencies, later developing into a series of fundamental reforms expressed in the 1994 Constitution. Recognizing Bolivia as a multiethnic and pluricultural country (Article 171) and promoting a large-scale debate over definitions and concepts of the ‘indigenous’ that would allow for a more egalitarian and diverse social development, the Constitution of 1994 and its subsequent educational reform (CEB/1994) conceived bilingualism and interculturality not as an ideology or goal, but as a reality. To illustrate this sociolinguistic panorama, the Census of 1992 asked the population what language they spoke and grouped those who declared to speak more than one language, as shown in Table 3.2.

Table 3.2 Bolivian population distributed by language spoken – 1992/2012 Foreign Population Spanish Quechua Aymara Guaraní Other languages (%) (%) (%) (%) native language (%) (%)

Two or more languages (%)*

1992 5,279,249

41.7

8.1

3.2

0.2

0.08

0.3

46

2012 9,639,713

69.4

17.4

10.9

0.5

0.50

1.1

—

* This category was not available in 2012, when respondents had to choose only one language. Source: INE, Census of 1992 and 2012.

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Responsible for the new constitution, the centre-right Sánchez de Lozada’s government attempted to choose a leftist and Aymara indigenous party leader, Victor Hugo Cárdenas (MRTK), as Vice-President and entrusted him with the educational reform (Law No. 1.595, CEB/1994). The new legislation began with the participative organization and definition of the curriculum and administration that aimed for the unification of the education system under intercultural and bilingual principles. The reform, liberal and democratic in nature, allowed for flexible calendars, contents and methods according to regional traditions and seasons, emphasized gender equality as a response to the latest data on women’s significant representation among illiterates, and promoted decentralization, autonomy and cultural diversity as pillars, in contrast to their traditional perception as obstacles for development by oligarchic and élitist sectors. Displacing the previous discourse of castellianization as the chosen method to forge a national identity, the Código de la Educación of 1994 (Art.  2, §4°) promoted the strengthening of national identity through the recognition and valorization of Bolivian history and cultures in their immense and rich multicultural and multiregional diversity. Also, with a centralizing governmental tradition for the past three decades, the legal and institutional framework of the 1994 Constitution allowed the educational reform to promote a far-reaching decentralization process that went beyond curricular and policy participation by transferring to local authorities all educational buildings, their administration and maintenance, while delegating to departmental governments the responsibility of training teachers and coordinating municipal efforts. The combination of decentralization and social participation aimed at keeping the educational system and its contents in touch with social issues and processes, stimulating a vivid diversity and creative opportunities for development. In addition, the reform was not meant to be a swift and quick process, but rather a continuous one, in which the educational sector would be permanently changing to adapt to social demands and necessities. In this sense, the reform projected a long-term implementation in at least two cycles, 1995–2003 and 2004–2015, that would focus Government expenditure and attention, respectively, in primary education and secondary and higher education. To analyse the proposals and obstacles of the CEB/1994 in its own context, four major axes will be covered: (1) the qualitative approach to diversity, (2) the curriculum, (3) the didactic material and environment, and (4) the teacher’s training. The first axis is best portrayed by the Ministry of Education (1995: 79) in the reform’s Regulation on the Curriculum Organization: this looks upon interculturality as a resource and as a comparative advantage in promoting a

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new and harmonic personal and social development for all Bolivian students, as well as in building a national educational system that simultaneously guarantees its unity and recognizes, respects and valorizes its diversity. In more pragmatic terms, however, the multiculturalism proposed in 1994 was only ‘multi’ for those with indigenous backgrounds and had little effect over students, teachers and schools in mainstream, urban and westernized contexts. Nonetheless, this represents a paradigmatic shift from the twentieth-century criollo and nationalist project that aimed to forge an identity through castellianization to the detriment of preserving and incorporating cultural diversity. Fundamentally committed to communication between cultures through bilingualism, the proposal recognizes that the monolingual Spanish system was inadequate for Bolivia’s social heritage and configuration, establishing two educational modules within this framework: (i) a monolingual Spanish-based module with optional native language learning, and (ii) a bilingual module based on the native language with Spanish as a mandatory second language. In qualitative terms, however, the proposal presents yet another paradigmatic change when it widens the original cognitive and professional educational orientation to account for concerns with the students’ self-esteem, confidence and learning environment, placing them at the centre of the educational process, rather than sustaining standardized role models. The attention to personal traits and abilities indicates that the Bolivian educational system had, by then, evolved to a point where it had to change strategies to improve schooling outcomes and reduce dropout rates by offering contents and dynamics that were both appealing and effective in order to integrate students and develop their own potentials, capabilities and opportunities. The second axis relied on a basic national curriculum organized around three commitments – (i) attend to diversity, (ii) attend to basic learning necessities and (iii) attend to recognized Bolivian social problems – in which intercultural methods were to be developed as a means of creating social cohesion without losing its multicultural configuration. Although a major improvement from its predecessor, the 1994 curriculum proposal presented two evident shortcomings that can be attributed to a selective, rather than universal, approach to interculturality and bilingualism, which would ultimately justify those who criticize the CEB/1994 for its timidity. The first of its selective aspects of bilingual application is the focus on indigenous or pluricultural students to whom this approach was mandatory, while for Spanish-speaking students – even if of Indian-descent who lost their original cultural ties – bilingualism was only optional as a school-based decision.

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The second of the selective elements is the emphasis on interculturality during the primary cycle, which was mandatory, with decreasing relevance in subsequent cycles. This may not be explained only by the mandatory aspect attributed to the primary cycle, since the curriculum suggests that such emphasis may have been based on children’s pedagogic development and/or on the gradual production of training and didactic materials, according to phases that would be dedicated first to primary schooling and second to secondary and higher education. Thus, the incorporation of diversity and interculturality by the primary cycle curriculum successfully reaches its transversal objective, guaranteeing that the child is approached in language education and life sciences with intercultural methods, while mathematics, technology, practical knowledge and creative expression are learnt through their own experience and culture (el propio). According to the 1994 proposal, the third axis, relative to the didactic material and environment, must reflect intercultural and diverse perspectives as a means of implementing the envisioned social transformation and integration through multiculturalism. However relevant are class ambiance, evaluative processes and professional orientation, the issue of didactic materials has a greater potential to promote massive or macro-level structural change. In this sense, didactic materials such as textbooks, visual aids and other available references are the backbone of educational contents, exerting strong influences on the cultural formation of students (that often goes undetected) and guarding enormous transformative potential if there are the funds available. Responsible for portraying and disseminating validated knowledge and information, didactic materials, especially due to their productive context, are both a major challenge and a necessary tool for democratization and multiculturalism. Analyzing the didactic material produced after the CEB/1994, under the intercultural and multicultural educational paradigm, Sichra et al. (2007) finds that although explicitly considered in the legislation, the textbooks and sources succeeded only in absorbing the official discourse, with no significant changes in content or approach. The indigenous culture is still portrayed as insignificant, folkloric or ludic, with no contents related to ethnic, social or cultural asymmetries, inequalities and discrimination. In general, the contents of didactic materials are part of a political process that involves producing consensus over what and how to portray them. In Bolivia’s case, this was determinant for the outcome of the CEB/1994 as a whole, since its implementation was severely reduced by resistance, refusal and/or omission of the necessary actors and efforts

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to produce new didactic material, despite the apparent convergence with the proposals set forth by the teachers, peasants, indigenous and workers’ syndicates. The challenge for the last axis, which revolves around the training of teachers, was to develop intercultural and bilingual aptitudes. In 1999, the government published its first basic curriculum for teacher education at the primary level that consisted of a robust and structured guide and apparently contemplated all areas in which the teachers and their training would have to work in order to achieve the necessary results. Even so, this axis was, by far, the most difficult to implement, with teachers’ trade unions acting as powerful and conservative forces, posing obstacles for changes that could happen only with their support and engagement. According to Contreras and Simoni (2003), the CEB/1994 and related legislation such as the Code for the Administration and Operation of Educational Units of 2000 (RAFUE/2000) were most strongly opposed by teachers’ syndicates, especially through the CTEUB. The unions wanted to maintain the urban/rural division that the reform aimed to unify, and opposed decentralization in order to preserve the centralized and unionized administration and professional organization that they were able to control. In fact, this criticism towards Lozada’s reforms had fundamental contradictions: while the discourse centred on the liberation of oppressed peoples and cultures from imperialist and exploitive forces, the unions – and ultimately Morales – sought to centralize the education sector around themselves, with less participation from other actors and only vague pedagogic and implementation strategies. This, however, was not a uniform phenomenon among teachers, who supported the CEB/1994 pedagogical approach, even though they opposed certain aspects of it (Luykx, 1999: 340, see Contreras and Simoni, 2003: 43). Although criticized by the teachers and other opposition groups, which were eventually led by Morales, the CEB/1994 succeeded, as illustrated by Figure 3.2, in several aspects such as continuing to raise literacy and significantly reduce the dropout rate, as well as achieving fundamental democratic, participative and decentralizing reforms at the policy and legislative levels. The aim of promoting the CEB/1994 and guaranteeing an educational framework with participative and plural principles and organization, however, was not enough to implement the proposed changes and effectively achieve the expected results. In part, this has been attributed to the incompatibility between the new participative structure that stemmed from the Constitution and permeated the educational system vis-à-vis the historic and predominantly

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Figure 3.2 Bolivia’s literacy and dropout rates in 1992, 2001 and 2012. Source: INE, Census de la Población y Viviendas, 1992, 2001 and 2012.

syndical popular organization that exists in Bolivia. This way, the inputs and impulses that the democratic system needed from civil society and central actors such as teachers and administrators were not mobilized at the necessary scale. In this sense, to illustrate the CEB/1994’s failure to incorporate and maintain attendance of the indigenous population effectively, Figure 3.3 presents the years

Figure 3.3 Years of schooling of the Bolivian population over 19 years of age by gender and self-declared indigenous ethnicity – Census, 2001. Source: CEPAL, 2005 based on INE, Census de Población y Viviendas, 2001.

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of schooling discriminated by both urban and rural territories and indigenous and non-indigenous ethnicity. Noticeably, the new educational system had little impact on both rural and indigenous children, especially female, over 11 years of age when the reform began. To further illustrate the persistent educational disparities between groups, Figure 3.4 presents the level of education attained according to the official ethnic categories of the Census: Group A, composed of the majority Quechua and Aymara groups; Group B, which are the other indigenous groups officially recognized by electoral legislation; Group C, which are other self-declared indigenous ethnicities; and Group D, which are self-declared categories that were not classified, such as not specified, mestizo, and intercultural among others. Interestingly, those who self-declared non-indigenous categories have a higher proportion of people with higher education, indicating clearly an ethnicbased division in terms of access to the complete educational cycle. However, Figure  3.4 also shows that all groups have around 70–79 per cent of their population still on the basic educational level, which confirms transversal and structural problems that were unresolved by the CEB/1994 and pose as challenges to the ASEP/2010.

Figure 3.4 Distribution of the population of Bolivia by level of education attained and ethnic groups – Census, 2012.

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The failure to implement several of the new constitutional aims, such as the CEB/1994 and, through them, to achieve results in terms of structural social change in Bolivia – like diminishing the educational gap between urban/rural and westernized/indigenous populations – were both cause and effect of Evo Morales’ rise to power. During the 2000s, intensifying mobilization of unionized and organized political forces led by the new leadership of CSUTCB and other representations of both peasant and indigenous scopes were constantly opposing and presenting obstacles for the 1994 constitutional and educational framework. Marches, which were originally used in peaks of political and social turmoil as demonstrations of dissatisfaction, gradually became periodical, and ultimately, became annual during Morales’ ascent and during his presidency.

Education for a Plurinational State: the Ley ‘Avelino Siñani-Elizardo Pérez’ (ASEP/2010) Aiming at creating a ‘new Bolivia’, Morales’ government drafted a new Constitution (2009) that restructured the country as a Plurinational State that maintained its Presidential and Republican aspects. In 2010, Morales replaced the CEB/1994 with a new educational system through the Ley ‘Avelino Siñani y Elizardo Pérez’ (ASEP/2010), also under the ideal of plurinationalism and decolonization and in the name of culturally oppressed indigenous minorities. This rhetoric, however, must be cautiously approached in order to identify the changes and continuums that it proposes or implicates. This reform must be understood from two simultaneous perspectives: (i) within the Plurinational State project of which it is part, and (ii) in relation to the CEB/1994. From the first perspective, the ASEP/2010 is one of the major backbones for the creation of a ‘new Bolivia’ (and Bolivians) envisioned by Morales and his supporters, which aimed at supplanting completely what they describe as an imperialist State that had existed, continuously, since the colonial period. This postulation, however, has two major limitations: it is contradictory to the evolution of the State and political actors that took place from colonial to contemporary periods, and it does not correspond to the institutional and functional basis of Morales’ government. Despite its MNR leadership, the democratic movement that resulted in the Constitution and the CEB had restructured completely the legal and institutional basis of the Bolivian State on participatory and liberal principles, which ultimately created an open system that could be permeated by multiple social forces, including the opposition forces.

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Multiculturalism, social participation through territorial organization and indigenous autonomous representation were all guaranteed in both the Constitution and the CEB of 1994. In terms of content, it can be argued that Morales’ proposal radicalizes what was considered minimalist in Sánchez de Lozada’s regime – the organization of the State from a multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual standpoint. The major difference, however, lies in the composition of governing forces that promoted the 1994 and the 2009 Constitutions, in which Morales opted to replace – rather than use, adjust and incorporate – the democratic and structured proposals of the 1990s, dismantling important public policies and systems. The framework, however, had laid an unprecedented and radical democratic opening for popular participation and had guaranteed both diverse and decentralized administration as necessary means for a multicultural Bolivia, in which programmes and pedagogic strategies could be plural and adequate for an education based both on the basic curriculum and on regional, cultural and social specificities. The collaboration of the multiple unions, however, was fundamental in turning the framework into an operational system, through efforts such as mapping and articulating the indigenous groups, as the CIDOB did by 2005, still under the 1994 constitutional regime. In the second perspective, despite the idealism of Morales’ proposals, several contradictions within his State’s organization may virtually create a lessdemocratic administration than the one it aimed to uproot. Historically, Morales’ political base is made up of syndicalist organizations such as the CSUTCB and the CSCB, in which he rose through the cocaleros’ labour sector. Traditionally, the syndical organizations have exerted powerful political influence within, or in opposition to, the State and, as such, may represent a way of co-optation of groups that identify with certain national, local or interest-specific projects. In another sense, springing from the syndicate’s historic influence and organization in Bolivia – albeit under long-term dominance by the miners’ sector during the COB’s syndical monopoly – Morales’ political base does not represent much of a status quo innovation. If, on the one hand, while his rhetoric claims a severe political rupture with a continuous imperialist and capitalist grip over the State of Bolivia, on the other, neither the content of his proposals, nor the bases of his administration indicate much change. The contents of the ASEP/2010 do not show structural differences from what was proposed by the CEB/1994, with most of its changes being on the rhetorical and ideological level. Finally, while the 1994 framework was designed to allow new and local actors to permeate all levels of the educational public policy, the ASEP/2010

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proposes plurinationalism and multilingualism through a centralized, political and union-based administration. Still in relation to the CEB/1994, the rhetorical nature of Morales’ ASEP/2010 lacks the pragmatic and operational investments much needed for indigenous and rural cultural revival, rights and interests recognized in the 1994 framework and, ultimately, has made these even more urgent under the new regime. Based on public demands and educational projects put forth in the 1980s and 1990s by the different unions, the CEB/1994 was structured by public agents in the Ministry of Education with the support of data collected through the Census of 1992 and later updated by the Census of 2001. In contrast, the ASEP/2010 has a rather ideological, idealistic and polarized discourse, but no data are yet available to support any impact analysis or results achieved over the four years since its implementation. Illustrative of the use of rhetoric to create polarization and an exaggerated sense of ethnicity and resistance to dominant culture is Morales’ discourse appropriation of the experience of the Escuela-Ayllu of Warisata as the ideal model and true attempt for indigenous and rural development. The differences between Warisata’s and Morales’ proposals are evident since the former is an autonomist project that preaches self-reliance and minimal central State interference, while the latter, despite is plurinational rhetoric, expresses evidences of centralization, corporatism and a State-led cult of Morales’ personality that, despite their popularity, are classical of authoritarian governments. From the 1994 perspective, the Warisata practices were some of the references for the organization of both the students’ schooling and the teachers’ training curriculums, with the objective of absorbing what could be either universalized or respected as possible local organizations through participative administration of educational juntas, committees and congresses. That experience, however, was approached as an interesting and rich source of policies, but cautiously, due to its inadequacy to meet educational demands and to the current sociolinguistic and socio-ethnic composition of the Bolivian population. Morales’ rupture with both the constitutional and the educational framework of 1994 and his proposal based on decolonization through ethnic recognition and cultural conservation seem displaced when faced by the data from the Census of 2012. First, dropout rates between 2000 and 2011 shown on Figure 3.5 suggest that while Morales was President but the CEB/1994 was still in place, significant advances were made even though the previous years had shown a steady fluctuation of the rate around 6 per cent. This would support that the major issues with the CEB/1994 were political rather than its pedagogic, institutional or legal framework.

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Figure 3.5 Annual dropout rates between 2000 and 2011 by primary and secondary cycles. Source: INE, Census de la Población y Viviendas.

Regarding the ethnic element of his proposal, it does not contemplate the complexity of Bolivian culture today: with over 500 years of active miscegenation between indigenous groups themselves, and between those and immigrants of both Spanish and other origins, the country can no longer be categorized under simple linguistic or ethnic classifications. Multiculturalism has reached a multidimensional level, in which factors of urban/rural nature, for example, have shaped different situations for people that have the same ethnic or linguistic origins. In this sense, Figure  3.6 and 3.7 illustrate both the complexity of multiculturalism in Bolivia today and the bilingual reality around which the CEB/1994 was structured. In Figure 3.6, the proportion of self-declared ethnicity and language speakers demonstrates the results of historic castellianization, urbanization and westernization processes in which significant parts of the major indigenous groups’ population lost their native language, without, however, losing their ethnic reference. In this sense, while 36.4 per cent of the population declared themselves Quechuas, only 17.4 per cent indicated speaking Quechua when asked their primary language. The difference is even greater with Aymaras: while 31.7 per cent of the population declared this ethnicity, only 10.6 per cent claimed to speak its language. The cultural complexity of Bolivia can also be illustrated by Figure  3.7, in which the number of self-declared ethnicities and language speakers for

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Figure 3.6 Proportions of self-declared ethnicity and language speakers by major indigenous groups of Bolivia – Census, 2012. Source: Demographic Census (2012) – INE.

Figure 3.7 Homonymous self-declared ethnicity and language speakers by major indigenous groups of Bolivia – Census, 2012. Source: Demographic Census (2012) – INE.

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homonymous groups are juxtaposed. While there were over 100 ethnicities declared in the Census of 2012, only 32 native linguistic groups were identified. The noticeable differences between ethnicities that have more people than those who speak that language – such as Movima and Leco – or between languages with a higher number of speakers than self-declared ethnic members – such as Bésiro – point to a far-reaching multicultural process that is not reflected by Morales’ proposal based on distinct and various indigenous ‘nations’. This multicultural context, portrayed by the data, suggests that any educational system that contemplates it cannot be structured around an unreal, abstract or ideological interpretation of its complexity. In this sense, the ASEP/2010 and Morales’ visions of the imperialist State seems displaced, in a historical perspective, since the former was promoted towards an oligarchic, assimilative, repressive and élitist predominance that was neither explicit, nor structurally strengthened in 1994. The proposal’s rhetoric defends the rupture with, and the substitution of, the liberal, democratic and participative framework of 1994 by a new system that favours, in reality, the centralization of administration under the presidency and its political supporters, and, in theory, the juxtaposition of syndical, indigenous and urban fragmented administrations, territories, organizations with unequal levels of autonomy and access to public goods and resources. Finally, data from the Census of 2012 also allowed for the distribution of illiterates according to the primary language spoken. Presented in Table  3.3, these data show an interesting panorama that the new ASEP/2010 will face: a small-scale and pulverized group of native languages vis-à-vis an educational system that intends to treat each indigenous group as a ‘nation’ and emphasizes pedagogic strategies in each native culture, while the concentration of illiterates is still high among major indigenous groups. The contributions to the illiteracy rate of each linguistic group indicates that this is a greater issue among the major languages such as Quechua and Aymara, rather than among the other native languages, which show smaller disproportions between their demographic representation and their contribution to the illiterate population’s composition. As a portrayal of the results achieved by the CEB/1994, the data presented suggest that it was ineffective to diminish disparities based on linguistic and ethnic groups that tend to exclude those of indigenous descent or cultures. On the other hand, they clearly indicate that the contemporary educational situation poses challenges that are not captured by ethnic perspective as proposed by the ASEP/2010. The data support a diagnosis in which the major challenges would be to educate Quechua and Aymara majorities through the identification of the

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Table 3.3 Population, proportion and contribution to illiteracy by language spoken – Census 2012 Languages spoken

Population

Percentage (%)

Contribution to illiteracy (%)

Spanish Quechua Aymara Foreign languages Guaraní Other native languages* 10,000 TOTAL

6,185,227 1,616,079 999,225 95,972 52,047 53,307 281 4,432 22,024 15,601 10,969 9,001,857

68.71 17.95 11.10 1.07 0.58 0.59 0.00 0.05 0.24 0.17 0.12 100.00

49.59 32.52 15.05 0.70 0.86 1.26 0.01 0.10 0.45 0.25 0.45 100.00

Source: Demographic Census (2012) – INE. * ‘Other native languages’ correspond to 32 languages.

origins of their exclusion, which can be a result of urbanization and socioeconomic processes and dynamics that sustain social divisions in accordance to the ethnic composition of the territory. Also, the data point to a smaller contribution to illiteracy of other native languages relative to their demographic representation, albeit this is still an issue. This suggests that focused efforts among these groups, that often involve the articulation of indigenous, State and international organizations, might have had an impact on literacy. In this sense, the ASEP/2010 can be an interesting framework for a portion of the population, but it is not adequate to attend to the Quechua and Aymara majorities that are over-represented in the illiterate population. The fragmentation of the educational system through the juxtaposition of ethnic, cultural and linguistic plurality, with no apparent consideration of contemporary socioeconomic situations of marginalized majorities that have lost or diminished their traditional ties, may fail to achieve the social transformation intended. The ASEP/2010 proposal also has operational shortcomings observed through the absence of basic definitions regarding the budget and the excessive rhetoric that does reveal how its implementation could be viable given the country’s reality.

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Conclusions: challenges for contemporary Bolivian education Since the CEB/1955, the Bolivian government has struggled to overcome massive exclusion from educational and cultural development, which has revolved around basic indicators such as the literacy rate, shown by Figure 3.8. Historically, however, literacy efforts have been combined with assimilative purposes and have been conditioned to socio-economic inequalities produced by urbanization and globalization processes over urban/rural, centre/periphery and class divisions. The multicultural reforms presented in this chapter as attempts to restructure these historical tendencies, sustained by the long-lasting CEB/1955, are presented in the comparative Table 3.4, regarding their nature, principles and organizational basis. In terms of public policy, the similar nature of these proposals and their roots in multicultural principles echoed in social demands does not explain the need for a complete replacement of the CEB/1994 by the ASEP/2010. Even though the CEB/1994 was ineffective, there are indications that this was due to political reasons, rather than its framework, which would support arguments in favour of adjustments and further development of operational problems, such as

Figure 3.8 Evolution of the literacy rate in Bolivia according to national censuses – 1950–2012. Source: INE, Census de la Población y Viviendas.

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Table 3.4 Comparative synthesis of the CEB/1994 and the ASEP/2010 CEB/1994

ASEP/2010

Nature

Pragmatic Realist Rational

Rhetoric Idealist Normative

Principles

Interculturality Bilingualism Unification Integration Social cohesion

Inter- and intraculturality Plurilinguism Plurinationalism Ethnic autonomy Decolonization

Organizational basis

Territorial Public participation Decentralization

Ethnic/cultural Unionized participation Centralization

the construction of necessary consensus for the production and distribution of didactic material with intercultural contents, the evaluation and empirical review of curriculum, programmes and investments, or the development of strategies to overcome identified disparities. In this respect, the ASEP/2010 can be considered a setback for Bolivian education since it discards the accumulated experience of the CEB/1994’s democratic and multicultural framework that operated for nearly 15 years. The new curriculum, organization and definitions proposed in the ASEP/2010 is permeated by ideological and ethnic perspectives that fail to identify the multicultural complexity that has developed over linguistic, ethnic, social, cultural, regional and urban/rural boundaries. Also, it does not present a structured system around basic national procedures, nor does it allow for comparable or impact assessments of the changes it proposes. The challenges faced by the new ASEP/2010 system are multiple and unlikely to work in the absence of proper consideration of educational specificities that would allow focalized pedagogic strategies to diminish social and educational inequalities according to their contemporary logic. Simultaneously, they would preserve native cultures through the educational structuring of their languages and traditions and their cultural integration to the basic national curriculum and identity.

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Although the ASEP/2010 reform has yet to show results, being implemented gradually since 2011, it is certain that the interruption of the process initiated by the CEB/1994 has negative effects. Politically based discontinuity and negligence of empirical mechanisms that would allow decision-makers to adjust to reality are major determinants for the slow development and/or poor quality of public systems and policies. It would have been best if the 2010 reform had recognized and improved upon the positive aspects of CEB/1994, avoiding unnecessary expenditures and ruptures in teachers’ and students’ lives. By 2012, the newspaper La Prensa11 reported on the difficulties of implementing the new curriculum under the ASEP/2010, given the chronic shortcomings of the Bolivian educational sector, such as poor infrastructure, inaccessibility to didactic materials and inadequate coordination of efforts and investments. The major challenges for Bolivian education in the next decades are to improve curricular content and teachers’ education, as well as to produce and distribute pedagogical materials that both provide quality education for all and attend to the needs and peculiarities of cultural minorities. The efforts and expenditures invested in the complete transformation of the CEB/1994 under a new ideology suggest that much attention, time and resources are being dedicated towards reforming what the CEB/1994 had done best – the formal, legal and institutional framework – while not addressing the major obstacles identifiable in the fifteen years of this first attempt at a multicultural education. Among these are: (i) the persistent resistance for several teachers’ organizations, especially in the urban context, against education reform; (ii) the lack of infrastructure, didactic materials and assessment systems to guide the educational policies with multicultural content, and (iii) the preference given to ideological and normative discourse with detriment to effective, dynamic and realistic attempts to produce social change.

Notes 1 According to Byram (2009): ‘Demotic discourse views culture as multifaceted and diverse in its range of values, beliefs, practices and traditions – some of which may be recent inventions – and hence as negotiable and subject to personal choice, as a dynamic process through which both meanings and the boundaries of groups or communities are renegotiated and redefined according to current needs’. 2 Bolivia’s territory is organized administratively in Departments, which represent the equivalent level of the State in the United States’ federal configuration, and Municipalities, even though it is not a Federation.

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3 Refers to the process of assimilation to the Spanish-based culture through the Spanish language, also known as castellano, as a way to indicate its transcendence from Spain to a larger linguistic group. 4 National Institute of Statistics: www.ine.gob.bo. 5 According to Jordán Pando (1972: 913), ‘when the independence [1825] was proclaimed three-quarters of the land belonged to the [indigenous] communities, but, by 1847, half of the fertile land had fallen into private hands’. 6 ‘Ayllu’ means community or village. 7 Freire, Paulo (1968) Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Paz e Terra, 1987. 8 At the international level, the first Indigenous Congress hosted in Mexico in 1940 announced Warisata’s pedagogic and institutional insignificance as an educational project within the movement: although attended by Pérez through a direct invitation, since the Bolivian central Government opposed his visions, the Escuela-Ayllu had no visibility during the sessions and Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas proposed ideas following Caquiaviri: ‘our problem is not to conserve the “Indian” as an Indian, nor is to to “indigenize” Mexico, but to “mexicanize” the Indian’ (apud Vilchis, 2010: 15). 9 Years spanning from the overthrow of Villaroel in 1946 to the Revolution of 1952 led by the MNR and headed by its exiled leaders. 10 Maximum syndical organization since the COB’s weakening in the 1980s and where Evo Morales paved his political trajectory. 11 La Prensa (2012) ‘El Seduca vigilará la aplicación de la malla’. Published 08/02/2012. Available at: http://www.laprensa.com.bo/diario/actualidad/la-paz/20120208/ el-seduca-vigilara-la-aplicacion-de-la-malla_18837_30446.html [accessed 15 December 2014].

References Byram, Michael (2009) ‘Multicultural societies, pluricultural people and the project of intercultural education’, Platform of Resources and References for Plurilingual and Intercultural Education. Language Policy Division, Council of Europe (COE). Cajías de la Vega, Beatriz (1998) ‘1955: de una educación de castas a una educación de masas’, Revista Ciencia y Cultura, No. 3, La Paz, http://www.scielo.org.bo/scielo. php?pid=S2077–33231998000100008&script=sci_arttext Cepal América Latina y El Caribe. Pueblos Indigenas. Observatorio Demográfico No. 6. United Nations. Santiago, 2009. Choque, Celestino (2005) La EIB entre los quechuas: testimonio de parte (1990–1994). PROEIB Andes. La Paz: Plural Editores. Código de la Educación Boliviana, 1955. http://www.lexivox.org/norms/BODL-19550120.xhtml.

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Contreras, Manuel and Maria Luisa Simoni (2003) The Bolivian Education Reform 1992–2002: Case Studies in Large-Scale Education Reform. Country Studies Education Reform and Management Publication Series. Vol. II No. 2. Washington, DC: The World Bank. CSUTCB (1991) ‘Hacia una educación intercultural bilingüe’, Raymi 15. La Paz: Centro Cultural Jayma. Freire, Paulo (1968) Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Paz e Terra, 1987. Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). Census de Población y Vivienda. 1992, 2001 and 2012. La Paz, Bolivia. Jordán Pando, Roberto (1972) ‘Participación y movilización campesina en el proceso revolucionario boliviano’, América Indígena XXXII(3) (July–September): 907–934. Luykx, Aurolyn (1999) The Citizen Factory: Schooling and cultural production in Bolivia. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Machaca Benito, Guido (ed.) (2011) Desafíos de la educación intracultural, intercultural y plurilingüe en Bolivia en el marco del Estado Plurinacional. Memória del seminario – taller. Cochabamba: FUNPROEIB Andes. Mesa, José, Teresa Gisbert and Carlos Mesa (1999) Historia de Bolivia. La Paz, Bolivia: Editorial Gisbert. Ministry of Education (1995) Reglamento sobre Organización Curricular. Decreto Supremo 23.950 of 1º de febrero de 1995. Available at http://www.santacruz.gob.bo/ archivos/PN08122010143750.pdf Pérez, Elizardo (1934) ‘Mensaje de la Escuela de Warisata en el Dia de las Américas’. La Paz, Bolivia: Editorial Semana Gráfica. Quispe, Luz Jiménez (2015) Proyectos Educativos Indígenas en la Política Educativa Boliviana. La Paz, Bolivia: PINSEIB. Reyeros, Rafael (1937) Caquiaviri: Escuela para los indígenas bolivianos. La Paz, Bolivia: Ed. Universo. Sichra, Inge (2002) ‘Reflexiones sobre la Educación Intercultural Bilingüe en el marco de Reformas Estatales’, Seminario Regional de Educación Intercultural e Bilingüe. Iquique: Universidad Arturo Prat, http://red.pucp.edu.pe/ridei/files/2011/08/661.pdf Vilchis Cedillo, Arturo (2010) Warisata y México. México: Editorial América Nuestra – Rumi Maki. Vilchis Cedillo, Arturo (2014a) ‘La Escuela-Ayllu de Warisata, Bolivia u sus relaciones con México’, De Raíz Diversa 1(1): 145–70, http://deraizdiversa.files.wordpress. com/2014/04/art_6.pdf Vilchis Cedillo, Arturo (2014b) ‘Warisata y Churata, pedagogia y periodismo de compromiso’, Revista de Pensamiento Crítico Lationamericano, Pacarina del Sur 5(20). Zalles, Alberto (2000) ‘Educación y movilidad social en la sociedad rural boliviana’. Nueva Sociedad 165: 134–147, http://www.pacarinadelsur.com/home/amautas-yhorizontes/284-warisata-y-churata-pedagogia-y-periodismo-de-compromiso [accessed 15 December 2014].

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Brazil: The Role of States and Municipalities in the Implementation of Education Policies Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro1

Introduction Discussing the governance of basic education in Brazil is not simple. It is a very complex architecture in which the Union, the states and municipalities have leading roles in educational provision and the three government levels have political and institutional autonomy. This raises many problems related to providing and financing education, as well as the cooperation between the different levels of authority. The municipalities are the main providers of early childhood education (from 0 to 5 years); states and municipalities share the provision of elementary education from 1st to 9th year (from 6 to 14 years); and states are responsible for the provision of three-years-long high school. The Union has a supplementary role relating to all levels of basic2 education and plays an important role in evaluating and coordinating the education policies at all levels, and is also responsible for regulating, supervising and financing the federal higher education network that includes its own institutions and also the private system. From a political–institutional point of view and considering the autonomy of the federated entities, we can say that Brazil has 5,645 municipal educational systems, that can integrate (or not) with their respective state systems, and 26 state systems, in addition to the Federal District. In any one territory, schools and students of both state and municipal systems can live together with autonomy to define the curriculum, teacher education and careers, didactical resources, scholar organization and planning. This complex system encompasses 50 million students, over 200,000 public and private schools and 2 million teachers working in basic education (School Census 2013, MEC/Inep). 97

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In this context, some questions are highlighted: to what extent is it possible to assure unity and quality patterns in the educational provision for the country as a whole, taking into account the regional and local diversities? What are the mechanisms for intergovernmental coordination? Is it possible to articulate autonomy and interdependence in the management of educational systems? Is it possible to regulate a collaboration regime between the federal entities from a political point of view, considering the constitutional autonomy of each level and their attributions? How do the state and municipal educational systems work? This is an exploratory study that deals with a problem rarely addressed in Brazilian literature.

Educational policies in a federation Social policies and education in Brazil have always followed a decentralized model, with the states and municipalities playing a key role in the provision of social services. The federative arrangement has existed for many years and was consolidated by the 1988 Constitution, which established the principle of decentralization in the provision of social services in general (including education), and assigning a markedly more important role to the municipal governments than previously (Arretche, 2009). Despite the 1988 constitutional precept to decentralize educational policy, the Federal government kept a coordinating role, creating a model that is simultaneously decentralized in its implementation but monitored at the federal level. The main instrument for this was the establishment, by constitutional amendment, of the Fund for Elementary Education Development and for Enhancing the Value of the Teaching Profession (hereafter FUNDEF) in 1997. This Fund, aimed at elementary education (1st to 8th grade), set the rules for the use of the mandatory spending by states and municipalities on education as fixed percentages of their budgets, as intended by the 1988 Constitution. The Fund distributes these state and municipal resources within each state according to the number of students enrolled in the schools maintained by each municipality and the State government. There are minimum national expenditures per student and teacher salaries, and the Federal government is required to transfer resources to poorer states and municipalities that cannot reach these minimum standards. The legislation also established an information system managed by the National Institute for Educational Research (hereafter INEP), using the School Census to generate the data required for determining

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the annual distribution of resources between states and municipalities (Gomes, 2008). FUNDEF can be considered a success by expanding access to primary education, which became universal, but serious problems remain in terms of quality, as shown by the figures for educational performance and grade lag reflected in the average scores obtained by students in the international and national evaluation tests such as PISA, implemented by OECD, and Prova Brasil, implemented by INEP (Veloso, 2011). Despite major disagreements in Congress at the time over the proposed FUNDEF (Gomes, 2008), this new generation of policies based on the 1988 Constitution, the National Law of Education (LDB)/1996 and FUNDEF/1997 produced a policy model consisting of three main pillars (Veloso, 2011) as follows:

1. Decentralization of educational provision: At present, pre-school education is the responsibility of municipalities, the states and municipalities administer elementary education jointly, and the states are in charge of secondary education. 2. Funding criteria defined by the federation: Budgetary allocations for each level of government (states and municipalities), with resource allocation based on student enrolment figures. 3. Centralized evaluation: For the comparative assessment of educational provision in the separate states, and of school networks and schools. Despite key differences in emphasis and approaches between the Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula governments, this framework, consolidated in the 1990s, was retained throughout the following decade. Although the educational levels covered by constitutional funds were expanded with the introduction of the Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and Enhancement of Education Professionals (hereafter FUNDEB), this change did not modify the three-point scheme outlined above. Moreover, despite controversies about the evaluation system, the instruments employed for assessing the quality of education were somewhat strengthened. The National Assessment of Basic Education (hereafter SAEB), based on a sample, was expanded in 2005 to include all students of 4th and 8th grades in all the public schools, with the name Prova Brasil. Meanwhile, the sample study continued to be applied in public as well as in private elementary schools and high schools, and questionnaires were applied to teachers, parents and students to better understand the economic, social and motivational factors

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associated with learning. The Basic Education Development Index (thereafter IDEB), a synthetic indicator monitoring system, was also introduced, and, despite undergoing major changes since 2009, the National Secondary Education Test (thereafter ENEM) also remained. By 2010, however, only elementary education presented a net enrolment rate that came close to universal provision. Most worrisome, the net enrolment rate of around 54 per cent in secondary education was far from satisfactory (Figure 4.1). It was hoped that by substituting FUNDEF for FUNDEB in 2007, expanding the financing system to all levels of basic education, that access and permanence problems in high school would be solved, but this did not happen. It was also hoped that the increase in per capita students’ expenditure would have a positive impact on quality, by raising teachers’ salaries and improving the functioning of schools. This did not happen either. The percentage of the youth from 15 to 17 years attending high school has been slowly rising, but since 2007 it has stalled around the 50 per cent range. The dropout rates of high school have been slowly decreasing, but in the later years have remained above 9 per cent per year (Figure 4.2). So, the growing investments in basic education did not lead to improvements in school performance. Data from the index of education development, IDEB, which established performance goals for schools, municipalities and states, point towards a difficult scenario: since 2007, there has been some improvement in Portuguese and Maths at the 5th year,3 but not much change for students at the end of the 9th year and high school (Figure 4.3). Data about the percentage of students with adequate performance in Maths show some improvement in the 5th year of schooling, modest improvement in the 9th year, and stagnation at the end of secondary education (Figure 4.4).

Figure 4.1 Net enrolment rates for 15 to 17 years old (%). Source: National Household Surveys, Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (Pnad/ IBGE), 2001–2012.

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Figure 4.2 Abandonment (dropout) rates in secondary schools. Source: Ministry of Education, School Census, 2007–2012.

Figure 4.3 Index of Education Development (IDEB) – public schools. Source: Ministry of Education, Index of Education Development (IDEB), 2005–2011.

Figure 4.4 Percentage of students with adequate performance and above in Maths. Source: Ministry of Education, Index of Education Development (IDEB), 2005–2011.

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Financing and municipalization of education Between 1997 and 2013, as a consequence of FUNDEF, there was a significant redistribution in enrolments in basic education. The municipalities gained 3.7 million new students, while the states lost 9.6 million. The difference is explained by demographic changes4 and the expansion of private education, particularly in elementary schools. Accordingly, the percentage of students in public education enrolled in municipal schools went from 40.7 per cent to 65.5 per cent, while enrolment in private schools grew from 3.2 to 4.4 million (Figure  4.5). The municipalities increased their role in the provision of early childhood and elementary education, while the states tended to expand their participation in secondary and technical education. Before FUNDEF, in 1996, the distribution of education provision varied greatly among states. For instance, in the state of São Paulo, the State government was responsible for 77 per cent of the students in elementary school, while in the state of Maranhão 69 per cent of the students attended municipal schools, with very large differences in expenditure per student among the regions. In 2013, enrolment in the state of São Paulo’s primary education had been reduced to 41 per cent. The additional resources provided by the decentralization of tax resources towards the municipalities and the mandatory expenditures on education also allowed for the expansion of expenditures on educational materials, teaching training, school bussing, etc.

Figure 4.5 Enrolments in public basic education (in million students). Source: Ministry of Education, School Census, 1997 and 2013.

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Arretche’s (2010) research shows that FUNDEF mostly benefited the poorest regarding access to school. The poorest 25 per cent of children from 7 to 14 years, until then excluded from mandatory education, were included between 1992 and 2001. The new role of regulation and supervising played by the Union, and the additional resources provided to the poorest states, led to a significant reduction in the inequalities in education expenditures among states and municipalities. Despite the redistributive effects of FUNDEF/FUNDEB, inequalities in percapita expenditures among the states remain, since the education fund is based on the tax revenues of each state, which can be very different. In 2013, the minimum expenditure by student/year expenditure in São Paulo, the country’s richest state, was R$ 3,156.55 for elementary school and R$ 3,787.86 for high school.5 In poorer states, such as Alagoas and Piauí, which received supplemental funds from the Union, the minimum value was R$ 2,022.51 for basic and R$ 2,427.01 for high school, a difference of R$ 1,000.00 – or US$ 500 – per student/year. In short, from an institutional point of view, the constitutional amendment n. 14 of 1996, which earmarked a fixed percentage of tax revenues of the Union, states and municipalities for education and the law regulating FUNDEF were the first steps in improving the collaboration among federal entities, by setting objective criteria for expenditure per student in elementary school – or that was what was necessary to improve the management procedures and enhance the educational statistics. From 1997, the school census started to collect data on school attendance, to publish them annually, and the figures were used to distribute the resources for education according to the number of students attending state and municipal schools. By the new legislation, states and municipalities were required to enrol all children in schools on penalty of losing resources. FUNDEF applied only to the eight years of mandatory elementary school, and it made possible the universalization of this stage, reaching at last, in the threshold of the twenty-first century, a historical goal in Brazilian education (Figure 4.6). Another effect of FUNDEF was to establish a clearer division of labour between state and municipal governments, allowing each of them to concentrate on their main area of responsibility, as shown in Figure 4.7 and Figure 4.8. The universalization of access to elementary school for ages 7 to 14 years allowed the country to continue to expand access to education both to preschool and to secondary education, included in the revised version of FUNDEF, the FUNDEB in 2007, with the extension of nine years of mandatory elementary schooling (6 to 14 years) until 2010 and the extension of mandatory schooling from ages 4 to 17 years until 2016.

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FUNDEF also had an important impact in teachers’ qualifications, since it required that 60 per cent of the education expenditures should be used for teachers’ wages and training programmes. With more resources, it became possible to start considering criteria for functional and salary improvements with teachers’ unions and career experts, and also issues of teacher evaluation and functional progression. The percentage of elementary school teachers with college degrees increased from 46 per cent in 1998 to 55 per cent in 2003. Some authors see a contradiction between the right to education, which presumes equal conditions for all, and the regional differentiation that occurs in a decentralized federative system such as in Brazil. Portela and Zákia (2010) acknowledge the importance of FUNDEF as the ‘most reasonable criteria’ for

Figure 4.6 School attending rates for children from 7 to 14 years old (%). Source: Pnad/IBGE, 1992–2007.

Figure 4.7 Distribution of students in state and municipal schools in the first years of elementary school (%). Source: School Census, Ministry of Education, 1997–2013.

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Figure 4.8 Distribution of students in state and municipal schools in the final years of elementary school (%). Source: School Census, Ministry of Education, 1997–2013.

resource distribution, while suggesting that the Union could have played a more active equalizing role, reducing regional inequalities, to assure equal rights to education. They also advocate the need to establish a National Education System with clearer rules about the attributes and required collaboration between national, state and municipal governments. The creation of such an education system became one of the major directives of the new National Education Plan (PNE) (2014–2024), but its implementation is likely to meet resistance from municipalities and states, which could see them as a threat to their autonomy.

Characteristics of Brazilian federalism and its consequences for educational policy In Brazil, decentralization and federalism are fruits of democratization. The political–institutional reforms in the 1980s and the Federal Constitution of 1988 recovered the federative basis of the Brazilian State, suppressed during the military dictatorship. Later, in the 1990s, a broad decentralization programme was implemented, particularly regarding social policies. The historical simultaneity of both processes led to the wrong impression that they are the same thing, when actually they are not: federalism and decentralization do not necessarily imply identical institutional engineering. Brazilian federalism is unique. Unlike most federative countries, where municipalities and districts are subordinated to states and not to the central government, in Brazil federalism has a different institutional framework: the municipalities enjoy the same degree of autonomy as the states.

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A study by Morduchowiez and Arango (2010) describes the organization of the education sector in some federative countries and highlights important variations regarding the roles of central government and states or provinces. Countries like Germany, Canada or the USA have standards that clearly delimit the jurisdictions of states and the central government, as well as the responsibilities of each. In Canada and the USA, education is administrated by school districts that have different levels of autonomy and dependency regarding the states, and the legislation does not assign any specific responsibility to the central government regarding the outcomes of education policies (except regarding human rights). In Germany, the administration and supervision of the education sector is the responsibility of regional authorities, and a national commission formed by representatives of the central government and regional authorities sets the broad education policies. The municipalities do not have specific functions in education in Canada or in the USA, while in Germany the municipalities are only responsible for the construction, maintenance and operation of the school buildings.6 In Brazil, although the Constitution and the Education Law of 1996 established responsibilities and legal competencies for the three levels of government, these legal dispositions are too general, particularly regarding the roles of government spheres working in the same territory and creating a reasonable degree of overlapping. With the 1998 Constitution, the municipalities were allowed to regulate and oversee their schools, which, before, were under the supervision of the state governments. One consequence of this autonomy is that, in many municipalities, there are different elementary schools managed by the local and the state administrations, without any formal mechanism to assure their coordination. The Union, meanwhile, has resources for projects and programmes aimed directly at the schools and municipalities, without having to coordinate with state governments. This situation often overloads the municipalities and its schools with projects not always aligned with their own pedagogical goals. Early childhood education (0 to 5 years) is the responsibility of municipalities, and high school (15 to 17 years) is the responsibility of the states, and primary education is the responsibility of both; but this division of labour is not enough to create a well-defined collaboration regime. For example, there are frequent mismatches between the pedagogic orientations of municipal pre-schools and the nearest state school that is going to receive these students and make them literate. Sometimes the municipalities are in charge of the first five years of primary education, letting

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the state governments take care of those aged 6 to 9 years, without, however, a well-established integration or coordination of their curricula.7 In another example, students enrolled in state schools may not have access to public school transport maintained by the municipalities. The attempts of coordinating educational policies – articulating state governments and municipalities – vary greatly among the states. In some states, such as Paraná, municipalities are responsible for providing the first years of elementary education (1st to 5th year) and the state educational network focus on the final years (6th to 9th year) and high school. In other cases, like São Paulo, cooperation comes down to establishing partnerships with the municipalities to transfer resources for transportation, school buildings, meals and assistance actions. Rare are the examples of effective collaboration between states and municipalities that go beyond financing. We refer here to joint planning, technical assistance partnerships, support to local pedagogic or curricular management projects, implementation of school performance evaluations, and use of evaluation results in planning and redefining goals and indicators. The state of Ceará is an important exception: the state, among the poorest in the country, has shown significant improvement in education quality. Two factors help to explain these results: continuity of educational policies since the mid1990s and the growing collaboration regime between the state government and its municipalities. All elementary education was placed under the management of the municipalities, and the state government created a system of economic incentives linked to academic achievement, together with support for the acquisition of educational materials, assessment, teacher education and pedagogical orientation. With this project, the percentage of students reaching full literacy by the end of 2nd grade of elementary school increased from 39.8 per cent in 2007 to 81.6 per cent in 2013.8 The state of Minas Gerais, Brazil’s second largest, had also innovated with the creation of a Pedagogic Intervention Programme developed by the state secretary of education, aimed at improving the quality of education in the earlier grades. The programme monitors the academic performance of state and municipal schools on a regular basis, and recommend strategies of pedagogic intervention and capacitation to school managers and teachers. The programme, initially only for state schools, was offered to the Minas Gerais’ municipalities and gained 100 per cent adherence. To the final grades of elementary school, a team offers pedagogic support to the municipal network for the implementation of the state curriculum. The state offers pedagogic resources, diagnosis evaluation instruments, curricular

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directives and municipal capacitation. The cases of Minas Gerais and Ceará are two rare examples of effective collaboration between a state and its municipalities aimed at improving educational quality and should inspire other initiatives. On the other hand, there are also several cases of policies implemented by the central government that stumble upon the autonomy of the federal entities, leading to problematic results. One example is the ‘Articulated Actions Plan’, managed by the Ministry of Education since 2007, that aims to develop pedagogical projects in partnership with local public schools, often without assuring an effective articulation with existing state and municipal programmes. Another striking example is the teachers’ national minimum wage, created by federal law in 2008. Five states went to the Supreme Court challenging this legislation, claiming that it was unconstitutional, since it created financial obligations to states and municipalities that might not have the resources to meet them. The Supreme Court, however, deemed the legislation constitutional, but ten states have failed to comply with it, according to information from the National Confederation of Workers of Education (CNTE) (Figure 4.9). The national guidelines for teacher careers, approved in 2010 by the National Council of Education and still pending on federal regulation, also clashes with the local autonomy of states and municipalities. Currently, states and municipalities each have their own careers plans and salaries, sometimes for teachers working in similar schools in the same municipality. This is a source of

Figure 4.9 Initial earnings of teaching professionals with secondary education – 2014. Source: National Confederation of Workers of Education (CNTE), 2014.

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permanent conflicts between regional and local governments and teachers’ unions, leading often to protracted strikes, some of them with over 100-days duration, i.e., half of the 200-day school year.

Curriculum issues in a federal system Another difficult area of collaboration is related to curriculum. The 1996 education law establishes that it is the responsibility of Union . . . to establish, in collaboration with states, the Federal District and municipalities, competences and directives to early childhood, elementary and secondary education, which shall guide the curricula and their minimal contents, in order to ensure a common basic education. Article 26 in this legislation emphasizes the need for collaboration, when it says that elementary and secondary education curricula should have a common national basis. This basis must be complemented, in each teaching system and school, with diversified contents according to the regional and local characteristics of society, culture and the economy. In other words, the law determines that states and municipalities should cooperate with the Union in defining competences and curricular directives. States and municipalities should establish their own curricula, taking into account the common national basis, which is very different from defining a single national curriculum in a vast and unequal federation. A curricular framework such as this requires a continuous dialogue and strong political leadership to create consensus between the federal entities. These conditions were absent in the 1990s when the legislation was approved and the country still does not have a clear and consistent curricular framework establishing the responsibilities of the three levels of government, in spite of repeated efforts to establish a national curriculum basis during the past 20 years.9 By the end of the 1990s, the Ministry of Education and the National Council of Education prepared the first generation of National Curricular Guidelines (thereafter DCNs) for the different stages and modalities of basic education. The guidelines dealt mostly with general principles rather than actual contents and competences. In the same period, the Ministry developed the National Curricular Parameters (thereafter PCNs) for basic education for all areas of knowledge, in 14 volumes, together with a broad teacher capacitation programme. Missing, however, was a larger effort of political articulation to involve the state secretaries of education in the implementation of the PCNs.

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According to Namo de Mello (2014), the PCNs were a step forward by specifying in detail the contents and competences of the curriculum, but the lack of an effective collaboration between the Union, states and municipalities hampered their implementation. It also missed a broad discussion about the limits of the national directives orientating the state and municipal curricula, so that they could complete the DCNs with propositions that suited their realities. A new period of curricular reform started with the change of government in 2003. At the request of the Ministry of Education, the Congress approved many amendments to the National Education Law, adding new ‘mandatory’ contents to the basic education curricula. In addition, the National Council of Education decided to produce new curricular guidelines for all levels of basic education instead of completing or correcting those approved in the late 1990s. For ideological and doctrinal reasons, the Council decided to leave out of the guidelines the contents and competences required at each stage of basic education. Thus, a good opportunity to move forward in establishing a pact of collaboration between the Union, states and municipalities towards a common national curricular framework was lost. In the meantime, in later years several states and municipalities elaborated and started to implement their own curricular frameworks. Among them are the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Paraná, Ceará and Pernambuco, besides several capital and large cities. There is no full record of all these initiatives, but research in progress show that they all have as a starting point the national curricular directives, but go beyond by detailing the learning expected at each grade of schooling in different areas of knowledge. The new National Education Plan 2014–2024 requires the elaboration of a common national curriculum basis and it is hoped that the Ministry and the National Council of Education will take into account these experiences as important contributions to this necessary debate. In practice, the implementation of the curricula in classrooms is still being made with the textbooks acquired by the Ministry of Education and given to the schools through the National Textbook Programme. The teachers are free to choose the books produced by private publishers from a list approved by the Ministry of Education, even in states that have their own curriculum and corresponding teacher materials and guidelines for teachers and students about the contents and competences that should be learned at each stage, as is the case of São Paulo. Often the books chosen are not aligned to the pedagogic project of the school or to the state curriculum, and it may happen that two teachers of the same discipline working in the same district use different textbooks.

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In short, the question of whether it should or should not be a national curricular framework, and about who would elaborate this curriculum, is still unresolved, and the ongoing discussion tends to start from scratch, looking sometimes for inspiration in other countries, and ignoring the national experiences. To some extent, the absence of a clearly defined national curriculum is compensated for by the matrix of competencies for the elaboration of tests developed by the INEP for the national assessments of education achievement (Fini, 2014), SAEB (1996), for basic education, and ENEM (1998) for those concluding secondary education. In later years, these tests became the main criteria to define what the students should learn at each stage. But these tests were developed independently from the curricular parameters, and, for basic education, they are limited to language and Maths, and there are no clear links between the external evaluations and actual teaching provided by the schools in their daily activities. So, in the absence of a national curricular basis, many teachers and schools ended up fulfilling just the minimum established in the national exams. So, the external evaluations, led by the Ministry of Education and expanded by many state and municipal systems, ended up by taking the place of the curricula, instead of being just a measure of their implementation, as they should.

Basic education evaluation and the collaboration regime The outcomes of the national evaluations, widely published in the mass media, have led to a flurry of studies about the factors affecting student and school performance, and have strengthened the role of the Ministry of Education in the coordination of national policies. However, little progress was made in the use of results of the national evaluations by schools and public networks. Despite the evidence produced by numerous researches that could have stimulated programmes of technical support to the states and municipalities and training courses in services to improve the teaching and learning, there are no records of a coordinated policy between the three levels of government with this goal. One exception is the new National Pact for Alphabetization, launched in 2012 by the Ministry of Education and inspired by the experience of Ceará, but it lacks strategies to follow up the municipalities and see if they are improving the classroom practices. Created in 1989, SAEB was applied in 1991 and 1993, but without a methodology that would allow for comparing of results from one year to another.

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Since 1995, it has adopted the methodology of Item Reference Theory that allowed for time comparisons. SAEB was a sample study that provided results at the level of states. In 2005, the Federal government created Prova Brasil, which is a version of SAEB applied to all students in elementary public schools with at least twenty students enrolled at the 5th and 9th years. There are two tests, in Portuguese language and Maths, and the average results of the students provide a measure of the performance of their schools. In 2007, a Basic Education Evaluation Index (IDEB) was created, which combines the rates of student promotion with the school averages in Prova Brasil. Making use of IDEB, the Ministry of Education established development targets for each school, municipality, state and for the country as a whole.10 In short, there was great continuity and improvement in the policies of large-scale assessments for basic education in the past 20 years, but its results seem to have had little impact in the improvement of quality. The main results of the evaluations of SAEB/Prova Brasil are stable and do not change much throughout the years, remaining always short of the minimum deemed necessary. There were some improvements in Maths and Portuguese language by the end of the 5th grade in the past 10 years, but unfortunately this improvement has not led to better results at 9th grade and high school, as one would expect. The assessments gave more relevance to the role of the Ministry of Education in coordinating the national education sector, but had much less impact on improving the quality of education as such. The findings provided by the assessments are a good starting point for the identification of problems and their causes, but had little influence in the improvement of teacher education and pedagogic management of schools. And, despite many studies available on the factors associated to school performance, there are few qualitative studies about what happens in schools when the external evaluation results come up. Brazil still lacks a broader understanding about the use of external assessments as a pedagogic resource to improve the work inside the classroom and trigger projects to improve the teachers’ ability to meet the learning targets. The municipal and state education administrations have done very little in this regard. There are, however, some isolated efforts in some municipalities and some successful initiatives by states such as Ceará and Minas Gerais that adopted support strategies to schools and teachers based on their own evaluation systems. In this process, the Ministry of Education and the National Institute of Education Studies (INEP) have been strengthened, and Brazil has started

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participating in the growing set of countries that use a reliable system to monitor the students’ performance in basic education. But the country is still far from knowing how to make use of these resources to improve teachers’ qualifications and the quality of learning in public schools. There remains a long way to go for an effective use of the evaluation results by the state and municipal education authorities, which could benefit from a more effective collaboration with the federal entities. In short, despite the availability of information and analyses about the results of SAEB/Prova Brasil and other local assessments, it is regrettable that, in most states and municipalities, education policies are not informed by rules of accountability and evidence-based incentives. To a large extent, the problems of education are political. In many cases states and municipalities lack the technical resources to understand and make use of the contributions provided by the national assessments, and could benefit from a more articulated coordination and collaboration among the three levels of government, which requires legitimacy and leadership that are still to emerge.

Conclusion The analysis of Brazilian education from a post–1988 political–institutional management point of view indicates a permanent tension between centralization and decentralization and a relative uncertainty of the competences between federal entities. Despite the fact that the collaboration regime has advanced in defining the financing mechanisms with the FUNDEF/FUNDEB, it is also true that little has progressed in relation to coordinating actions that stimulate higher integration in pedagogic and administrative management of the educational systems. This collaboration regime functioning limit possibly contributes to expanding the inequalities in the providing conditions of municipal and state networks. In Table  4.1, a summary of the different collaboration themes between federal entities in Brazil is presented, which sums up the cooperation difficulties still present in Brazilian basic education in different areas. Table  4.1 shows that after 25 years of the promulgation of a Brazilian Constitution – in addition to the financing-related questions – the situations of effective collaboration seem to limit themselves to programmes defined from the ‘centre’ and traditionally led by Federal government, such as the national textbook programme, school meals, school transportation and the construction

114 Implemented

Implemented

Source: the author.

Construction and renovation of buildings Evaluation

Implemented without curriculum articulation Implemented

Implemented without curriculum articulation Implemented

Textbooks

Regulated by FUNDEF/FUNDEB Regulated Unregulated Unregulated Unregulated Implemented Implemented

Union–Municipalities

Regulated by FUNDEF/FUNDEB Regulated Unregulated Unregulated Unregulated Implemented Implemented

Union–States

Collaboration modalities

Financing Minimum Wage Teacher’s career Curriculum School management School transport School meal

Collaboration areas

Table 4.1 Summary of the collaboration situation between Brazilian federal entities

Variety of situations

Variety of situations

Regulated by FUNDEF/FUNDEB Unregulated Unregulated Unregulated Variety of situations Non-existent, except in the state of São Paulo Non-existent

States–Municipalities

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and renovation of buildings. But the cooperation between states and municipalities, those which effectively execute the educational policies in the country, is very limited. Strategic issues for quality improvement such as the articulation between state and municipal curricula, teachers’ training and career, pedagogical use of national assessments results and the planning and greater articulation of actions are still pending or with very problematic implementation. And even auspicious initiatives, such as the ones from Minas Gerais and Ceará, can suffer discontinuities depending on the changes of state policies on education.

Notes 1 I appreciate the comments and suggestions of Haroldo Torres, Rafael Camelo and Mariza Abreu. 2 ‘Basic education’ refers to all levels before higher education. 3 In 2006 the duration of primary education was extended from 8 to 9 years, covering the ages 6 to 14 years. Previously, it was 7 to 14 years. 4 The population aged from 0 to 6 years declined from 23 million to 19 million between 2000 and 2010, while the population from 7 to 27 years dropped only from 37.8 to 36.6 million in the same period. 5 Values fluctuate according to the stage (initial or final grades), location (urban or rural schools) and shift (partial or full time). 6 Some countries have autonomous cities or provinces with great freedom to organize their educational systems. This is the case with the Buenos Aires province in Argentina or Shanghai in China. In Canada the systems are also organized by provinces or states, there is not a federal organ responsible for education, but the school districts follow state orientations. 7 It is normal to hear teachers from state schools complaining about the bad performance of students that come from municipal schools and vice versa. 8 Article published in the newspaper Estado de São Paulo on 4 July 2014. 9 Namo de Mello (2014) carefully analyses the impasses that hampered the pact of a common national basis. 10 For a complete description of the Brazilian system of education assessment, see Castro (2012).

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References Arretche, M. T. S. (2009) ‘Descentralização das políticas públicas sociais no marco pós-constituição de 1988: experiências e perspectivas’, in Cedeplar (ed.) Projeto Perspectivas dos Investimentos Sociais no Brasil. Belo Horizonte: Cedeplar. Arretche, M. T. S. (2010) ‘Federalismo e Igualdade Territorial em Termos?’, Revista DADOS 53(3). Castro, M. H. G. (2012) ‘Developing the enabling context for student assessment in Brazil’, Working Paper 74532. SABER, No. 7, The World Bank. Fini, M. I. (2014) ‘Currículo e Avaliação: uma articulação necessária’, in M. H. G. Castro, B. Negri and H. Torre (eds), Educação Básica no Estado de São Paulo: avanços e novos desafios. SP: Imprensa Oficial (no prelo). Gomes, S. C. (2008) Fatores explicativos das diferentes estratégias de municipalização do Ensino Fundamental nos governos subnacionais do Brasil (1997–2000). São Paulo: Tese de Doutorado, Ciência Política, USP. Morduchowiez, A. and A. Arango (2010) ‘Desenho institucional e articulação do federalismo educativo: experiências internacionais’, in R. Portela and W. Santana (eds), Educação e Federalismo no Brasil: combater as desigualdades, garantir a diversidade. Brasília: UNESCO. Namo de Mello, G. (2014) ‘Formação de professores de educação básica no estado de São Paulo’, in M. H. G. Castro, B. Negri and H. Torre (eds), Educação Básica no Estado de São Paulo: avanços e novos desafios. SP: Imprensa Oficial (no prelo). Portela, R. and S. Zákia (2010) Educação e Federalismo no Brasil: combater as desigualdades, garantir a diversidade. Brasília: UNESCO, pp. 13–37. Veloso, F. (2011) ‘A evolução recente e propostas para a melhoria da Educação no Brasil’, in E. Bacha and S. Schwartzman (eds), Brasil: a nova agenda social. Rio de Janeiro: Gen/LTC, pp. 213–53.

5

Brazil: Curriculum of Basic Education An inventory of concepts and practices Guiomar Namo de Mello

Introduction The curriculum is everything a society considers necessary for students to learn throughout their schooling. Like almost all educational issues, decisions about curriculum involve different conceptions of the world, of the society, and especially of different theories about knowledge, how it is produced and distributed, what their role is in human destiny. You can group these theories into two main axes: knowledge-centred and student-centred curricula. The first is the oldest and dates far back to times when knowledge was not separated from religious beliefs. The curriculum is understood as the source of a fixed, universal and unquestionable knowledge and the school as a place where this knowledge is assimilated according to some rules, among which the Trivium and the Quadrivium are the classic examples. The knowledge is conceived as ‘sacred’, according to the expression by Michael Young (2013). The design of the curriculum focused on knowledge prioritizes the appropriation of the accumulated cultural and scientific heritage instead of advancing toward new discoveries and subject boundaries. Its didactic is frontal, expository and easy to observe and learn, and this is the reason why it still prevails in many classrooms. Throughout history, this curriculum ensured that the legacy of several generations was assimilated and preserved. The student-centred axis understands that the school curriculum should be built upon the knowledge that the students rebuild on their own, according to their cultural and individual references. It ranges from the most radical and libertarian pedagogies such as Ivan Illich’s (1985), who preaches the simple 117

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suppression of the school; it then passes through the Progressive School active pedagogy, which has John Dewey (2007) as its most important thinker; and then reaches modern constructivist pedagogies. It also includes those who understand, as Michael Apple (2004), that the curriculum knowledge is the dominant ideology; and Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (2008), to whom school knowledge is a cultural arbitrary. The variations of student-centred alternatives differ significantly with regard to the role of the teacher and the school, although they all share the conception of knowledge as emancipation. In the most radical version, school education should be abolished since it simply carries ideology or cultural arbitrary. As for those inspired by constructivist theories, such as Ana Teberosky and Emilia Ferreiro (1988), knowledge is an emancipator, if it engages student participation with the teacher as a facilitator of knowledge reconstruction. Its didactics require student activity and engagement with knowledge, which is shared by the students and the teacher, instead of the frontal attitude. Facing the polarization between knowledge or student-centred curriculum concept, American authors like Hilda Taba (1962) and Ralph Tyler (1969) restricted the curriculum to the organization of the content to be taught, whatever conception of knowledge is embodied. Criticized for its technical approach, this orientation has lost momentum in recent decades, though occasionally it is found in the pedagogical culture of the USA, which is why sometimes it seems that, in that country, curriculum is the same as methodology and teaching resources. In the final decades of the twentieth century, along with elementary school enlargement and the impact of new technologies on the production and distribution of knowledge, a new curriculum conception emerged with the potential to overcome the opposition between a knowledge-centred and student-centred curriculum. As with the first, it attaches great importance to the scientific, cultural and artistic legacy of the past. It is also close to the student-centred conception since it considers knowledge as an emancipatory power. Nevertheless, this new conception is different from both conceptions, because it considers that participation and reconstruction of knowledge is not enough. Emancipation can only be achieved if knowledge is acquired not as an unchangeable truth, but as the best knowledge so far built, until new theories and evidence emerge to contradict it. The curriculum is centred on fallible knowledge, which must be submitted to questioning. The curriculum is, therefore, centred in learning, teaching and outcomes.

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The history of curriculum decisions in Brazil Education in Brazil began from the top level. When Dom João VI moved the Portuguese Crown and its real court to its Brazilian colony in 1808, nine higher education institutions, the royal library and royal press, a botanic garden, a chemistry laboratory, an observatory and a museum were set up in the following 12 years. These scholar culture institutions were then transplanted from Europe to a country where 80 per cent of its capital inhabitants were illiterate. Enlightenment ideals that, although remotely, inspired liberation wars among its South American neighbours, found no echo in the Brazilian land. The country’s independence came to preserve the monarchy and the power was kept by the heir of the Portuguese empire. Brazil was the last country in the continent to become a republic, in 1889, after 67 years of royal ruling and just one year after the abolition of slavery. Teaching people to read and write was not a priority in the early years of the Portuguese royal family in Brazil. The imperial power was more concerned to ensure that its court had the educational opportunities that they had to leave behind in Europe. As for the settlers and Indians, since the mid-eighteenth century, the Marquis of Pombal had expelled the Jesuits from the country, closing catechetical schools run by the order of Ignatius of Loyola. The initiative to establish schools for the population was on account of the provinces and some of them emerged in the 1830s. The first Brazilian national basic school still carries the name of the Emperor Pedro II, where a 7–8 year programme was aimed at those who were already literate. In 1855, the first national curriculum was set up, appointing the courses to be taught at primary school – a 4-year duration programme – and the level then called ‘superior’ that corresponded to what we now call lower and upper secondary. In the primary schooling, reading, writing, and a very basic content of grammar, arithmetic, weights and measures, as well as sacred history and moral education were taught. In the ‘superior’ programme, which was only accessible to those who would pass an entrance admission examination, these contents were divided into at least ten subjects that included French and Latin. This pedagogical organization has changed little with the arrival of the Republic throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, and it was only the Organic Laws of Teaching in the 1940s that set the compulsory disciplines to the curricula of all levels and types of basic education. For the middle school or low secondary, thirteen disciplines were prescribed. This number would reach sixteen disciplines for senior secondary school (upper secondary). The Federal

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government, together with the states, was in charge of translating each discipline into specific programmes, which should be flexible, indicating only general guidelines. This collaborative regime between the Union and states still has to be clearly defined and since then has been the source of constant conflict, as will be seen later. Regulatory frameworks set by the Organic Laws were in effect until the enactment of the first General Education Act – the Law of Guidelines and Basis (LDB), in 1971. Although this act was already previewed in the Brazilian Constitution of 1946, the road to build and approve it in the Congress was long (14 years) and bumpy. From the Organic Laws, the 1971 LDB kept the same structure of a four year primary school, and a secondary school in two levels: a four grade lower secondary school named ‘ginasio’, and a three grade upper secondary school named ‘colegio’. The curriculum model also was kept with the same knowledge-centred concept. The main innovation was the division of the curriculum content into two categories: mandatory and elective. The 1961 Education Law established that both the Union and the states would have Education Boards. The Federal Board (CFE) was in charge of defining mandatory disciplines and the State Boards (CEE) of appointing the number and content of the elective ones. The schools should then choose some elective disciplines from the CEE list. This federal law also introduced the concept of educational practices to designate contents that did not fit into the traditional discipline format such as Arts and Physical Education. These educational practices, however, would also be classified as mandatory or elective. Thus, the curriculum building in Brazil became an elaborate and bureaucratic exercise, involving the Union and the states in the definition of mandatory or optional disciplines and educational practices. However, the complexity of this exercise had to do with who had the power to decide and choose, not with the curriculum design. The military government that began in 1964 revised the legal framework of education in Brazil with two new laws: the 5540/1968 (Higher Education Act) and the 5692/1971 Law for basic education. The latter was of great importance to the legal rearrangement of the system and shaped many of the present features of educational system management in Brazil. That is why it is also considered as another LDB. Until now, the Brazilian curricular practices and conceptions are marked by the 1971 LDB. Among them it is worth highlighting: the distinction between activity, area of study and discipline; the unification of the primary and the lower secondary into an eight-year schooling level; and the transformation of all upper secondary into a vocational secondary school.

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The 1961 LDB curricular model was improved by the 1971 LDB, which split the curriculum structure into a common core and a diversified section aimed at meeting the local peculiarities and individual differences among students. For the first time the student was considered as a person whose needs should be taken into account in the curriculum building. The common core, to be fixed by the Union, should set the mandatory contents and the diversified section would be under the charge of the State Boards (CEE). Shortly after the 1971 LDB enactment, the CFE set a norm (the 853/1971 Advice) to explain the curriculum concept that is embodied in the 5692/1971 Law and to regulate its application. In this Advice the concept of subject is adopted to generically describe the curriculum content. Subjects, stated the Advice, are the activities, areas of study and disciplines to be delivered in this order along with the schooling time according to the student’s development. In the earliest years of schooling, the prevailing activities are those of fostering intuitive and experience-based knowledge; the areas of study require a higher level of systematization but are still based on the integration of different types of knowledge, which is the prevailing form of teaching in the final years of the eight-grade elementary school; finally, in secondary school activities the areas of study are replaced by disciplines which require systematization according to the classic division of knowledge. This way of distributing knowledge along the school grades was presented as a more democratic curriculum organization. Nevertheless, although it could be consistent with a pattern of cognitive development, it didn’t take into account that the high dropout and repetition rates in Brazilian schools excluded many students throughout their schooling. Only a minority of economically privileged students remained and they would have access to a more rigorous and systematic knowledge organized into disciplines. Another great impact of the 1971 education law on the Brazilian curriculum was the unification of the four grades of primary and the four grades of lower secondary school into a single eight-year schooling sequence. This new unified arrangement is presently called ‘fundamental school’ and until now is distinguished as fundamental school I and fundamental school II. The guidelines for the reorganization of the curriculum into eight years were set by the 853/1971 Opinion of the Federal Council of Education. If effectively implemented, these guidelines should have led to a more organic structure of mandatory schooling by the allocation of contents in activities and areas of study during the eight years. A big effort would be required in order to unify these two very different school cultures into a single, organic, eight-grade

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mandatory school. The first culture was the typical Brazilian popular school aimed for all, with one single teacher for all the subjects. The second culture, whose curriculum was based on a rigid knowledge-centred structure since the Dom Pedro II 1855 curriculum, was aimed at the minority who succeeded in the entry examination, which would give access to the lower secondary studies. Such an effort, that should also have reached the teacher preparation programmes and the agencies that set the curriculum content, unfortunately was never taken seriously into account by education policies. Until now, the Brazilian elementary school has had two different and overlapping school cultures and curricula: the one with one single teacher favours bonds between the student and the teacher and school; the other imposes the same standards on all students regardless of their previous school path, a fragmented curriculum coupled with a reduced school journey forcing teachers to teach in two or three different schools, leaving them no time to have more direct contact with students. These cultures are based on two types of teachers with different professional ethos: the generalist and the specialist, whose higher education preparation courses are completely different to one another. On the one side, Pedagogy at the Schools of Education; on the other, different and single-subject bachelor programmes, each one in a different Institute, isolated from each other. None of these favours a truly unified school, not to mention a team able to set a school development plan. Another important change came with the 5692/1971 Act concerning the relationship between basic and vocational education. These two different schooling paths were then put together into a common curricular organization. According to the law, general education should prevail in the earliest years of fundamental school, with vocational education taking second place. Gradually, vocational education would increase in the final years of the fundamental school and become predominant in the secondary school. According to this concept, all students should have a vocational or professional qualification at the end of secondary school. The professional bias imposed on the secondary school has eventually disqualified it. One of the most striking characteristics of public schools used to be the lack of time to implement all curriculum contents, and this became worse as the traditional disciplines were replaced by improvised vocational courses without appropriate facilities. Brazil was not able to provide the necessary infrastructure for all its schools in order to transform them into really professional institutions, as required by the 5692/1971 Law. This professional policy for the secondary school was reviewed a few years afterwards, but the disqualification of

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the secondary schools prevailed because there was no specific policy and budget for this level of schooling in the Brazilian education system until the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Brazil and the international context From the 1980s onwards, the technological revolution has been imposed on the country while the expansion of basic education took place at an accelerated pace, with the degradation of all the factors responsible for the quality of education – from the physical infrastructure to the lack of financial support for teachers, including the lack of management and the production of curricula inputs and textbooks. When access to school was becoming universal and, despite the mishaps, reaching the educational ideal of the French Revolution, in the eighteenth century, the demands of the twenty-first century were settling on the world and knocking on the doors of Brazil. The great innovation that the knowledge society imposes on education is towards its hard core: the learning process, how to teach and how to evaluate the learning – in short, it is about the curriculum and pedagogical aspects. After the 1990 Jomtien Conference on Education for All, it has been taken as an action guide by OECD, indicating the directions that the educational innovation should take – and in fact it took – on its state members and in some important non-members such as Brazil. It is increasingly clear that living, being creative and participatory, productive and responsible in the new scenario of the knowledge society requires much more than the accumulation of knowledge. Learning to learn, deal with information increasingly available, apply knowledge to problem solving, have autonomy to make decisions, be proactive to identify the data of a situation and seek solutions become more important than the uninteresting and scholarly knowledge of the old school. Finally, learning outcomes must express and present themselves as the ability to operate knowledge in situations that require relevant decision making. To this mobilized, operated and applied knowledge was given the name of competence (OECD, 2002). A consensus is also emerging on the importance of assessment and accountability in mass-education systems, among other reasons, because it is necessary to know whether the right to education is being ensured and because growth requires high investments in resources and human capital so that all countries need to prioritize and keep focused on their education policies.

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With the international assessments carried out by OECD, and the intense debate that takes place in several countries on the innovations that the knowledge society would demand from education, emerges an educational paradigm that has in the skills and competencies the reference concepts of pedagogical and curricular organization and in the assessment of its most important tool in system management. With greater or lesser resistance, more or less debates, this new paradigm is being adapted and adopted in different countries. Extensive academic literature, many studies and reports on educational policy show this new view of education. Just to mention OECD, the Background Paper, already indicated, and its various reports on the results of international assessments on language, Maths and Science. The competencies as a curriculum reference promote a real Copernican revolution in the pedagogical theory and practice. The subject content of the curriculum, traditionally treated as ends in themselves, are to foster the learning of competencies and abilities. Considering the contents as a drive for learning implies a change of culture much deeper than the reports and documents can predict, because it focuses assessment on learning outcomes. Many countries are still in transition between the subject-centred curriculum model and a curricular organization that submits the course contents to the acquisition of competencies. Starting with the curriculum reform in 1988, during Thatcher’s government in Britain, to the initiative of North American state governors in 2010, to build a national core curriculum for English and Maths – the common core; going through curricular reforms in Australia, Portugal, Spain, Finland and others, the world had almost three decades of curricular initiatives. With greater or lesser emphasis, these initiatives fall under the same conceptual framework of the curriculum centred in the competencies and abilities that should be assessed as indicators that the basic learning needs are being met.

The new legal and normative context It is in this international context that Brazil is included, mainly from the 1988 Constitution on that the debate on the new education law started. It took eight years from the first draft until the enactment of the current LDB 9394/1996 legislation. The new law introduced considerable changes in the curriculum guidelines, attuned to the new moment of the country and the world.

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The first comment to be made about the new legal system is that it moves the focus from the curriculum to the process of teaching and learning. The LDB 9394/1996 expressed learning in competencies and abilities such as: learning how to acquire knowledge; understanding of the physical and social environment; intellectual autonomy; critical thinking; understanding of the meaning of science, literature and arts; and understanding the relationship between theory and practice. From the 1971 LDB, the current one keeps the idea of subject, avoiding references to disciplines or course labels, but rather using expressions like ‘studies’ or ‘knowledge’. Above all, it does not use the expression ‘mandatory disciplines’1 and does not adopt the divisions between mandatory and elective ones, nor between activity, area of study and subject, which bureaucratized curriculum decisions in previous legal frameworks. It does not even distinguish general education from vocational education. According to the new LDB, municipalities are considered as federal entities with curricular autonomy. In Article no. 9, the law provides among the Union duties: to establish, in collaboration with the states, the Federal District and the municipalities, the competences and guidelines for early childhood education, elementary school and secondary school, which will guide curricula and their minimum contents, in order to ensure a common basic core. The aforementioned article focuses on the core of the pedagogical work of teachers and students. Guidelines are values and principles that should guide the entire process of curriculum definition and implementation. Skills, the term assumed in the legal system of education, refer to what each and every student should learn; the common basic core for all the curricula, ‘plural’, immediately makes it clear that there will not be a single national curriculum, but a common base to it. This point becomes even clearer when the LDB 9394/1996 Article no. 26 employs the expression ‘common national basis’.2 States, the Federal District and municipalities should build their own curricula upon this common national basis. It means that they could decide about other contents to be introduced into curricula and about the pedagogical activities in order to give them a coherent structure. Issues such as the planning, rhythm and temporal distribution of contents in the curricula, as well as the selection of instructional materials, assessment planning and professional development of teachers, should be made according to the needs and available resources in each sphere of the government, without any harm to potential partnerships or consortia. However, in the 1990s, soon after the enactment of the new LDB, the role of the states, the Federal District and the municipalities in curriculum definition

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within the federal structure were not clear. A curriculum focused on skills, whose construction was distributed by the spheres of government, besides the political consensus, demanded a solid educational and pedagogical knowledge that Brazil did not have. Therefore, the implementation of curricular innovations introduced by LDB 9394/1996 has been slow and tumultuous.

Curricular initiatives of the 1990s The former CFE, now called the National Education Board (CNE), produced doctrinal guidance, now called National Curriculum Guidelines (DCNs), for all levels and types of basic and professional education. Based upon them, the Ministry of Education produced and delivered the National Curriculum Benchmarks (PCN), proposing content and pedagogical treatment for each subject or course and the curriculum for each grade. At that time, it was not clear that DCNs and PCNs should be the basis on which states and municipalities would build their own curricula. There was no national discussion or reflection to understand if, when, how and with what scope, the country would need a more detailed and structured curriculum proposal. Most importantly, there was no discussion about the role of the Union government and the institutional capability of subnational governments in this endeavour. As we discover later, there was a huge need for federal leadership, coordination and support, both technical and financial. It is important to remember that the Brazilian law stated the common national basis in 1996 while the movement to build the common core in the USA began between 2007 and 2009. Since 1996, Brazil has had a legal system that would give support to such work with less difficulty than is found in the North American initiative. Our curriculum difficulties do not come from a lack of legal support, but from the lack of political leadership and pedagogical competence. The difficulties and institutional impasses were not the only factors that produced the curriculum woes in Brazil. Ideological political issues also paralyzed the debates and initiatives over the issue. One of the difficulties is the rejection of the LDB 9394/1996 curricular paradigm that adopts a focus on competencies, as is clear in Article no. 9 transcribed above. It is said that the focus on competencies subordinates education to the market logics, which has led to semantic juggling in the search for synonyms to replace the word ‘competence’. Nowadays, the most fashionable expression is ‘learning expectations’

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for some or, for those who proclaim themselves more politically correct, the expression ‘rights of learning’. Another factor that has hindered the curriculum development is Brazil’s chronic inability to put the doctrinal discourse into practice. Managers, teachers and decision makers often rely more on psychological concepts than on didactic pedagogical ones. In other words, it is easier to put yourself into a position of how we learn, rather than to try to say how to teach and what should be learned. Behind such alleged psychological discourse, we find an over-scrupulous resistance to indicate what has to be done in the classroom and consequently the open rejection of any proposal to support pedagogically the curricula, which are seen as offensive to the teachers’ autonomy. Such concern in preserving the teachers’ decision-making power ends up being harmful to the students’ learning process. It is widely known that teacher preparation programmes in Brazil have little quality; offer is higher than demand and, consequently, they attract the students who feel themselves not able to apply for more competitive programmes. Professional autonomy has to be based on pedagogical and didactic skills that the majority of Brazilian teachers have no opportunity to learn in their preservice preparation. As a result of this ideological immobility, the teacher practices have been guided by the publishing market through textbooks, ‘structured curricula’ and a set of instructional resources containing the contents of each school year. The acquisition of these books by the National Textbook Programme (PNLD) is as fragmented as the curricula are from the sixth grade onwards. There is no concern for acquiring books according to an educational project of the school system or even of the school. Since the textbook is the teacher’s choice, it is highly likely that two teachers in the same school may use different books for the same discipline. The inadequate selection and acquisition of textbooks by schools stimulated the production of ‘structured curricula’ materials. These instructional resources were initially produced by private schools and have been adopted by many municipalities where, ultimately, they determine the curriculum and the pedagogical project of the municipality and the school. It is also noteworthy that, despite this curricular anomie, the country has a high-quality national assessment system, with advanced and excellent metrics. The states and some municipalities, especially the state capitals, have also developed their own assessment systems, proving that expertise can be developed if there is motivation and support. Ultimately, curricula have been determined by the matrices of descriptors that are used to guide the preparation of external

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evidence used in these large-scale assessments. It is the ultimate expression of anomie: to have good means of assessment before building highly qualified curricula; it is like putting the cart before the horse.

Prospects During the first decade of this century, the Brazilian curriculum reform was confused due to some political events. Numerous amendments were approved by the LDB introducing new ‘mandatory’ elements in the curricula of basic education, sometimes called content, sometimes studies, sometimes components, sometimes disciplines. It is not clear what is the difference between content discipline with specific workload in schools and contents that can be treated in various ways across different disciplines. School leaders tend to consider everything to be mandatory that was proposed in the law, because this is the curricular tradition with which the country is used to since the empire. Take secondary education as an example: if all amendments made to the LDB resulted in compulsory subjects with specific workloads, the present three-year secondary schools should last at least five years. Definitely not a wise way to decide curriculum matters. In addition to the amendments to the law made by the Congress, the CNE also decided to produce new DCNs for all stages of basic education. That could be an opportunity to correct the 1990s’ DCNs, by adopting a solid conception of a common national basis, talking with states, the Federal District and municipalities how to work together. However, what the CNE has done is not aimed to supplement or correct the existing guidelines, but to produce new ones replacing a doctrinal pedagogical discourse by another doctrinal discourse, all repeating the same mistakes. That is to say, more guidelines and fewer definitions of roles and tasks of the three government levels. In order to complete the curricular outlook of the country, it is necessary to note that in recent years many states and municipalities have developed curriculum proposals that are under implementation and review, including São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo, Paraná, Minas Gerais, and many state capitals and medium cities. There isn’t a complete record of all these efforts because the country does not keep a database and documentation on what would be required to deposit a copy of each material produced by schools or departments of education. Anyway, despite the conduct and misconduct of the curriculum policy in the country, there are already initiatives that have to be

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taken into account if the work to build a common basis for the Brazilian national curricula is taken up. The main conclusion that is imposed when we analyse the recent history of educational management policies in Brazil is that in matters of curriculum there is much activity and little coordination. Nationally, the CNE has produced at least two generations of curriculum guidelines for all levels and courses of basic education. The PCNs are still being used, though it is not known in which or in how many schools. States and municipalities have produced benchmarks for contents, skills and abilities and even complete curricula with instructional material for teachers and students in the form of notebooks, booklets or hand-outs. Over the years, the idea that we need to overcome this situation of curricular anomie that has settled in the country has been consolidated. There is an awareness of the need to re-read with other eyes what determines the LDB and begin to construct a national common basis for the Brazilian curricula. This idea – which has been strengthening in education and in other organized sectors, institutes and foundations, media, businessmen, politicians and others – has now became law insofar as it was assumed by the National Education Plan (PNE), as transcribed below. The PNE converted the national common base into a strategy to meet the national goals. More than that, the plan has established that the common national base is among the initiatives that should be taken by a permanent instance of negotiation and cooperation between the Union, the states, the Federal District and the municipalities. The country needs to solve its curricular misconduct and it is hoped that this issue has taught us how to make this right, with less activism and more coordination from the Union and with more commitment on the behalf of subnational governments.

Notes 1 Amendments arising from lobbies in Congress, introduced later, ‘mandatory disciplines’ as it happened in Philosophy and Sociology in secondary school. But in its original version the law was not that effective in establishing obligations in the curricular composition. 2 Article no. 26: The curricula of kindergarten, elementary school and secondary school must have a common national basis, to be completed in each school system and (private) school, with what is required by regional and local society characteristics, culture, the economy and the learners (emphasis added).

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References Apple, M. W. (2004) Ideology and Curriculum. New York: Routledge Falmer. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron J. (2008) A reprodução: elementos para uma teoria do ensino. Petropolis: Vozes. Dewey, J. (2007) Experience and Education. New York: Simon & Schuster. Illich, I. (1985) Sociedade sem escolas. Petropolis: Vozes. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2002) Definition and Selection of Competencies: Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations (DeSeCo). Strategy Paper. Taba, H. (1962) Curriculum Development. Theory and practice. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt College Publishers. Teberosky, A. and Ferreiro, E. (1988) Psicogenese da Lingua Escrita. Porto Alegre: ArtMed. Tyler, R. W. (1969) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Young, M. (2013) ‘Overcoming the crisis in curriculum: a knowledge-based approach’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 45(2): 101–118.

6

Brazil: Why José Can’t Read João Batista Araujo e Oliveira

Introduction and context Teaching people to read and write has always been a hotly debated topic both in political and educational arenas.1 In previous centuries, learning how to read and write was associated with access to governmental, financial or religious privileges and powers. The industrial revolution made it imperative to ensure universal access to primary education, and fuelled an increase in demand for higher levels of education for the entire population. Historically, the debate about reading in developed countries has been concentrated around two major issues: from the development of ‘global methods’ in the eighteenth century well into the mid-1960s, the focus was on methods – with camps divided between the defenders of global versus phonics, and those in between. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, the focus was on whole language and constructivism versus a more traditional understanding of the difference between learning to read and reading to learn. Both issues have been settled by empirical evidence, and this can be traced to two major publications: Hoover and Gough (1990), who proposed a clear distinction between the skills necessary to read and those necessary to understand, and Adams (1994), who published an authoritative and thorough review of the literature on what the relevant skills are and what it takes to teach people how to learn to read and write. On the academic front, the contributions of the neuroscience and psycholinguistics associated with the development and use of statistical analysis provided robust evidence about how the brain learns to read and how it should be taught (Dehaene, 2009). Since the publication of the report A Nation at Risk in the USA in 1983 (United States National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) and the challenges of globalization in the 1980s, developed countries have taken a more critical view of the outcomes of their education system. Language and literacy 131

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became matters of concern when actual declines in school quality were perceived, which led many countries to look into various aspects of their educational system. In the 1990s, the majority of countries that were involved or affected by the war on methods or the whole language approach made important changes to their approaches to the topic, influenced by several landmark publications (Chall et  al., 1990; Morais, 1994; National Reading Panel, 2000; Oakhill and Beard, 1999). Examples of national initiatives are the publications of the American Federation of Teachers (McPike, 1995; McPike, 1998), the National Reading Strategy in the UK (Beard, 2000), the launching and publications of the Observatoire National de la Lecture, in France, or the Programa Nacional de Leitura, in Portugal. As happens in any paradigm shift, in some countries, such as Australia, and in many schools of Education, as in the USA and Canada, there is still some resistance to the prevailing paradigm of the cognitive science of reading (Bissonnette et al., 2010).

Reading in Brazil The debate on literacy in Brazil was not immune to these developments. Up to the mid-1960s, there had been some discussion about literacy, but it was confined to teaching methods. In the mid-1960s, Paulo Freire raised suspicions about schooling in general and literacy in particular. Adult literacy became the vehicle to make illiterate adults ‘conscious’ of the social problems that affected them (Freire, 2000). These ideas, coupled with direct and indirect reactions to the military dictatorship that prevailed in Brazil between 1964 and 1985, created a fertile ground for Emilia Ferreiro and colleagues’ ideas of whole language and a general criticism of ‘alienated’ texts, textbooks and any other instrument that could be associated with authoritarianism, authority or perceived threats to local autonomy and control (Ferreiro et  al., 1986). Thus, curricula, textbooks and directives of any sort were associated with centralized control and authoritarianism. Putting the child in the centre of the process was a nice way to reject any mandated approaches to teaching. Such theories reinforce the autonomy and political force of teachers and teacher unions that were starting to get organized by that time. Reacting against the control of teaching activities became a banner. Moreover, as children were the centre and the teachers became mere supporters or facilitators of the learning process, these theories contributed to shielding teachers from the responsibility of the results of their activities.

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This paper describes the evolution of reading policies in Brazil and contends that the dismal results of students are the natural consequence of these policies: most Brazilian children do not learn to read and write properly because these policies have been effectively implemented, not by lack of implementation. However, the reader must bear in mind that reading policies are part of general education policies and of the context within which they are implemented: what happens to reading policies is not independent from other policies concerning educational expansion, teacher training or school management. Having acknowledged this, we focus our discussion on reading.

José can’t read The results for Brazil in the PISA language tests show that over 90 per cent of Brazilian youngsters were still below 410 points, meaning that they can barely read and have minimal understanding (OECD, 2011). No significant changes occurred in the various editions of the test. What the PISA reports do not show is the fact that the majority of 16-year-olds in Brazil are not on 11th grade, as is the case in the PISA sample. These results are highly consistent with those of students in SAEB, the Brazilian National Assessment of Basic Education, according to which 63 per cent of 5th graders do not attain minimum levels in the language test (INEP, 2011). More evidence comes from Prova ABC (ABC test), an assessment developed by a non-governmental organization, ‘Todos pela Educação’, to measure a mix of reading in comprehension skills in a sample of children enrolled in the second and third years of basic education (see Table 6.1). The level 175 and above is considered adequate, and below 125 students identify words using decoding skills. Even though one may argue about the validity and reliability of the test, it clearly shows that most 3rd graders have not

Table 6.1 Prova ABC, 2012 – Reading scores Range of results

Grade 2 (%)

Grade 3 (%)

175

43.3 34.3 22.4

28.1 32.4 39.7

Source: Todos pela Educação, 2012.

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Table 6.2 Reading level of 2nd to 5th graders in 350 municipalities in Brazil Grade

Students tested

Below standard

%

2 3 4 5 Total

84,710 78,475 118,376 42,087 323,648

73,069 58,126 72,217 20,835 204,247

82.4 74.0 61.0 49.5 63.1

Source: Instituto Alfa e Beto, 2010, www.alfaebeto.org.br

acquired basic reading skills and are unable to learn from what they read. The increase of 17.3 percentage points from the 2nd to 3rd grade is mediocre and suggests that students are not explicitly taught and have to overcome their difficulties on their own. Table  6.2 presents data from a much simpler test used with over 323,000 students from 2nd to 5th grade in more than 350 municipalities in 18 states of Brazil in 2009. The test measures the ability of students to write words and simple sentences dictated by the teacher, as well as the ability to write simple sentences based on visual stimuli. The words and sentences dictated are frequently used and were calibrated for orthographic complexity. The results suggest that, although the students are not taught to read and write in any formal way, over time some of them end up mastering the rules of the alphabetic system. However, at 5th grade, only half of the students have learned the basic skills of reading and writing, and this is reflected in the high levels of grade repetition, dropouts and low levels of performance in standardized tests.

Why José Can’t Read: The success of government policies The present section attempts to demonstrate that Brazilian students cannot read because government policies – especially the recommendations of the Ministry of Education or Schools of Education associated with it – have been successfully implemented. For that purpose, we will briefly analyse the major components of such policies, starting in 1997. The year 1997 marks Brazil’s official recognition of both Ferreiro’s constructivist and Vigostky’s socio-interactionist approach to literacy. These ideas have been dominating the landscape since the mid-1970s, but in 1997 they

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were enshrined as official policy in a document called Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais (National Curricular Parameters), with a special chapter on literacy. Four documents will be referred to as they reflect both the consistency of government policies as well as signs of change: PCNs, PROLETRAMENTO, PNAIC and ANA.2 Using these documents as reference, we briefly analyse official policies and practices related to definition, curriculum, methods, teacher training, instructional materials and evaluation of literacy. The signs of change will be analysed in a later section.

Definition Definitions are the cornerstone of any intellectual endeavour. And this is the first and most important problem that characterizes literacy policies in Brazil. All the other mistakes discussed here derive from inappropriate definitions. PCNs do not present a clear-cut definition of literacy. The document criticizes ‘traditional’ definitions of literacy as inadequate or incomplete but does not present its own version. The word ‘letramento’ is used several times, but, as it happens with the book with the same title (Soares, 1998), no clear and consistent definition of the term is given or sustained in the text. Sometimes it is used in the sense of ‘literacy’ or ‘functional literacy’, but most often it is used with sociological and political overtones, such as empowerment and development of independent critical thinking, in the tradition of Paulo Freire’s ‘pedagogy of liberation’. The other three documents present the same definitional problem. Letramento offers slightly different versions of literacy in its various editions. In the first version it stated that the concepts of ‘alfabetização’ and ‘letramento’ were inseparable. In the 2008 version, it concedes that these terms are different but inseparable. PNAIC and ANA provide several definitions of ‘alfabetização’ without committing to any one of them. They recognize that to become a reader it is necessary to master the alphabetic code but, in practice, these documents perpetuate the original confusion started with the PCNs. Two reasons seem to lie behind the hesitation with definitions. First, the authors of these documents consider learning decoding a nuisance, a lower status skill, a necessary evil at best. Developing comprehension and critical understanding are considered the only noble goals worthy of the attention of educators. Thus, part of the confusion comes from substituting the process of learning to read by the purpose of learning to read.

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The second reason is conceptual: to recognize that reading and understanding are independent concepts conflicts with the belief that, since words are made to express meaning, there is no possibility to read words without capturing their meaning. In reality, more than a conceptual mistake, this reflects an ideological understanding of the reading process. It is ideological in the sense that the theories supporting such views have not been confirmed by empirical evidence. If reading and understanding were in fact the same cognitive event, why would people need dictionaries? A common characteristic among all of these four documents is their contempt for evidence-based scientific knowledge – the four documents basically quote each other as well as other official documents! In the four documents there is not one single mention of papers published in refereed, international journals. For example, they do not quote papers published by Brazilian authors whose work contributed to falsify the idea that children make syllabic hypotheses (Cardoso-Martins et  al., 2002; Pollo et  al., 2008). Even though the official documents mention advances in psycholinguistics, there is no mention of the thorough and well-documented work of Brazilian linguists on the alphabetic system of Brazilian Portuguese (Cabral, 1986; Cabral, 2003; Lemle, 1990; Silva, 1998). There is also no mention of publications such as the seminal books by Adams, Chall, the National Reading Panel Report, or of any documents issued by Ministries of Education from other developed countries. These four documents fail also to include references to the international reports commissioned by the Education Sub-Committee of the Brazilian Parliament or the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (Araujo et al., 2011; Comissão de Educação e Cultura, 2003). In short: the references quoted in these four documents commissioned or produced by the Ministry of Education and some Federal Schools of Education are limited to a selected sample of locally produced academic work. A major inconsistency exists among these documents. Even though the Proletramento and ANA documents mention that literacy is related to the alphabetic code, the new PNAIC orientations produced by the Federal University of Pernambuco in 2013 denies this time-tested concept. It states explicitly that the alphabet is not a code, but a notation system, and from this notion it derives a series of implications.3 In short, the official documents do not present a clear or consistent view of what literacy is, much less a definition that is consistent with the one accepted by the international academic community. All the problems analysed in the next sections are derived from this.

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Curriculum The document PCNs was presented in 1997 as a substitute for conventional curricula, and was framed in very vague and general terms. Given the definitional problems mentioned before, no specific sets of skills were presented to guide teachers on what to teach and thus there is no mention of the development of skills related to phonemes, graphemes or reading fluency. There are also no specifications about what should be taught and when. The bulk of the document is written in a vague language and is focused on the presentation of ill-assimilated ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin about the nature and meaning of texts, genres and dialogue (Bakhtin, 2010). In addition, no evidence is presented about the effectiveness of applying these theoretical concepts to teaching children to read. Overall, the PCNs stress the importance of genre knowledge and of the social uses of language and give no proper room for the structure of the language – including the mastery of the phonetic basis of the language. In the recommendations for early grades, there is great concern to ensure that students are able to identify genre characteristics and infer information from context and virtually nothing about mastering the principles of the alphabetic system. The other three documents follow the same lines, but reflect changes occurring in the external environment, such as pressures from the government to define a curriculum and to define the grade or grades in which students should learn to read. Some of these more recent documents describe in slightly more detail some skills related to learning to read, but in a very timid, non-systematic and incomplete way. Understanding texts and developing critical understanding remains the central concern. Defining curricula and contents for specific grades has been a major challenge that Brazilian governments have yet to overcome. In 2004/2005, the government decided to expand ‘fundamental education’ from ages 8 to 9 years, and transformed the final year of pre-school into the 1st grade of primary education. The opportunity was lost to define curricula for pre-schools and for the early years of schooling, ignoring the abundant evidence that, in addition to concepts of print, letter knowledge and phonemic awareness should be taught and learned before children start the formal process of learning to read (Adams, 2013; Connor et al., 2006; Douglas and Montiel, 2008; Piasta and Wagner, 2010). Schools became totally disoriented about what to do in the 1st grade and teachers had no guidelines, skills, tools or materials to help them to deal with 6-year-olds in the 1st grade. A few state and municipal governments developed curriculum guidelines for their educational systems, but teaching to read and write remains a shady zone.

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Table 6.3 illustrates an example of the 2013 curriculum that was presented together with methodological advice from the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro to the teachers. As specified, the ‘curriculum’ does not give teachers sufficient guidance about the contents and skills to be taught. The suggested activities do not correspond to what actually promotes the basic skills of reading. The same document states that children should learn to read and write in the 1st grade, but at the same time defines the first three grades as ‘ciclo de alfabetização’ or ‘literacy stage’. One can clearly understand what ‘learn to read and write’ is, and it is possible to agree that this should be done in the 1st grade. But the document confuses the reader by introducing the expression ‘literacy stage’: what additional skills are involved in this ‘literacy stage’? And why are they confined to three years? In 2012, the Federal Government finally decided that children should complete the process of learning to read and write by the end of 3rd grade. The issue was debated in the Parliament in the context of the discussion of

Table 6.3 Teaching to read and write: Curriculum orientations – 1st grade Skills

Suggestions

Relating phonemes and graphemes (sounds and letters)

Using mobile alphabet, ask students to form words by adding, suppressing or changing the letters Associate initial and final sounds of the children’s name or names of friends and relatives, establishing the sound–letter relationships Use labels to build a ‘mini-market’ to classify products by types Create an illustrated vocabulary album

Identifying oral or written syllables

Reading words Recognizing words as the graphic units of a text Identifying spaces used to separate words in a text Writing words Writing sentences Identifying the direction for reading

Colour spaces between words Domino; memory games to associate words and pictures Use popular sayings and proverbs, adding or subtracting words Collective reading of texts, pointing to the directions of words, melody and intonation

Source: Curriculum Guidelines, Municipal Department of Education, Rio de Janeiro, 2013.

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the National Education Plan. The age for ‘alfabetização’ was hotly debated, but the arguments and reasons were more political than technical. About onethird of the MPs voted against the government – an extraordinary departure of the usual consensus around the new National Education Plan.4 At the same time, the Federal Government sent an informal proposal to the National Council of Education for a ‘learning rights chart’ for the first three grades. ‘Learning rights’ was a euphemism found to circumvent the reaction of those opposing the idea of a curriculum – and that includes the majority of Brazilian educators and the more vocal pressure groups. But even this timid idea did not prosper. Overall, Brazil does not have a curriculum or anything comparable with the USA Common Core Curriculum or the ‘Programmes d’Etudes’ of the Ministry of Education in France, for example. It is thus no surprise that the country has no curriculum or guidelines for teaching children to read and write.5

Methods The wars on reading were basically focused on debates about teaching methods. There has never been strong disagreement or debates about the need or the methods to teach children to understand texts and genre characteristics – even though it is highly debatable whether teaching genre characteristics makes significant contributions to understanding texts. Initially, the issue was whether or not to use phonics to teach the code. Later the issue became whether to teach the code at all. In the PCNs, the ‘traditional’ primers and teaching methods are depicted as outdated and not based on the latest knowledge developed by psycholinguists. What this latest knowledge is and who these psycholinguists are is neither mentioned in the PCNs nor in the other three documents. The only reference given is to the 1975 study by Emilia Ferrero based on a sample of sixteen upperclass students in Argentina. PCNs, Letramento and PNAIC always use adjectives, sarcasm and linguistic twists to demean methods. For example, phonics is always referred to in the following way: ‘phonic methods that teach only the phoneme– grapheme relationships . . .’ The word ‘that’ excludes phonic methods that do other things, but are not considered. The word ‘only’ stresses the point of view that children must discover phonemes and graphemes as a result of their analysis of ‘authentic texts’ they are struggling to understand – or decipher. The 2013 PNAIC document explicitly considers phonics a thing of the past and states

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that proponents of phonic methods ignore the latest developments in psycholinguistics. As in the PCNs, references to these latest developments are not given.

Teachers and teacher training In Brazil, teacher training is considered to be the solution for all educational problems. All educational ills are due to the lack of ‘teacher training’. All solutions depend on more training. Training is always conceived in the same way: universities are hired by the local or central governments to organize and deliver training sessions of different lengths, always using the cascade model. Training is essentially theoretical – college professors have never been schoolteachers – and consists of lectures based on grand theories, principles and generalities. Officers or teachers appointed by the State Secretariats of Education are nominated to participate in these sessions and are expected to replicate the contents to other teachers. Teachers are supposed to absorb the contents delivered by these nonexperts and non-practitioners, and to apply whatever they have learned to their students. There is extensive evidence that these strategies do not work and why they do not work (Murnane and Ganimian, 2014). In order to engage teachers and to ensure that a large number of teachers are involved in the PNAIC programme, the Federal Government offers scholarships, stipends or other financial enticements to teachers. In many states and municipalities, teachers get higher pay for participating in training sessions. In the specific case of literacy, a virtual monopoly for the delivery of training was established by the Federal Government, first based in the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais with the Proletramento, and as of 2013, in the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, with the PNAIC. There is no published evaluation of the results of these activities.

Instructional materials The word ‘cartilha’, which means primer, is a traditional Portuguese word used to refer to a booklet or to an introduction to some new topic. It is a cherished, popular word used everywhere: there are ‘cartilhas’ for exporters, ‘cartilhas’ for start-ups, etc. Since the mid-1970s, educators have started to reject the ‘cartilhas’ for beginning readers, as well as their contents and pedagogical orientation.

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They were focused on phonemes, graphemes and typically used simple texts written for the specific didactic purpose of emphasizing the phonemes and graphemes under study. The bones of contention about instructional materials for teaching reading are centred on four major issues. The first issue is about types of texts. ‘Cartilhas’ typically use very simple texts. These are simple, structured, built around a story to capture children’s hearts and minds, or texts containing words or structures that will capture the children’s attention and that will be explored in activities focused on word analysis. Some of these ‘cartilhas’ use decodable texts in which words are chosen to allow readers to ‘decode’ all or the majority of the words used. These texts are condemned as ‘artificial’: according to the PCNS, Proletramento, PNAIC and other documents, since didactic texts are not ‘authentic’, they have no social function. The reason given is that these texts do not exist outside schools, they are not genres. Graffiti, bottle labels and other authentic texts with real social functions should replace them. The second issue pertains to the concept of reading. Perfetti and Roth (1981) demonstrated long ago that good readers read every word of the text – and use words to read and context to understand – as opposed to bad readers, who use the context to read – and end up as bad readers. Contrary to the existing evidence, PCNs and the other texts suggest that students should use every contextual hint to understand text and not worry too much about the words. This is why they recommend that students should interact with a variety of texts to learn to read and to learn to like reading. And this is the reason given for abolishing primers from schools. If words should ever be the subject of students’ or teachers’ attention, they should always be considered in the context of ‘authentic’ contexts. Texts written for beginning readers using words chosen according to semantic, linguistic and alphabetic principles are not considered legitimate contexts. The third issue pertains to methods. All four documents criticize phonics, but give no importance to any other methods to teach children to read and write. The dominant paradigm is that methods do not matter. What matters is the ‘fact’ that students bring with them theories and ideas about the functioning of the alphabetic system – and teachers have no special knowledge, authority or right to teach them anything before they change their ideas. The way to go is to give children the opportunity and time to learn to formulate and test their hypotheses about the alphabetic code. Only in this context, and based on contextualized words in authentic texts, it would be legitimate (or tolerated) to work on word analysis. Concepts such as phonological awareness, phonemic awareness,

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decoding, or the systematic teaching of the relationships between phonemes and graphemes are ignored in the four documents under consideration. In 2007, the Ministry of Education included a requirement that textbooks presented to the National Textbook Programme (PNLD) for the first two grades (focused on ‘alfabetização linguística e letramento’) should have activities to develop phoneme–grapheme relationships and fluency. Table 6.4 shows what the 19 ‘cartilhas’ – the 19 primers approved by the official programme – looked like. This situation has not changed in the next rounds of PNLD. Table 6.4 illustrates that decoding activities are seldom present in the ‘primers’ – the emphasis is on vocabulary and comprehension. The fourth issue is writing. All documents emphasize spontaneous writing as the preferred pedagogical strategy to teach children to write. In the four documents there is no additional treatment of the topic, beyond the fact that all four documents repeat the idea that children come to school with full capabilities to understand and produce texts. Official documents seem to confuse capabilities with abilities, and ignore research about how reading and writing skills are better developed. The more recent document, PNAIC, contains a few suggestions of activities that teachers could develop to focus on word analysis. In practice, teachers are instructed to develop, in unsystematic and unprofessional ways, activities that are very similar to what exists in good primers.6 Overall, the commitment to constructivism and the spontaneity about deriving the alphabetic principle from exposure to a literate environment transformed schools of education and schools in general into a science-free territory. Doctrines and beliefs – such as the belief that children make hypothesis about the alphabetic code, or that it is more effective to guess than to read in order to understand – dominate the scene and receive the official stamp of approval. Schools of education that publish dissertations and teach such ideas and omit all the relevant publications in the domain of the cognitive science of reading get top grades in the CAPES evaluation system.7 And these same professors that ignore existing research participate in the boards that certify institutions, develop tests and policy documents, specify evaluations and train teachers.

Evaluation There are as many literacy tests as there are dimensions associated with the concept of literacy. Tests are also developed according to purpose or level – there are tests to evaluate subcomponent skills, the ability to identify single words or

143

Number of activities

88

54

20

48

14

40

22

65

30

40

51

86

108

11

Books

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

–

–

10

–

–

1

3

–

3

–

–

2

–

2

Decoding

–

2.2

–

–

11.6

–

–

3.3

4.6

–

7.5

–

–

10.0

%

6+1

2 + 50

2 + 31

9 + 14

2 + 10

10 + 10

11 + 13

11 + 13

4+0

3+5

7 + 36

3+3

2 + 20

17 + 19

Vocabulary comprehension

33.0

48.0

38.5

45.0

35.0

67.0

37.0

37.0

10.0

43.0

93.0

30.0

40.0

40.0

%

Table 6.4 Types of activities in the ‘primers’ approved by the Ministry of Education

1

41

20

19

26

9

37

11

29

5

6

12

31

49

Other

%

3

13

18

7

–

–

–

–

2

–

–

–

1

6

Non–relevant

(Continued)

27.2

12.0

20.9

13.7

–

–

–

–

5.0

–

–

–

1.8

6.8

%

144

73

42

75

43

16

17

18

19

952

42

15

Total

Number of activities

Books

Table 6.4 (continued)

23

–

2

–

–

–

Decoding

%

0.02

–

2.6

–

–

–

91 + 358

2+4

4 + 37

6 + 19

4 + 33

4 + 21

Vocabulary comprehension

37.5

14.0

55.0

48.2

50.7

60.0

%

376

29

22

1

24

4

Other

36.5

%

95

4

3

16

10

12

Non–relevant

10

9.3

4.0

37.2

13.7

28.6

%

Brazil: Why José Can’t Read

145

pseudo words, to read connected text and the ability to understand and make inferences. Different tests of literacy are needed for different times and purposes. Given the difficulty of Brazilian authorities to define what reading is about, and what students should learn to be able to read, leads to an impossible task: how to define the skills to be evaluated. Table 6.5 presents the existing proposal for the literacy test by the Ministry of Education (Provinha Brasil). These descriptors do not cover any recognizable domain listed in Hoover and Gough’s (1990) analysis of the reading/comprehension process. Three issues stand out in the analysis of the descriptors of the literacy test. The first is usefulness: since the tests do not measure basic, essential reading skills,

Table 6.5 Provinha Brasil Dimension 1

Writing

D 1 Recognize letters

D 1.1 D 1.2 D 1.3

D 2 Recognize syllables

D 2.1

D 3 Relate phonemes and graphemes

D 3.1 D 3.2

D 3.3

D 3.4 D 3.5

Discriminate letters from other signs or symbols Identify the letters of the alphabet Identify different types of letters (fonts) Identify number of syllables based on pictures. Identify nasal vowels Identify relationships between phonemes and graphemes with a single correspondence: (e.g., p, b, t, d, f) Identify relationships between phonemes and graphemes with multiple correspondence (e.g., c and g) Recognize the sound value of a syllable based on oral stimulus Recognize the sound value of a syllable based on an image

Dimension 2

Reading

D 4 Read words

Establish relationships between words and their meaning Read sentences Topics related to reading comprehension

D 5 Read sentences D 6–D10

Source: Provinha Brasil. MEC/INEP – Guia de Correção e interpretação de resultados, p. 13.

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they provide no information to teachers and authorities about what children know about these essential skills. Second, since students are usually tested at the end of 2nd or 3rd grade, even if the test provided good information about missing basic reading skills, it would probably be too late for remedial intervention, or, at least, to make remedial intervention harder, more costly and less effective. Third, if students cannot read the words they will not be able to understand a written test – but this does not prove that they are unable to understand at all. Or they may give a correct answer based on guessing the form or the meaning of the word. There is an extensive literature on the methodological problems associated with tests that attempt to simultaneously measure reading and comprehension. In conclusion, children in Brazil do not learn to read because they are not taught properly. Official policies and instruments have been widely implemented with dismal results. Of course this is not limited to literacy – students do not learn and schools do not function properly for a number of reasons. But since reading is a tool necessary to acquire other skills, failure to teach children to read and to write at the beginning of schooling compromises other efforts to improve the quality of education.

Effective literacy policies and practices Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, some initiatives from individuals and institutions have been developed in Brazil under the umbrella of the evidence-based movement. Capovilla and Capovilla (2002) published a book on literacy in which they not only presented existing evidence on literacy methods, but criticized existing policies for ignoring them. In 2003, the Education SubCommittee of the Parliament commissioned and presented a report prepared by a group of international experts. In 2009, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences also published a report on the theme and, in 2011, the Catholic University of São Paulo organized the first academic meeting on the Cognitive Science of Literacy. Some state and municipal governments also implemented literacy programmes, some of which required and adopted phonic-based materials. Even though these initiatives have not received wide coverage and support, they have certainly contributed to starting the debate about policies and practices associated with early literacy.8 Two examples illustrate practical attempts to change the situation: one was in the state of Ceará in the Northeast of Brazil; the other was in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro.

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147

The case of Ceará The case of Ceará was a unique educational reform project in the Municipality of Sobral.9 The reform started in the late 1990s, focusing on students that struggled, repeating words while reading. It soon became clear that a major cause of repetition was the lack of adequate reading skills. The municipality of Sobral undertook a series of initiatives, reforms and innovations, which included school supervision and school management reforms, direct teaching based on detailed curriculum and prescriptions and, of course, the use of an evidencebased literacy programme to teach children to read and write in 1st grade. The results in the national evaluation exam (SAEB) have shown a marked increase in the performance of Sobral’s schools – Sobral’s municipal school system is one of the best in the country and far above the national average. The positive experience of Sobral was expanded to the entire state of Ceará. The state government who took office in 1997 adopted some of the successful practices from Sobral and created incentives for municipalities to ensure effective early reading programmes. The programme was later expanded to include some form of direct, structured teaching for upper grades. Table  6.6 and Table  6.7 present examples of the improvement of students from Sobral and from other municipalities that adopted structured, scripted programmes for students and teachers that were developed with the IAB. Table 6.6 presents the relative evolution of Sobral and the municipalities from Ceará compared to the average municipality in Brazil between 2007 and 2011 in the National Evaluation Exam (SAEB): Sobral improved 46 and 76 points in 5th grade Portuguese and Maths tests, as compared to 24 and 25 points in Ceará, and 15 and 16 points in the country as a whole. Table 6.7 presents the evolution of results in the State Exam (SPAECE ALFA). The group of municipalities had very similar results in the beginning of the Table 6.6 Improvement of Sobral and Ceará vis-à-vis other municipalities in Prova Brasil 5th grade, Portuguese

2011 2009 2007

5th grade, Maths

Sobral

Ceará

Brazil

Sobral

Ceará

Brazil

230.90 218.24 184.79

183.44 172.29 159.40

187.15 181.38 172.35

270.55 244.77 194.09

199.71 187.50 174.60

206.14 201.39 190.06

Note: Points in the Brazilian National Assessment (Prova Brasil) on a scale 0–500. Source: Brazil, Ministry of Education, Prova Brasil.

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Table 6.7 Improvement of Ceará municipalities in the state exams

Total IAB Others

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

127.8 126.6 128.4

133.8 144.6 132

162.3 166.6 161.8

173.9 180.3 177.6

164.7 183.2 162.1

Note: Points in the Ceará State Exam (SPAECE-ALFA) on a scale 0–500. Source: State of Ceará SPAECE/ALFA evaluation 2008–2012.

state-sponsored literacy programme, ranging from 126 to 128 points. In 2012 the municipalities using IAB’s programme scored an average of 183 points, as compared to 162 for the non-IAB municipalities.

The case of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro Since 2011, the municipality of Rio de Janeiro has undertaken a series of reforms in its education system. There have been incentives for schools to participate in a variety of initiatives – some developed by the local education office and some developed or chosen directly by the schools. Very few initiatives were compulsory. Initiatives included curriculum guidelines, scripted curricula, quarterly evaluation of students, and special projects of various sorts, including one for early literacy. Several NGOs were invited to sponsor or participate in a number of different projects. Overall, the internal evaluations have shown important improvements on student learning. Table 6.8 presents the results of 2nd graders on the Literacy and Maths tests prepared and administered by the local Municipal Secretariat on the first three months of 2014, comparing classes taught according to the methodology developed by IAB with the regular, non-IAB classes. Data here refer to students enrolled in a phonics-based literacy programme in their first year that continued to use direct-teaching prescribed materials developed by the same organization in the second grade. These two examples show that it is possible and feasible to significantly improve the performance of students in different parts of Brazil, under varied and even the most difficult circumstances. The results cannot be attributed to specific approaches or methods, but they certainly suggest that education can be improved through the adoption of more rational, evidence-based interventions. Rationality and evidence have contributed to improve education in other countries and can certainly contribute to improve education in Brazil.

149

7.3 8.0 6.4

5.7 6.7 4.8

8.0 8.2 7.6

7.6 8.4 6.8

5.5 6.3 4.5

6.7 7.4 5.8

Maths n.a. 8.3 6.8

Reading

Third month n.a. 6.1 4.2

Writing

n.a. 7.1 6.1

Maths

Note: All classes: 1,788 classes of 2nd-grade students; IAB (30 classes) and non-IAB (35 classes) refer to classes in the same schools. All comparisons between IAB vs. non-IAB classes in the same school are significantly at the p