Educational opportunities distribution: Analysis elements over the access to public school of the Rio de Janeiro municipality

The study analyzes the composition of the groups of students that entered the elementary school between 2008 and 2010 in public schools of the Rio de Janeiro municipality. The study aims to identify distinction factors among the groups of students located in schools with better or worse results in the national evaluations. In the case analyzed, the rules to concretize the initial registry of the students consider procedures parents selection, with important alterations from 2010 on, and procedures of vacancies attributions by the municipality administration. It is well know that, the social differences create different chances of access to the schools that are considered the best ones and to the advantages that those opportunities create to the most favored groups. Hence, the results of the educational processes can be related to the opportunities provided by the family of the students, what points to the existence of advantages to the students that come from most favored families. The results point that, in schools with better results in the evaluations, there are more students with the following characteristics: 1) students that call themselves of white descent; 2) students whose mothers are graduates in college or high school; 3) students that live far from the school; 4) students that have the expected age to be in their first year of elementary school. The study, of transversal character, identified a trend to students’ selection even in their very first registry in the elementary school, because the differences in the groups of people that are studying in the schools with better and worse results in the national evaluations can’t be considered of random nature, what suggests the existence of selection procedures. The selection can occur in the family relation with the school or in the school relation to the students and their families.