94.3
Inequalities in the Elementary Teaching System in São Paulo (Brazil)
In São Paulo, the Brazil’s most developed state, it was promoted a process of transferring Elementary Teaching’s supply (ET) from the state level to municipal level in recent years: in 1995 were enrolled 5.263.112 students in the state net and 646.500 in the municipal nets. While in 2011 there were respectively 2.563.326 and 2.359.825 students.
Many believed that this would bring positive effects, such as best access conditions to the ET and a better students’ performance, due to higher accountability in the municipal nets and greater management capacity as a consequence of the reduction of the state net’s enormity.
The public system showing a better students’ performance, would be possible to think that a growing percentage of different social classes members would prefer it, giving to students from variable familiar origins background to compete in an equal way for positions of quality either in subsequent stages of learning or in the labor market.
Viewed this way, the so called decentralization of the ET may be understood as one of the adopted policies by state of São Paulo government to reduce the educational inequalities.
This article intends to observe, based on data produced by SAEB (the Brazilian Basic Teaching Evaluation System) for the years 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, e 2011, what kind of audience is attending each network (state, municipal and private schools) in order to verify the evolution of the students’ performance in each system.
Supported by these observations, it will be possible to identify if this process is contributing to the reduction of ET’s inequalities or, on the contrary, if it’s being built a public system of questionable results for underprivileged population and a private system of better results for privileged people, increasing educational inequalities across the region.