Brazil Fulfills Only 20 Percent of Educational Goals in 2017

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Since being implemented in 2014, Brazil’s National Education Plan (PNE) has reached only six of the thirty goals for 2017, according to the Observatorio PNE (PNE Observatory). The organization, formed by 24 educational entities, says that lack of focus led only twenty percent of the total goals to be implemented.

“The plan does not put the goals and the strategies in an order so that we can get it really done and fulfilled. Some goals are bottlenecks for others,” stated Todos Pela Educação president, Priscila Cruz, in the Observatory’s report.

“It is necessary to define which ones should be fulfilled before others progress and which goals will prevent the others from being fulfilled,” concluded Cruz. For the educational expert, federal, state and municipal governments should have outlined an implementation strategy to define what should be done first.

Among the goals considered fundamental for the advancement of education and which was not met in 2017 was the valuation of teachers and their work, with established career plans, better wages and benefits and better infrastructure for teaching.

“With a good teacher, in a well-managed school with a good director, and with the right infrastructure, you can achieve various of these goals,” argues Cruz.

The National Education Plan, announced in 2014 by the Rousseff Administration, is a blueprint with goals to improve the quality of Brazilian education within a ten-year period (2014-2024), from kindergarten to post-graduation.

The PNE calls for increased investment, improvements in infrastructure and teacher appreciation. For the Observatory, fulfilling the PNE goals would be one way to reduce the enormous inequalities seen within Brazilian society.

“It is important that public policies are designed with the reduction of inequalities as one of its main objectives, targeting more and better educational offerings precisely to the localities and population segments that most need it,” concludes the Observatory’s June report.