Strong impact of pandemic on literacy of school children in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Seven out of ten Brazilian students aged seven can neither read nor write or can only read very little. School dropout has always been a Brazilian challenge. And with schools closed by the coronavirus, the situation has worsened.

Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Education Secretariat reported that when face-to-face classes were reintroduced, 25 thousand students did not show up. In the state network, for every ten students enrolled, one still did not show up. That is almost 65 thousand students.

The active search for students at this time was fundamental. “We call, we send messages through mothers, representatives, we talk to the staff of the School Community Council…”, says the director Fátima Amorim.

It even pays to draw attention to the school through unusual means. “Come here! The school is your place! “, says the message on a sound car.

Now it is a matter of understanding why many students have not returned and what their most urgent needs are, say professionals. It is necessary to restore the connection lost with the pandemic. The educational part is a challenge for next year.

Students in the literacy stage are among the hardest hit. A study of 250,000 seven-year-old children found that 73% of them cannot read at all or at most nine words per minute. Only 7% are fluent readers at this age.

With information from G1

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