It should take Brazil another 16 years to overcome racial and socioeconomic inequalities in secondary education completion, if it maintains the average pace of progress observed in the past decade. This is what was revealed by a study conducted by the Todos pela Educação Foundation on Monday (17).
The survey, conducted using data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), shows that 1 in 4 young people up to the age of 19 are out of school, without even being able to complete basic education. They have had to leave their studies because they need to work or because they have lost interest.
The data shows that there are significant racial differences. While 69.5% of Black, Brown and Indigenous youth up to age 19 have completed high school, among White and Indigenous youth this rate is 81.7%.
A decade ago, this difference was even greater, with a school completion rate of 66.3% among whites and 46% among black youth.
According to the study, during these ten years the country recorded, on average, a rate of decline in racial inequality of 0.8 percentage points per year. If this trend continues, it will take Brazil 16 years to tie the two groups.
“Brazil has made progress, but the pace of progress is still insufficient to guarantee the right to complete basic education for all,” says Manuela Miranda, Director of Education Policy at Todos Pela Educação. “It is time to reaffirm the country’s commitment to policies that ensure access, continuity, learning and equity, so that everyone, especially the most vulnerable, has the conditions necessary to complete education at the appropriate age.”
Looking at socio-economic groups, the differences are even greater: among the poorest groups, only 60.4% of young people completed secondary education by the age of 19. Among the richest groups, this percentage reached 94.2%.
One policy that could help accelerate the pace of this change is the Pé de Meia programme, which aims to reduce the school dropout rate due to the need for work.
According to the rules of the program, students enrolled in high school receive R$200 per month, plus R$1,000 for each completed year and an additional R$200 if they take Enem, which can only be withdrawn from savings after graduating from high school.
By the end of 2024, 3.95 million students had already benefited from the program, according to federal government data, representing 50.6% of the 7.8 million enrollees enrolled in secondary education that year.
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