The Tarcísio de Freitas (Republican) government is entering the final year of its mandate as São Paulo’s major education bets were disappointed in 2025. The establishment of civic-military schools and progress in the digitalization of education have been slowed by legal actions.
Two of the governor’s promises, however, have made progress during this third year of his mandate: the outsourcing of non-educational services in schools and the increase in enrollment in technical education.
In view of the 2026 elections, Tarcísio entrusted the Secretary of Education, Renato Feder, with the mission of elevating São Paulo to the top of the Ideb (Basic Education Development Index). To achieve this goal, the businessman invested in these actions aimed at improving the educational results of São Paulo schools.
Since the start of his mandate, Feder has adopted a plan to digitize education with platforms to control everything, from student attendance to the content that must be taught by teachers.
There are more than 31 platforms and for each of them, the secretariat defines usage objectives to be achieved by schools every two months. Their use began to be linked to the evaluation of teachers and school principals, under penalty of sanction.
The public prosecutor understood that the compulsory use of these platforms violates the Constitution by removing the autonomy of the teacher in the classroom and standardizing academic content. This is why the prosecution filed a civil complaint so that the government makes the use of these tools optional.
“The Tarcísio government presented two main objectives for education in its government plan: the recomposition of student learning and the idea of an effective school. Both are based on the same idea, that quality education is that which achieves the objectives. This is why the emphasis is on platforms, to control what happens in schools,” explains Marcia Jacomini, professor at the Department of Education at Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo).
For her, however, excessive vigilance and control of school activities turned out to have the opposite effect, that is, it harmed educational development. “This process contributed negatively to students’ learning and reached such a point that the Public Prosecutor’s Office had to intervene,” explains Marcia.
Claudia Costin, who was director of education at the World Bank, also believes that we need to rethink excessive and compulsory use. “We need data and assessment in education, but it is not enough to have data, but to know what to do with it. Measurements cannot be used for surveillance and punishment.”
“Effective education requires a relationship of trust, both on the part of students and teachers,” he adds. She also highlights that an important strategy for restoring learning has been neglected by the Tarcísio administration: the expansion of full-time education.
As he announced upon taking office, Feder ended the policy of increasing full-time enrollment in São Paulo. It was former governor João Doria’s big bet on education and increased the proportion of secondary students in this model from 9.9% to 25%, between 2019 and 2022.
However, under Tarcísio’s administration, registrations in this modality tend to decrease. In 2023, 27% of high school students were studying full time. The index fell to 26.6% in 2024 – the latest year for which data is available by the MEC.
In the later years of primary school, there was also a slight decline, from 41.5% to 41.4%.
This reversal occurred because the government decided to prioritize increasing places in technical and vocational education. In November, the governor announced that the number of registrations in this modality would double during his mandate, from 147 thousand to 320 thousand in 2026.
“São Paulo had little provision of technical education and it was very bad. Young people want education that prepares them for the job market. The expansion of this modality is very important, but to be more effective it could also be linked to an increase in full-time employment,” explains Costin.
To rapidly scale up this model, management has invested in the provision of technical courses within the current mainstream school structure. The courses are taught in person and by professionals, who are not necessarily teachers, but who work in the field of courses.
With this new format, the government has broken with the policy practiced for decades in the State, with the concentration of investments in technical and vocational education in the CPS (Centro Paula Souza).
“The government has chosen to break with a recognized model of excellence. The Etecs could be expanded to accommodate more students, but they have been relegated. A simpler and cheaper model has been chosen and the quality is unknown,” underlines Márcia.
In a statement, Seduc said the expansion of technical education “consolidates the state government’s commitment to simultaneously ensuring the completion of basic education and quality vocational training for young people in São Paulo.”
He also informed that he would continue in the first two months of 2026 the implementation of the civic-military schools program — after a series of decisions that interrupted the model, the TCE (State Court of Auditors) approved the resumption of the recruitment of police officers for the program.
“With the training and hiring of the 208 military police selected during the selection process, the goal is to start the 2026 academic year, on February 2, with the model implemented in the 100 units approved in public consultation,” the secretariat said.
Regarding the action of the Public Ministry in terms of the use of platforms, the secretariat declared that “there is no imposition of unique educational methodologies” on the network. He also argued that they are only “instruments intended to support pedagogical work” and do not replace “pedagogical action or the leading role of teachers in the classroom.”
While defending this policy, the secretariat announced that it would publish a document containing new rules and instructions for the use of educational platforms.
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