It’s the start of the day for the students at the Wilma Florpublic school in the eastern suburbs of Sao Paulo. Only it’s not 8 am, or even9 am. It’s 1 pm. Wilma Flor runs three shifts. The first group of students hasschool in the morning, the next in the afternoon and the final shift doesn’tstart until 7 p.m.
Over the past 20 years, Brazil has done an impressive job ofgetting more students into the education system. Many of the children here atWilma Flor are the first in their families to finish high school. Some haveparents who didn’t even finish elementary school. That’s the good news inBrazil’s education story. Here’s the bad news. Brazil now has the sixth-biggesteconomy in the world, but its education standards lag far behind. In aninternational study of education systems, PISA, it came in at 53rd. Thatthreatens to hold this country back.
Political will
No one here disputes that those figures must change, andsoon. Brazil’s recent economic boom has depended in large part on exporting itsvast natural resources to other growing economies. As one Brazilian economistsuggested, this country’s rapid expansion can be explained in one word: China. Butif Brazil wants to move beyond being simply a commodity provider, or if China’sgrowth slows and it demands fewer Brazilian resources, then what? Put simply,if Brazil wants to develop from an emerging economy to an emerged economy, itwill have to do a better job educating its population.
Improving education takes time “ time this country doesn’thave much of. Tackling the vested interests of administrators, teachers’ unionsand bureaucrats makes it one of the most politically difficult things anycountry can do. Look at the fights the US has gone through over standardisedtesting. Priscilla Cruz, a campaigner for education reform from Todos PelaEducacao, sums up the challenge like this: “The political issue is thatteachers are voters, and in Brazil there are 2 million of them that can decideelections, so it is very hard to make changes.” One change that teachers’unions reject would be to make it easier to get rid of teachers who don’tperform.
In Brazil, teachers can get tenure after only three years onthe job, and once they have tenure they can’t be fired. Out at the Wilma Florschool, teachers clearly want to do better but are held back, ironically, by alack of teaching for themselves. When Regilene Cunha entered her firstclassroom as a teacher she had zero practical experience. She had theuniversity qualification to be a teacher, but it was all academic theory, nohands on practice. It was, she admits, a terrifying experience: “I feltinsecure and apprehensive. The same as new teachers now.”
Importing Europe
If Brazil’s schools and universities cannot provide theskilled workforce to satisfy its economic needs, then Brazilian companies willlook elsewhere for labour. The government is exploring ways to reduceimmigration restrictions to make it easier for technical professionals,particularly those with experience in the petrochemical industry, can come andwork in Brazil. It’s not lost on Brazilian companies that the recession inEurope means highly educated people are prepared to travel across the Atlanticfor a job.
Joao Nunes arrived in Sao Paolo a year ago from Portugal.He’s an engineer who works for a headhunting company. “When you talk aboutengineers, Brazil has a huge demand of technical professionals to face thegrowth of the country,” he says. Yet even he admits this is a short-termsolution to Brazil’s problem. In the long run, the country cannot rely onengineers from Lisbon to make up its labor shortage, it will have to developthem at home.
