Program for Results in Brazil to Support the Implementation of the Upper Secondary Education Reform Benefiting around 2.4 Million Students | WPN World People News

Around 2.4 million students in Brazil are expected to benefit from the first Program-for-Results (PforR) for the Federal Government of Brazil approved by the World Bank Board of Directors, on December 14.

The US$250 million operation will support the implementation of the Upper Secondary Education Reform through a combination of two financial tools: a US$221 million PforR loan disbursed against educational results focused on regional and socioeconomic equity and a US$29 million loan for technical assistance. The program will support the 27 state secretariats of education in the implementation of the upper secondary educational reform.

“The upper secondary school reform is the most structural and relevant change in public and private education in Brazil in the last two decades and will promote transformative action, especially for the poorest students,” said José Mendonça Bezerra Filho, Brazil’s Minister of Education. “The new upper secondary school will be more attractive by offering a flexible curriculum, joint with technical-vocational education. As such, it will enable students to choose areas for deepening content according to his/her life project. The new architecture of the Brazilian upper secondary education will allow more freedom to develop the basic skills required by the national curriculum. These measures are fundamental to correct inequalities in the educational system and to improve the country's performance in education.”

Despite the remarkable progress achieved in the access to secondary education in the last two decades, Brazil’s educational quality still lags behind other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Secondary education in Brazil is characterized by low internal efficiency, pervasive high age-grade distortion rates, one of the highest repetition rates and some of the lowest completion rates in the region.

“We are proud to support this educational milestone in Brazil,” said Martin Raiser, World Bank Director for Brazil. “The reform will help to reduce existing inequalities in educational outcomes and build the human capital needed for inclusive growth.”

The Bank will support the implementation of the reform’s main twin goals: add flexibility to a new competence-based curriculum, supplemented by learning itineraries (languages, mathematics, natural sciences, humanities or technical and professional education), and the extension of the school day, from four to five hours a day. These changes are aimed at promoting the diversification of the curriculum, the development of key competences and, consequently, the decreasing in dropout and repetition rates by making secondary education more relevant and attractive to young Brazilians.

Among the outcomes supported by the project are:

● Timely implementation of the upper secondary education reform with regional, socioeconomic equity;

● Improvements in the quality and relevance of learning in upper secondary education;

● Increase school completion rates;

● Higher productivity for sustainable growth.

Source: World Bank