📋 Tender Overview
Managers of the education sector defended public literacy policies during a public hearing promoted on Wednesday (9) by the Senate Education Commission (CE). The guest debaters pointed to the importance of articulation between Union, states and municipalities to ensure that more children are literate, but also charged more financial resources and efforts in teacher education.
The hearing took place at the request of Senator Augusta Brito (PT-CE), who led the debate. These discussions are part of the evaluation of the National Commitment Policy Child Literacy, which was launched in 2023 to ensure that all students are literate until the second year of elementary school. The evaluation of this policy is one of the objectives of the Education Commission in this legislative session.
Challenges
Representative of the Secretariat of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education, Joao Paulo Mendes de Lima assessed that the National Commitment Policy Child Literacy still faces challenges. He praised this policy as a way of seeking a successful and regular trajectory of schooling through the collaboration of the union with the federated entities and the establishment of a unique parameter for literacy measurement.
- When we have a clear, technical marker, we can identify which children are not having access to this right and which measures each of the federated entities can implement.
Marcia Baldini, vice-president of the National Union of Municipal Education Managers of Parana (Undime-PR), agreed with the need for coordination between Union, states and municipalities so that in 2032 the goal of 80% of literate children be reached. She charged a focus on literacy as a state policy within the National Education Plan.
- [It is necessary to think about the continuity of this program, because Brazil has been having several interruptions in literacy policies. (...) Each time the government is changed, politics is exchanged.
In this context, Senator Augusta Brito stressed that innovative education policies do not serve if there is no literacy at the appropriate age.
- It has to be done the basics for us to be able to reap the fruits of sustainable education. That everyone can learn at their base, which is literacy, she defended.
Disparities
The implementation of the National Literate Child Commitment Policy, regarding its pedagogical and administrative aspects, is a daily challenge, said Sandra Casimiro, vice president of the National Council of Secretaries of Education (Consed) and Secretary of Education of Amapa. Among other points, she pointed out the need to train literacy professionals and recalled the great disparities in access to education, especially in the Amazon region.
- Thinking a literacy policy requires thinking of a different logistics for each region, requires thinking about the institution of follow -up forums, (...) to think of literacy in that territory.
Representative of the National Commission of Indigenous School Education (CNEI), Andrea Cristina Almeida stressed the need to ensure indigenous childrens right to literacy in their maternal languages. According to her, there was never the implementation of a policy in this regard.
- The results of indigenous schools, in terms of literacy, are always below the results of other schools. (...) In the governance of this program, we need to think about this perspective.
For Andrea, the national commitment to literate child is an advance by linking national policy to the program indigenous knowledge at school, designed to promote the valorization of traditional knowledge in the school curriculum. However, it considers that the effort is impaired by lack of didactic material in indigenous languages and limitations on teacher training.
Articulators
Pollyana Cardoso Neves Lopes, representative of the National Network of Articulation of Management, Training and Mobilization of the National Literacy Child Commitment (Renalfa), highlighted the mechanisms of action of the articulators - which, according to her, are present in all municipalities, receive scholarships and undergo continuous training.
- This network (...) greatly contributes to this result of 27 territorial policies [literacy].
Renan Ferreirinha, chairman of the National Council of Capital Education Secretaries (Consec), said that the priority to literacy, shared between the federated entities, is an institutional achievement with extremely positive balance. He pointed out that, without proper literacy, the student will accumulate weaknesses that will be costly in the course of the educational process.
We have challenges that, unfortunately, are not reversible when there is no real action of good literacy at the right age, he warned.
Senate Agency (reproduction authorized by citation of the Senate Agency)
