The new National Educational Guidelines and Framework (Lei de Diretrizes e
Bases da Educação Nacional – LDB), passed in December, 1996, redefined the roles and
responsibilities of each system of education (federal, state and municipal). It gives greater
autonomy to the school, making its curriculum more flexible and encouraging teacher training –
it states that by the year 2007 teaching should be an all-graduate profession – the new law
created the necessary environment for carrying out the significant changes in the country's
educational landscape.
Compulsory prymary education, from 1
st
to 8
th
grades, along with crèches, pre-
school and secondary education, has always been the responsibility of states and municipalities.
central government's role at these levels of teaching, is normative, setting out the broad lines of
the system, and redistributive and supplementary when it deals with aid and financial
arrangements aimed at decreasing social and regional inequalities. The Union is only directly
responsible for maintaining higher education and secondary level technical institutions.
Since the LDB was passed a general process of municipalisation of basic
education and state control of secondary education has been launched. In 1997, there were 18
million pupils in state basic education schools and 12 million in the municipal system. In 1999,
the municipal and state system of education were equal in number, with 16 million young
people in each. Today, secondary education, which has been expanding on average at a rate of
14% since 1996 and 1999, is increasingly concentrated in state systems. Preliminarly data from
the year 2000 School census show that the expansion of 5,4% in enrolments took place in the
state network (7,9%), while all the other systems showed a fall: federal -10,2%, municipal
-4,9% and private – 4,2%. This changes is in accord with the National Education Guidelines
and Framework Law which allocated the provision of secondary education to the states.
The whole emphasis of the Federal Government is concentrated today in
promoting, from the bottom to the top of the education system, the expansion with quality of
educational opportunities, specially for those of school age, while also ensuring opportunities
for reentry on the part of those who had no access to school at the appropriate age.
The most important aspect in basic education was to enroll children aged 7 to 14
and to keep them in school, guaranteeing them quality education. The government's second
objective, after universalizing access, was to ensure success in school, represented by pupil's
progress to the end of the final grade within the specified time period, and ensure that of
necessity involved the improvement of teaching quality.
Attention must be also be given, however, in addition to prioritising basic
education, to measures involving the reform and diversification of secondary and further
education, to the training and qualification of teachers and to the expansion and improvement of
higher education.
Together with this, complementary compensatory programmes – some of which
are the widest-ranging in the world – have been developed with a view to making up for the
historic heritage of inequality in Brazilian society. Standing out along these are the programmes
for distributing free school meals and books at primary level, of income support for the poorest
families with children in school, of educational loans for students entering higher education,
and of support for the education systems in the North and Northeast, that also are aimed at
compensating for regional and economic inequalities and at contributing to the effort at social
inclusion that are currently in force in Brazil.