GOB UNVEILS NEW EDUCATION PLAN TO ADDRESS SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 SAO PAULO 000301

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA/BSC, WHA/PDA, ECA
NSC FOR FEARS
DEPT OF TREASURY FOR OASIA, DAS LEE AND JHOEK
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD
USAID FOR LAC/AA
PARIS FOR ECON - TOM WHITE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: SCUL SOCI PGOV ECON KPAO BR
SUBJECT: GOB UNVEILS NEW EDUCATION PLAN TO ADDRESS SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS

REF: (A) BRASILIA 149; (B)SAO PAULO 10;
(C) SAO 06 PAULO 1038

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SUMMARY
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1. Prominent commentators and politicians have increasingly
identified deficiencies in Brazil's public education system as a
leading cause of the country's subpar economic performance and its
inability to keep pace with other so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia,
India, China) economies. Recent results of standardized national
tests tend to confirm these concerns, showing a marked decline in
student performance over the past ten years. Last year a group of
civil society, private-sector, and government leaders called
Everyone for Education (EFE) launched a new, long-term education
initiative to press for reform of the system and realignment of
priorities. More recently, The Ministry of Education unveiled a
comprehensive Plan for Educational Development (PDE),which appears
to adopt many of EFE's priorities and to shift government priorities
towards improving the quality of primary education. End Summary.

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TEST RESULTS CONFIRM WORST FEARS
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2. Along with social inequality - or because of it - the low
quality of primary education has long been identified as the main
obstacle to Brazil's economic growth and development. According to
the Map of Illiteracy in Brazil, a research project conducted by the
Anisio Teixera National Institute of Studies and Research on
Education (a branch of the Ministry of Education),the country has
16 million illiterates and 30 million "functional" illiterates
(defined as person over the age of 15 with less than four years of
formal schooling). Worse yet, in February the Ministry of Education
itself published the 2005 national exam results for elementary
schools. The figures showed a decline in students' performance in
Math and Portuguese Language compared to 10 years ago, suggesting
that, far from increasing their knowledge, Brazilian students are
performing worse each year.


3. The standardized national examination, created 10 years ago, is
given every two years by the Ministry of Education. It includes
tests in Mathematics and Portuguese designed to measure the
performance of public and private school students alike. In Brazil,
the educational system comprises 11 years of schooling divided into
two phases. The first, called fundamental (primary) education,
includes 8 years of schooling for children aged 7 to 14. The next
phase, consisting of three years of schooling, is called
complementary (secondary) education and is for children aged 15 to

17. In 2006, President Lula enlarged the fundamental cycle of
education by one year. All children should now begin to attend
school at age 6, a change that will be phased in over the next
decade.


4. The 2005 results show that the students from the 4th grade
(first half of fundamental education) averaged 182 in Math and 188in Portuguese on a scale from 0 to 500. According o exam standards,
students at that level are suposed to score at least 300 in both
exams to prov they are literate and have appropriate number skils.
However, the results indicate they are fallig short. Worse yet,
performance in 2005 shows adecline from 1995, when the average
scores were 91 and 188 respectively.


5. The same disappointing picture is reflected in test scores from
other age groups. Students from the 8th grade at the end of the
"fundamental" cycle averaged 239 in Math and 232 in Portuguese. In
1995, the scores were 253 and 256. Finally, the 11th grade, near
the end of complementary education, scored 271 in Math and 258 in
Portuguese, decreasing from 282 and 290, respectively, in 10 years.

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6. There was a little good news from the fourth-graders. Their
performance shows an improvement in 2005 over their 2003 results,
when they scored 169 in Portuguese and 177 in math. However, this
trend was not observed among other age groups; overall scores in
both subjects were lower in 2005 than in 2003. In other words,
while there may be some slight short-term improvement at the lower
level, elementary-school students are scoring lower on standardized
tests than they did in 1995, and secondary-school students have
showed a steady decline, leaving little room for optimism. The
result of this failure of the education system is that many students
leave the schools with little or no basic reading, writing, or
numbers skills, severely limiting their value in the workforce.

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HOW WE GOT HERE - A BRIEF HISTORY
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7. The problems exposed by the test results did not surprise
experts on education. "These results just confirm what everybody who
deals with education in Brazil already knows: the system doesn't
work at all," said Professor Sergio Haddad, president of the NGO
Educational Action. "What strikes us is why this situation has
stayed the same for so long." Professor Haddad believes that the
federal government in recent years has been focused on getting
children into the schools rather than on improving the quality of
education. In large part because of the priority placed on access
to education, almost 100 percent of school-aged children are
enrolled in elementary schools, a major advance over thirty years
ago. Until the 1970s, the majority of public school students were
from middle-class families, and poor children were largely excluded.
The quality of education was excellent in those days. However,
things began to change in the late 70s and early 80s. Public
schools began slowly to receive students from the lower economic and
social classes, increasing class size. Middle-class families
started sending their children to private schools. This phenomenon
became widespread in Brazil and stimulated a boom in private
education for middle-class students. At the same time, several
local and state governments implemented programs to encourage poor
families to send their children to public schools, particularly in
rural areas.


8. The "Bolsa Familia" conditional cash transfer program (ref B),
for instance, was initiated under President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso (1995-2003) with the name Bolsa Escola as an incentive to
increase school attendance in poor families. According to many
experts, the increase in attendance adversely impacted the quality
of education because there was insufficient funding and
administrative infrastructure to train more teachers, build new
facilities, and respond to an educational clientele with special
needs. Many of the new students came from dysfunctional families
and/or violent neighborhoods. The overall educational strategy gave
priority to quantity over quality. Bad education was deemed better
than no education at all.

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LACK OF DEMAND...
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9. Professors and experts on education say that the inclusion of
poor children in the educational system is no longer an excuse for
providing bad education. Professor Claudio Moura Castro, former
head of education policy at the Inter-American Development Bank and
one of Brazil's foremost education experts, believes that investment
in good education lacks political appeal to the federal government
in Brazil. He cited a 2006 survey of public views on education in
Brazil. The results are surprising. The poll, conducted by the
Brazilian Institute of Popular Opinion and Statistics (IBOPE),shows
education ranked 7th among the Brazilian people's worries, after
health care, jobs, hunger, public safety, corruption and drugs. The

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survey also shows that public appreciation of education varies from
one level to another across the economic and social spectrum.
People from the lower classes - who are generally less educated -
tend to believe that the quality of education is good or improving,
while the more educated sectors of the population are much more
critical. "The Lula government was re-elected by the less educated
voters and, for them, there's no problem in the educational system,"
opined Professor Moura. "Therefore, this government has no
political reason to provide a better education" and does not treat
it as a priority.

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...AND LACK OF FOCUS
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10. During Lula's first term, the federal government went through
several different Ministers of Education and developed no clear
policy. Cristovam Buarque, a former Governor of the Federal
District (Brasilia),a 2006 presidential candidate, and now a
senator from the Democratic Labor Party (PDT),gave priority to
adult education. His successor, Tarso Genro, now Minister of
Justice, devoted attention and resources to the higher education
system. After Genro left in 2005, Fernando Haddad continued his
policy of concentrating on improving universities. His priority was
to get more students from the lower economic and social classes into
the universities. He designed federal programs to offer loans to
poor students and provide tax exemptions to private universities
that accepted them. The Ministry also implemented quotas in public
universities for poor and Afro-Brazilian students. Those
initiatives were praised by education experts as good tools for
bringing poor students into the system, but few believed that they
would improve overall education quality.


11. The real problem in the eyes of many observers was a poorly
defined or even misguided education policy focus. While the
government was seeking to help higher education students, many
protested that fundamental education needed more attention. In
September 2006, a group of professors, experts, and private-sector
leaders founded a movement called Todos pela Educacao (Everybody for
Education - see ref C) to demand a policy shift towards primary
education. It identified five main objectives to be achieved by
2022, when Brazil celebrates the bicentennial of its independence.
"This group is an important tool to press the government," says
Professor Maria do Carmo Brant de Carvalho, general coordinator of
the Center for Studies and Research on Education, Culture and Common
Action (CENPEC). She considers the group very effective and noted
that the new program recently unveiled by the Lula administration
appears to be consistent with the direction suggested by the
movement.

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ROLE OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR
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12. The private sector's role in education, health and social
services in Brazil is significant. Private schools account for a
significant percentage of enrolled students, especially in secondary
schools and universities. Private sector associations, business
confederations and multinational companies have been involved for
some time in efforts to train a more qualified industrial workforce.
The quality of available jobs in Brazil is generally low, as
illustrated by low pay, low productivity growth, high turnover, a
significant decline in the number of jobs in industry, and the high
percentage of jobs in the informal economy. To address this
situation, programs have been created to provide education,
technical know-how, and expertise in information technology to their
workers as part of a process to restructure and modernize Brazilian
companies to be competitive in today's global market.


13. For example, the Sao Paulo state Federation of Industries
(FIESP) operates the National Industrial Apprenticeship Service

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(SENAI) to train young professionals for the industrial sector.
SENAI is an educational organization for training, development, and
specialization of both semi-skilled and technically trained
woerkers. Both SENAI and a related organization, the Industry
Social Service (SESI),are funded by mandatory monthly contributions
collected by the government from industrial companies and passed to
FIESP. SESI is a nationwide organization created to provide
supplementary health and education services to workers and their
families. The largest private organization in terms of schools and
students, SESI has 600,000 students enrolled this year in a wide
variety of classes. Another example is the National Center for
Commercial Education (SENAC),which trains workers in trade-related
areas


14. The Bradesco Foundation, operated by Bradesco Bank, is one of
the oldest institutions in Brazil focused on basic education. It
has 40 schools and more than 100,000 students nationwide.
Individual companies have developed Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) programs to provide education. Some have created foundations
for this purpose, while others prefer to sponsor programs developed
by independent NGOs.


15. There are several independent NGOs working in Brazil to improve
the quality of education. Prominent among these is the Ayrton Senna
Institute - established by the family of the late race-car driver -
whose programs have already reached almost seven thousand
under-privileged children and young adults in the country.
Likewise, the Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics operates
Reading Circles for at-risk youths in metropolitan Sao Paulo.
However, all these combined efforts, while encouraging, have not
been enough by themselves to turn the situation around. For this
reason, the Everybody for Education movement was launched last year
to coordinate civil society and private sector efforts to press
government and society as a whole for a better education system.

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THE PLAN FOR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
--------------


16. In early March, Minister of Education Fernando Haddad (no
relation to Professor Sergio Haddad) launched a plan focused on
education quality, informally referred to as "the PAC for education"
in reference to President Lula's overall economic plan, the Growth
Acceleration Program (PAC). The official name of Haddad's proposal
is the Plan for Educational Development (PDE). It includes some 50
items to be implemented over the next four years, among them being
early (age 6-8) literacy testing, higher minimum teacher salaries,
more computers and better transportation, extension of the "Bolsa
Familia" maximum eligibility age from 15 to 17, and financial
incentives for school districts that improve their results. The
initiative earned the plaudits of experts, academics, businessmen
and even opposition political parties because, as they explain, this
is the first time that the government has shown a pragmatic interest
in improving the quality of education instead of merely increasing
the number of students in the schools. Paulo Renato Souza, who
served as Education Minister under President Cardoso and is often
critical of the Lula administration, praised the PDE as positive and
long-overdue while noting that much will depend on how well it is
implemented.


17. The program is still something of a work in progress. Minister
Haddad announced its main components without providing details and
is expected to present the final, comprehensive version sometime in
April. In general terms, the Ministry proposes to distribute 8
billion Reals (about USD 4 billion) over four years to those cities
where the students and teachers are found to be performing better.
As things stand now, funds are distributed proportionally based on
the number of students enrolled in each school. In order to
implement this change, the government will establish goals for
educational performance and ways to measure it. "The government
finally accepted the idea of evaluation based on merit," said

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CENPEC's Professor Brant.


18. Experts note with approval that the new plan also embraces the
idea of decentralization, since the goals will be set locally
through agreements between the Ministry of Education and municipal
governments. "Parents and the community would be able to work with
teachers to design the goals and identify how to get there,
Professor Brant explained. This would also mark the first time that
the government accepts inputs from people outside the formal
education system, she commented. Finally, the plan calls for
children to be tested early on (between the ages of about 6 and 8)
to help provide an early indication whether the system is working.
If not, there would still be time to correct it.


19. This is a long-term plan. According to Minister Haddad, its
results will become visible in about 14 years. In other words, the
government recognizes that it will take the better part of a
generation to improve the quality of education in Brazil.


20. The PDE remains at this point a bundle of good intentions,
because the money is not guaranteed. The Ministry of Education can
currently count on only 500 million Reals (USD 250 million) out of
the requisite 8 billion Reals (USD 4 billion). Furthermore,
implementation itself will be a big challenge. Brazil has three
different educational systems, each with its own attributes,
functions, and responsibilities. Local governments and state
governments are both responsible for fundamental schools but each
government has it own separate system. Besides that, municipalities
run the childhood education while the states are in charge of the
three last years of schooling (complementary education),and the
federal government is in charge of the higher education. The states
are responsible for some institutions of higher learning as well.
The three levels of government, far from working well together to
ensure a consistent product, devote much of their attention to
competing for funding.


21. The money for the basic system comes from the Fund for
Maintenance and Development of Basic Education (FUNDEB),which is
expected to have 2 billion Reals to spend in 2007. Created last
year to replace an earlier program, FUNDEB is not yet fully
implemented. Though the sources of funding have been identified,
the government has not established how the money will be distributed
among the different levels of education. This is money that local
and state governments are fighting over.

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STATE TO PUSH FOR TEACHER TRAINING AND EVALUATION
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22. Acting CG met April 5 with Sao Paulo State Secretary of
Education Maria Lucia Marcondes Carvalho Vasconcelos, who said
Minister Haddad's PDE is a good initiative because of its focus on
quality. In her view, the current education system is clearly not
working and needs to be fundamentally changed. The key to
improvement, she said, is to train teachers and regularly monitor
and measure their classroom performance. She also cited the need to
test students more frequently; in Sao Paulo, elementary school
students progress from one year to the next without having to
demonstrate their proficiency. Secretary Vasconcelos identified
addressing these issues as her top priority.


23. Vasconcelos said Sao Paulo Governor Jose Serra is also pushing
to improve the quality of instruction in the state education system.
He is willing, if necessary, to confront the teachers' and school
employees' unions in order to implement merit evaluations. Given
that the local education unions are influenced by President Lula's
Workers Party (PT),they are expected to mount resistance to any
change. Nevertheless, Vasconcelos believes Governor Serra is
genuinely committed to bringing about change and will ultimately
prevail.


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MISSION SUPPORT FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION
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24. The U.S. Mission in Brazil works closely with the Brazilian
Ministry of Education and the State Secretaries of Education to
foster good management and leadership in the public schools in
Brazil. Following an Embassy-sponsored Voluntary Visitor exchange
visit to the U.S. a few years ago, members of CONSED (Council of
State Secretaries of Education) instituted a National Prize for
excellence in school management and leadership, loosely based on
similar awards for school excellence they learned of in the U.S. As
an added incentive for good school management, the Embassy organized
an annual principals' exchange program in which each year's
award-winning school principals from each of the states and the
Federal District are offered a 10-day trip to the U.S. to observe
U.S. public schools and interact with U.S. school principals. The
exchange is two-way, as award-winning American school principals are
brought to Brazil to visit award-winning Brazilian public schools,
as well. The principals' exchange also results in the distribution
of a publication on "Best Practices in School Management and
Leadership" which is annually distributed to all public schools in
Brazil.


25. Through its Youth Ambassadors program, the Mission, in
partnership with public and private organizations in both countries,
annually gives recognition to 20-25 outstanding, economically
disadvantaged public school students from throughout Brazil who
speak English and are involved in social responsibility initiatives
in their communities. Now in its sixth year, the Youth Ambassadors
program gives these students the opportunity to participate in a
two-week exchange program in the United States. More than 10 Youth
Ambassador alumni have since won substantial four-year scholarships
to U.S. colleges and universities, including the University of
Chicago, Smith, and Mount Holyoke.


26. Thus, although there are serious problems with Brazil's public
education system, the Mission's public diplomacy programs indicate
that there are nonetheless pockets of excellence, and highly
motivated administrators, teachers and students in the system.

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COMMENT
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27. Education in Brazil is something of a political football. As
President Lula was contemplating his post-re-election Cabinet
shuffle, influential members of his Workers Party (PT) urged him to
make Marta Suplicy the next Education Minister based on her record
as Mayor of Sao Paulo (2001-04) and in the hopes of enhancing her
chances to be elected Mayor again in 2008 and to aspire to the
Presidency in 2010. Intentionally or otherwise, Minister Haddad
foiled those plans by presenting the PDE and demonstrating himself
to be a serious, competent administrator with some practical ideas
that happen to coincide with the recommendations of outside groups.
Lula had no choice but to keep him in the Cabinet to refine and
implement the PDE, and Marta Suplicy ended up as Minister of
Tourism. Time will tell how much of the Plan is ultimately funded
and implemented, and there is plenty of room for skepticism, but the
fact that the federal government appears to understand the
seriousness of the situation and to want to try to fix it is in
itself encouraging. End Comment.


28. This cable was coordinated with Embassy Brasilia.

MCMULLEN