Literacy among Brazilian kids below 50% in 2021
Brazil has a long way to go before children can show satisfactory reading skills, experts told Agência Brasil on International Literacy Day, observed this Friday (Sep. 8).
Recent data from the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (Inep) on 2019 and 2021 reveal a drop in literacy performance. In 2019, 54.8 percent of the children assessed were literate. In 2021, however, the percentage sank to 49.4 percent.
The date was created by the United Nations in 1967 to promote discussion around literacy, especially in countries that still have significant illiteracy rates.
According to the survey, children with a score of 743 and above are considered literate—they can read words, sentences, and short texts, locate information on the surface level of a text, spell words with predictable orthography, and build texts that can circulate in everyday life, even with spelling and segmentation deviations.
In the view of Ivan Gontijo, educational policies manager for Todos pela Educação (“Everyone for Education”), an organization working to improve the quality of basic education in Brazil, the landscape is challenging, “but future outlooks can be positive.”
“Basically, half of Brazil’s seven-year-olds are unable to read and write in a minimally adequate way. This casts light on an alarming reality, but it’s nothing new. Back in 2014, when the National Literacy Assessmen was implemented, Brazil already had appalling indicators. So the 2021 result showed that the pandemic had a significant impact, especially on literacy,” Gontijo told Agência Brasil.
The organization advocates the introduction of public policies that guarantee learning and equal opportunities for children and young people. Literacy is a basic skill, Gontijo argued. If children are not properly literate at the right age, he went on to say, they will face major difficulties throughout their school life.
Pandemic
The CEO of the Maria Cecília Souto Vidigal Foundation, Mariana Luz, a champion in the debate on early childhood, believes that the coronavirus pandemic, with the closure of educational spaces, affected the performance of children in nurseries and pre-schools alike, the latter considered a fundamental stage in literacy.
“[The pandemic] brought about an educational deficit and widened inequalities. Sadly, those who had less access, less support, less education, and less opportunities to learn were the vulnerable, black, brown, indigenous people, not to mention those living in poverty. Hence the large gap,” said Luz.
Research carried out by the foundation points to a pedagogical delay of six to seven months in children in language and math, she noted. Making up for this loss was possible thanks to the return to in-person activities.
“It’s in early childhood education, especially pre-school—a compulsory stage—that kids have contact with letters and numbers in a more deliberate way, taking into account that the next stage is the first year of primary school, where literacy is effectively built. So this familiarity, this appreciation, this knowledge, this awakening of interest and curiosity—all of this happens in early childhood education,” she said.
Municipalities
Under the Brazilian law, municipalities play a fundamental role in providing early childhood education and have most spots in the initial years of primary education (1st to 5th grades). States, on the other hand, must prioritize secondary education, but can work alongside municipalities to provide primary education.
In the view of Marcelle Frossard, program and policy coordinator for the Right to Education campaign, prioritizing mobilization, political pressure, and communication is key to bring states and municipalities together on the search for solutions.
“Families,” she declared, “also need conditions to ensure that their children continue studying. In order to guarantee the right to education, we need investment in social policies, so that families can afford to keep their children in school.”
Commitment
In view of the current landscape, the Brazilian government has launched a plan dubbed National Commitment for Literate Children, in collaboration with states and municipalities. The objective is to ensure that all Brazilian kids are literate by the end of the 2nd year of elementary school, in addition to restoring education for all children enrolled in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades who were affected by the pandemic.
The initiative is based on the role of states and municipalities in building solutions in literacy. Each state, aided by local authorities, must devise its policies to address specific needs. Next, it is up to the federal government to support the states technically and financially accordingly.
The program aims to reach around 4 million students aged four and five in 80 thousand public schools that offer pre-school services, 4.5 million students aged six and seven in 98 thousand public schools in the initial years of primary education, and 7.3 million students aged eight to ten in 98 thousand public schools, also in the initial years of primary education.
