The Inclusive Potential of Secondary Education in Brazil. Contributions for an Analysis of Juvenile Trajectories After Secondary School

Abstract

In Brazil secondary education is predominantly urban and public. The unemployment rate among youngsters has fallen in Brazil, but we do not know the trajectory of the youngsters that finish secondary schooling. The absence of this kind of analysis precludes the understanding of the real potential of schooling in the lives of youngsters. This chapter proposes to outline a panorama of the situation of Brazilian youngsters between the ages of 18 and 28 in 2013, having finished secondary schooling, creating therefore conditions to identify and analyze trends in their trajectories and potential of secondary schooling within these trajectories.

There is a consensus in Brazil that Secondary School is the level of education about which the most controversial debates take place within the reflection on the Brazilian education system, either in view of the recurring problems of access to education, or for the quality of the education offered, or still because of the future opportunities it offers to youngsters.

Historically, the indexes of inclusion in Secondary Education in Brazil have been embarrassingly low, but since the mid-1990s Brazilian public Secondary Schooling has been expanding, and in 2009 basic education became mandatory and free between the ages of 4 and 17. This is extremely important, because it gives secondary schooling the status of a right of every citizen.

The inclusion of Secondary Education within basic education and its progressively mandatory status demonstrate the recognition of its political significance (we can no longer live in a country with such educational inequality), social relevance (it is a concrete and growing demand in view of the devaluation of diplomas and of the need to compete in a tight labor market), and economic importance (socialization in a new labor logic).

During the last 10 years, the process of inclusion in Secondary Schooling (enrollment and school success) has had ups and downs, but the number of youngsters that complete secondary schooling in Brazil is not negligible. One of the arguments to explain the difficulty to change the dropout rates in secondary schooling is the lack of motivation by the youngsters due to, amongst other reasons, the few opportunities that this level of schooling offers after completion.

The unemployment rate among youngsters has fallen in Brazil, but we do not know the trajectory of the youngsters that finish secondary schooling, or the behavior of the labor market with respect to demands for schooling.

The absence of this kind of analysis precludes the understanding of the real potential of schooling in the lives of youngsters, and above all if and to what extent the secondary school certificate has suffered a process of devaluation as more and more youngsters have access to it.

This chapter proposes to outline a panorama of the situation of Brazilian youngsters between the ages of 18 and 28 in 2013, having finished secondary schooling, creating therefore conditions to identify and analyze trends in their trajectories and potential of secondary schooling within these trajectories.

As Oliveira Bueno affirms in this Handbook, the phrase urban education has not been used in Latin America in the same meaning that it has in North America and Europe. However, the author reminds us that public education in Latin America is carried out mainly in big cities and metropolises, and caters for the largest number of students. This allows us to observe important similarities between the two phrases, although they are not totally equivalent.