“It will be the largest program of our ministry, to guarantee that all children in the second year of primary education can become literate, read and write at the appropriate age,” announced the Education minister, Camilo Santana, last week.
Santana assured that the new policy was cemented through conversations with municipal education secretaries and with the Union of Municipal Education Leaders. The Ministry will provide technical and financial support.
According to Santana, Brazil must raise the index of the National System for the Evaluation of Basic Education to 80 percent of the students educated at the end of the second year of primary education. The current percentage is 43.6.
The official said that, in the first five months of his administration, Lula authorized the expansion of the readjustment of scholarships for scientific initiation, master’s and doctoral degrees, with a million-dollar investment.
According to statistics from the United Nations Children’s Fund, released in September 2022, two million students between the ages of 11 and 19 left school before completing Basic Education.
Official data reveals that currently the illiteracy rate in Brazil is 6.9 percent for men aged 15 and over, and 6.3% for women, while it is 8.9 percent for black or mixed-race people, and 3.6 for whites.
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