Social inequality and the possible impacts on Pará state High School offering in the city of Belém-PA

Resumo

This study aims to understand the quality of High School being offered in Pará state, Brazil. In order to do so, the discussion was grounded on the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and on some educational indexes regarding the city of Belém-PA, such as indexes related to flow, age-grade distortion, dropout rates, among others, with the intent of understanding which is the quality of public High School being offered within the State education network in the Pará-located Amazon. Thus, the study considers macrostructural factors, for instance social inequality, public policies, as well as microstructural factors, which include school infrastructure, age-grade distortion, student rates per class, pass rates, dropout rates, among other causes that interfere in students’ learning processes. The research was carried out by adopting a qualitative approach, materialized through document analysis. It was observed that, even though education is one of the dimensions assessed by the SVI, education public policy in force does not seek to overcome any of the causes of problems that might affect this education stage, as it seems to be the case with the High School Reform, at a federal level, as well as with the programs “Bora Estudar” (Let’s study), and “Escola que transforma” (School that transforms) by the Pará State Secretary for Education (SEDUC-PA). In other words, it is not enough to offer precarious education and to create public policies which do not align with goals that have guided education as a fundamental right and related to social quality. Based on that, the research could ponder that, as public policies keep on being dictated by multilateral organisms’ guidelines, both the SVI and the Basic Education Development Index (IDEB) results may be used to ground reforms for economic, social and political adjustment, as status quo maintenance is a capitalist project in a perpetual movement of self-renovation.