At the start of February, back to school period in Brazil, Paula Capriglione realizes the obvious: “We will have to work hard to make up for lost time”. Located in a disadvantaged area of São Paulo, the Chiquinha-Gonzaga establishment, of which she is the educational coordinator, experienced long periods of closure during the Covid-19 epidemic which severely bereaved the country (nearly 652,000 deaths ). Today, its teachers are faced with a double mission: to identify, among the approximately 500 students enrolled from CP to 3ème, those who will need tutoring… but also to point out the names of those who are missing. .
Too long away from school, many young Brazilians have ended up throwing in the towel. According to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in 2020 alone (schools also remained closed for a long time in 2021), preschools and primary schools across the country kept their doors closed for 178 days. That is three times longer than the average for member countries. In November of that same year, more than 5 million children and adolescents were deprived of any educational activity, online or face-to-face, recalls the Brazilian Institute of Statistics. 1.5 million of them – a third – were not even enrolled in school. “Brazil runs the risk of a backward step in terms of access to education. An issue on which the country had made progress”, warned Unicef at the time. Stating that “school exclusion mainly affects those who were already in a situation of social vulnerability” before the epidemic.
A simple formality for private establishments, which welcome a minority of wealthy people, the transition to online education has proven to be much more complicated in the public sector due to the digital divide. It will be necessary to wait until early 2022, and an ultimatum from the Brazilian Supreme Court, for the government of Jair Bolsonaro to start releasing budgets with the aim of connecting public schools to their students. In Sao Paulo, the economic capital, the situation turned out to be just as complex as elsewhere. “Our students only received a digital tablet last June,” criticizes Paula Capriglione. When the schools were finally able to reopen, the link had already broken. “Some of those who no longer came were seen begging or working illegally,” she laments.
“For the poorest, the health crisis and the economic difficulties caused, have had impacts in all areas, adds Marcia Bonifacio, coordinator of Naapa, the team of psychologists of the municipal school network. Many children have been exposed to extreme situations. Entire families found themselves on the streets. Some seniors have sometimes had to sacrifice their schooling, following the death of one of the two parents, to take care of their younger brothers and sisters.
The construction site is huge today.
Marcia Bonifacio coordinates a search mission to find all the students in the city who have passed under the radar. Headed by Unicef, this program deployed more widely throughout the territory has already enabled more than 80,000 children to return to school. The impact of the public school closure goes beyond learning issues alone. “Many out-of-school children no longer have enough to eat and cases of abuse have exploded,” continues Marcia Bonifacio. But convincing their parents to send them back to school is not always easy. “There is a devaluation of the school and its role in the formation of citizenship”, still regrets the social worker. Some see it as the influence of Bolsonaro who accuses teachers, too left-wing for his taste, of “indoctrinating” children, by presenting them with their own vision of the world.
In this federal country of 212 million souls, it is the local communities that directly manage the school network. In principle, under the leadership of the central state. But, in the absence of a national strategy to fight the virus, each city or territory has implemented its own arsenal of health measures. “The school should have been the last to close and the first to reopen, but in Brazil it was the opposite, thunders pediatrician Daniel Becker. Gyms, beauty salons, shopping centers resumed before the educational institutions !”. According to the practitioner, member of the scientific committee of the city of Rio de Janeiro, this choice caused “an unprecedented wave of psychic and psychosomatic symptoms in children and adolescents”.
With a group of colleagues, Daniel Becker was at the origin of the first national campaign advocating the reopening of schools. The idea being to convince the general public that these were not sources of contamination. “We wanted to raise awareness, which was lacking even among teachers. Their unions fell on us, accusing us of throwing them into the mouth of the wolf”, explains the doctor. We are then at the end of 2020, on the eve of the municipal elections. “Many parents of students were worried about sending their children to school. As the election approached, the mayors did not want to upset them”, recalls Priscila Cruz, president of the association Todos Pela Educaçao (“All for education”).
“The epidemic, it is true, remained out of control for a long time, Jair Bolsonaro having made the deliberate choice to let the virus run free. And vaccination was slow to start. When the health situation improved, private education reopened its doors. And that, before the public schools, which further aggravated the disparities”, she continues. And Priscila Cruz draws this bitter observation: “In terms of learning, we have gone back ten years”. The construction site is huge today. However, the budget of the Ministry of Education, supposed to coordinate the national effort, has been cut. “There is nothing to expect from this government, loose Priscila Cruz. Even if he is re-elected at the end of the year, Jair Bolsonaro will do nothing for the school”.