Advancing and Setting Back the Guarantee of the Right to Basic Education in Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes the effects of the changes led by the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDBEN/1996) during its effectiveness. Initially, we address the relationship between the formal requirement of schooling and the idea of promoting educational equality in the country. Then, with methodological support of Content Analysis, we specifically focus on the devices that modified Title V of LDBEN/1996, related to the levels and modalities of education and teaching, seeking to capture possible repercussions from the perspective of coping or reproducing children’s educational inequalities. In the conclusions, we highlight the LDBEN provisions favorable to the march for the guarantee of the right to basic education, as well as those that represent an evident setback to this claim. Faced with this reality, we defend the discernment about what is effectively inferred from the law, in order to mobilize its progressive contributions in the fight for public education in the current context of the country.