“…Second, although Brazilian education followed the respective governments' ideological stances (Fonseca 2009), political compromise always happened, either by conciliating divergent positions or by meeting social demands for education (Saviani 1996). Third, despite the rapidly swinging political pendulum, the democratisation of education took shape in the concrete expansion of educational opportunities (Oliveira and Araujo 2005, Klein 2006, Oliveira 2007, Gouveia and Souza 2013. Fourth, in the course of this process, quantity and quality epitomised two antagonistic stances, and the Brazilian educational path has favoured, discursively as well as pragmatically, the former to the detriment of the latter (Campos 2000, Azanha 2004).…”