Education and development projects in Brazil (1932-2004): political economy perspective

Abstract

This paper discusses the long-run history of education policies in Brazil. It is suggested that the main reason for the educational backwardness was the existence of strong political interests over education. It is also defended that these interests can be empirically observed in the allocation of public resources between the different levels of education, with political choices favouring specific groups in society. It was not a matter of lack of investment in education, but of inadequate allocation of resources. This pattern of political-based policies created a strong negative path dependence of misallocation of resources in education in Brazil, particularly with significant underinvestment in secondary education.

Education and development projects in Brazil, 1932-2004: a critique

“…Even though I agree with the overall argument of Wjuniski (2013) as to why Brazilian education remained backwards, issues related to data and methodology raise important questions. First, the database comes from the M.A.…”

“…In a paper published in the Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, Wjuniski (2013) attempts to explain why Brazilian education lagged behind other countries throughout the 20 th century. His explanation is not a new one: Brazilian elites had little interest in expanding mass education and gave priority to higher education, as other scholars have also suggested (Plank, 1996;Plank et al., 1996;Brown, 2002;Schwartzman, 2004;Valle Silva, 2008;Ansell, 2010;Kosack, 2012;Kang, 2011Kang, , 2017.…”

“…The second criticism holds even if the database is accurate given how the data is categorized. Using Maduro's database (2007), Wjuniski (2013) found several structural breaks in all schooling levels, including breakpoints for both primary and secondary levels around 1971. According to the author, the Second National Education Regulatory Framework (2ª Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional or 2 nd LDB) mandated that the government decrease relative spending on secondary education, since the wealthier classes were more interested in ensuring higher investments in primary and tertiary education rather than expanding secon-dary education to the masses.…”

“…It is difficult to define what "primary" and "secondary education" means in Wjuniski (2013), since the 2 nd LDB reorganized schooling levels in 1971. Roughly speaking, the 2 nd LDB doubled the number of years of compulsory schooling from four to eight years.…”

“…All statistics followed the regulatory change, creating challenges for constructing a continuous data series. Although both Maduro (2007) and Wjuniski (2013) acknowledge the problem, the latter runs econometric tests using that database. As a predictable consequence, he finds structural breaks in both "primary" and "secondary" levels for years around 1971.…”