Brazil’s basic education system is perpetually searching for simple solutions to the complex problems it faces. The results have historically fallen short of expectations, given the investment and the need to educate a nation of 203 million people (IBGE/2022) spread across 8 million square kilometers.

Providing quality education for only a few has long been a settled issue. The formula is well known: good teachers, small class sizes, school infrastructure, meals, and a variety of incentives within an organized and safe social environment. It works very well for the segment of students whose families can afford it. The child will grow up with all the tools and resources needed to become whatever they dream of when they finish elementary school. And so, Brazil will continue to be an extremely unequal nation, where the richest 1% hold 49.6% of the country’s total wealth (Global Wealth Report, 2021).

In this context, the fundamental challenge facing our country is how to provide quality education to many people. So far, we have failed as a society in this regard.

This challenge must be the top priority for public and private education stakeholders. We see no way forward unless we increasingly bring educational startups into the public sector. They possess the entrepreneurial drive, innovation, and technology-driven pedagogy—along with the agility—that will facilitate the evolutionary transformation of a complex sector like education.

The public sector, which today accounts for more than 80% of students (2023 School Census) in Brazilian basic education, must overcome its fears and create simplified ways to partner with startups. And startups must understand that they will only generate significant social impact if they support public education through their solutions, always serving the teachers in the classroom. This partnership movement began to gain traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it needs to move forward as a national initiative rather than a government-led one.

Three years ago, we founded SQUARE, an investment ecosystem for education startups, based on two principles: evidence-based learning and interoperability in both usage and pedagogy. As a result, different solutions are deeply integrated at the user level.

We have achieved significant results with what we call the “dolphin group.” In other words, instead of the school or the Department of Education relying on a few monolithic solutions, they select—for specific problems—solutions from multiple startups that integrate seamlessly with the school’s educational and management programs. It’s worth noting that the costs of innovation, research, and development are higher and less efficient when they’re concentrated solely among large organizations.

Medicine has addressed this problem by “breaking it down into pieces” and, over the past hundred years, creating a global ecosystem (both public and private) that leverages the physician’s role—comprising millions of laboratories that perform simple or complex tests, new drugs for old diseases, supportive therapies, and monitoring devices that are now on people’s wrists—and that even tell the time! All of this has resulted in a medical system in which doctors have the ability to “know” more about a patient rather than merely “guess,” allowing them to take preventive action and provide evidence-based treatment.

In contrast, our teachers are still limited to “figuring out” rather than “knowing” about their students, just as the Department of Education is limited to “figuring out” rather than “knowing” about its schools. Our education system has few support tools compared to those in the medical field.

Making education evidence-based, through robust dialogue with edtech startups, is a prerequisite for ensuring that the dreams of every young Brazilian boy and girl do not fade away during the 12-year journey of basic education due to a lack of efficient and integrated learning and management solutions.

Cheers, Brazil!

*Alex Pinheiro is an entrepreneur and co-founder of the SQUARE Ecosystem.

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