Brazil will need to increase spending on education to make up for the learning losses that students—especially those in public schools—experienced during the pandemic. This is the assessment made by Cláudia Costin, director of the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s (FGV) Center for Educational Policy and former global director of education at the World Bank, as she examines the new data on basic education released by the Ministry of Education.

On Friday, the ministry released the latest edition of the Brazilian Education Development Index (Ideb). The data are for 2021 and show a decline in the average proficiency of Brazilian students across all subject areas and all grade levels surveyed. The results reflect the impact of the pandemic’s most severe phase, when schools were closed for much of the 2020 and 2021 school years. How to make up for the learning losses during those years is the question that schools, public officials, and academics are trying to answer.
“Brazil is the world’s twelfth-largest economy in terms of GDP, and we cannot say that it is impossible to make up for the learning losses,” Cláudia told Valor. Such a recovery will inevitably require increased spending, she stated. “There’s a myth we need to dispel—that Brazil already spends a lot on education and that better management of these resources is all that’s needed,” she said. “That’s not the case. We need both. In education, the biggest expense is paying teachers better. And we need high-quality, well-paid teachers, preferably working full-time at a single school. And we need to make the teaching profession more attractive. That’s what makes basic education costly.”
It’s true, Claudia said, that Brazil spends more on education today than some European countries do. But it’s important to remember, she added, that teachers’ salaries in Brazil are lower than those of teachers in OECD countries. And there is yet another factor: “We are still at a stage where the number of children and young people is significant. Therefore, it will still take time and investment in education for Brazil to achieve a basic education system on par with those countries, because they are at a different stage of demographic transition.”
Claudia is among those who argue that education should not be limited by public spending constraints. “Education should not be subject to spending caps,” she stated. “I know this sounds like a cliché, but it needs to be done because more investment in education, if done right, improves other areas, including health.”
Data released on Friday showed a 24.5-point decline in Portuguese language proficiency among students who were in the second grade of elementary school in 2021 compared to the results from the previous Ideb assessment in 2019. These children were in the process of learning to read and write and experienced the most significant decline. In mathematics, these students saw a 9-point drop in average proficiency.
Students in fifth grade in 2021 experienced a 7-point decline in proficiency in Portuguese and an 11-point decline in mathematics. In ninth grade, the final year of elementary school, the declines were slightly smaller. In Portuguese, proficiency fell by 2 points, and in mathematics, by 7 points. And among high school students, the average proficiency in Portuguese fell by 3 points compared to 2019 and by 7 points in mathematics.
For Cláudia, one of the key measures for Brazil to restore and improve its students’ learning levels is the expansion of full-time schools (see more on full-time schooling in “Do Full-Time Schools Perform Better on Assessments?”). “Brazil still has two shifts—morning and afternoon—and children spend four and a half hours at school. In most countries with good educational systems, children spend seven hours at school. It’s impossible to provide meaningful education—one that fosters these young people’s capacity for critical thinking—by simply delivering quick, lecture-style lessons on 13 subjects, one after another.”
Several states, particularly in the Northeast, have been making progress in adopting full-day programs in the public school system. This is an issue that, in Cláudia’s view, should be a priority for whoever occupies the presidency starting in January.
Looking at the results from the 2021 Ideb and other data on education in Brazil, Cláudia assesses that the workforce that will dominate Brazil in one or two decades—made up of the generations currently in school—risks being less productive and innovative. “Unless we make a decisive shift with a sense of urgency,” she said. “In education, we must prioritize the development of more sophisticated skills because artificial intelligence will replace jobs—including those that require intellectual skills. So, if we continue to struggle even with the development of basic cognitive skills, we won’t have the human capital [for this new reality],” she warned.