Por: brookings.edu
Many have been shocked by the World Bank’s estimate that it would take Brazil more than 260 years to reach the OECD average proficiency in reading and 75 years in mathematics. But as demonstrated by the discussion last week following the presentation of the World Development Report on Learning in São Paulo, Brazil’s education community is aware that the country lags far behind. It knows that it needs to do a lot, and soon.Author
Brazil is not alone. According to the report, 40 percent of kids in Latin America and the Caribbean do not acquire basic skills in numeracy and literacy during primary school (in Africa this number is 80 percent). The report concludes that the world is facing a “learning crisis”—even though more kids go to school, they are not learning nearly as much as they should.
But is this really a learning crisis? In commenting on the report, Ricardo Paes de Barros, chief economist of the Ayrton Senna Institute and a specialist in education policies in Brazil, challenged this conclusion. He argued instead that Brazil is facing a “copying crisis”: There is plenty of data about the performance of schools across municipalities in Brazil, with huge variations, but it’s clear that the poor performers don’t improve. Transferring experiences from one country to another can be difficult, but learning from the successes of your peers within the same country should be a lot easier. In Brazil, this is not happening.
Perhaps this is because the successes aren’t documented well and hence poorly understood, or because the necessary changes face political resistance and hence require leadership that is in rare supply. Overcoming political resistance is never easy but documenting successes, in Brazil’s case at least, should be. A recent World Bank report on the efficiency of public spending provides a useful entry point and perspective. The report compares the educational outcomes attained by 4,648 municipalities in Brazil in 2013 with the cumulative spending per student over between 2009 and 2013 (Figure 1). This comparison leads to an obvious conclusion: Good educational outcomes in Brazil have little to do with how much a municipality spends and a lot with how the resources are utilized. This is good news for those who wish to copy successful experiences.
BIG DIFFERENCES WITHIN BRAZIL
A closer inspection of Figure 1 reveals a second striking fact: a regional pattern in the efficiency of education spending. The poorest parts of the North and Northeast are still missing basic infrastructure, so additional investment could boost outcomes. In the richer South and Southeast, by contrast, inefficiencies are glaring and resources could be saved without jeopardizing—possibly even improving—education outcomes.
Figure 1: Spending and outcomes in education in Brazil—not a close correlation
Source: World Bank estimates based on SIOPE and Prova Brasil. IDEB is a summary index of the state of compulsory education.
Fuente: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2018/03/06/brazil-can-improve-education-by-copying-its-own-successes/