Focus on Secondary Schooling

After six years of investments in supplementary education projects run by outreach organisations that buttress classroom activities, from 2010 onwards the Instituto Desiderata Education area will be firming up its commitment to public education policies, particularly those addressing secondary schooling in Rio de Janeiro.

This secondary schooling segment (6th to 9th year) has some characteristics that are intrinsic to this stage, with some worrying indicators in Brazil ? and Rio de Janeiro is no different. There are more subjects to study and the teachers are specialists in their fields, while teaching methodologies seem unable to build up dialogues with the new languages of these pupils, who are growing from childhood into adolescence, with personality changes that affect their learning processes.

The indicators reflect severe age x grade lags and high dropout rates, especially in the sixth year, when these youngsters leave primary school to start their secondary education. Despite gains in ensuring a universal access to education, they enter the sixth year of school with poor knowledge of Portuguese and Mathematics, contributing to low secondary schooling completion rates and low probabilities of continuing their studies and graduating from high school.

This situation is worsened by the lack of special public policies addressing this stage, with few academic studies and private investments targeting these issues.

In order to provide input for these policies, we believe that it is necessary to build up in-depth knowledge of this segment in Rio de Janeiro, blending analyses of the current indicators for this education network and the perceptions of the school community that is directly involved. This is why a diagnostic approach will be adopted jointly with the Municipal Education Bureau, seeking innovative paths for dealing effectively with these issues, thus upgrading the quality of secondary education in the City of Rio de Janeiro.

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