The increase in demand for professors with higher education has driven candidate professors in the country to seek this training in faster courses or in simplified teacher training programs. They have also sought distance learning, without strong regulation and monitoring. The data is in the publication Teachers from Brazil, which was launched in São Paulo by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) in Brazil and the Carlos Chagas Foundation (FCC).
The book Professores do Brasil, which deals with the challenges in teacher training in the country, is the third in a series that provides a broad overview of teaching: training, work and professionalization. It was produced from the design Scenarios of teacher education in Brazil and its challenges. The publication is the result of studies carried out by researchers Bernardete A. Gatti, Elba Siqueira de Sá Barretto and Patrícia Albieri de Almeida, from the Carlos Chagas Foundation; and Marli Eliza Dalmazo Afonso de André, from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC).
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The material also shows the profile of undergraduate students in the country, highlighting important points. For example, teaching students have lower incomes than those in other degrees: around 61.2% of students, in 2014, had an income of up to three minimum wages. And, of this total, one in four students have a salary of up to 1.5 minimum wages.
“From the beginning of this century to now, they [undergraduate students] have become poorer, coming from families with less education”, said Elba Siqueira de Sá Barretto, professor at the University of São Paulo and researcher and consultant at the Carlos Chagas Foundation, in an interview à Brazil Agency. “Among degree students, around 42% have parents who only completed incomplete primary school. Only 9% of these students have parents with a college degree,” she added. “This is a trend. Increasingly, teaching in Brazil is being sought by the most impoverished segments. And this trend has become clearer, more pronounced, ”she said.
Another aspect indicated in the research is the number of women, who complete the degrees, being greater than that of men and blacks being the majority among students. [The presence of blacks in the degree increased from 35.9% in 2005 to 51.3% in 2014]. “Of 14 degree courses [according to Enade data], 11 of them had 50% or more black or brown students. And all degree courses also have Indians represented, albeit in small proportions”, informs Elba.
“They [undergraduate students] were already poorer students. This is not a Brazilian phenomenon, it happens in several Latin American countries, since the 2000s. Many of the undergraduate students are the first to reach high school and higher education”.
According to the researcher, the degree is also a predominantly female course. "But we've noticed recently that enrollment for men is increasing," she said, adding that, most of these undergraduate students not only study: “They study and work and still maintain the family". For Elba, this means how hard you have to work to be able to study.
The study also found an aging profile of undergraduates: the presence of young people aged between 18 and 24 who are studying for a degree increased from 34.7% in 2005 to 21% in 2014.
According to the researcher, these phenomena result, among other reasons, because of the establishment of the Quota Law. “There was also funding for these private courses and the opening of many vacancies in public institutions so that they could do Higher Education”, she added.
Since the enactment of the Law of Guidelines and Bases (LDO 9,394), in 1996, it has been required in the country that all teachers have higher certification. However, in 2016, there were still 34% of early childhood education teachers and 20% of elementary school teachers without a degree. In the final years, the proportion of non-graduates added up to 23%. In high school, the proportion of non-titled teachers was equivalent to 7%.
Also according to the book, enrollments for the degree increased from 659 thousand students in 2001 to 1.5 million in 2016. The exact number of students enrolled, in 2016, in degree courses in the country amounted to 1,524,329, of which 579,581 were in public schools and 944,748 (62% of the total) in private ones. Of this total, 882,749 were taking a degree in face-to-face teaching courses and the remainder, 641,580, through distance learning courses.
“This was a period [after 2000] in which the countries of South America and Latin America had some very favorable conditions for their development. A crisis in the countries of the North greatly favored our countries that export commodities. So, the GDP grew, there was a great economic development”, said Elba. “Licenciatura degrees were one of the higher education courses that were favored during this period”, he added.
Of the 2,228,107 places offered in degree courses in the country in 2016, 1,990,953 (or 89.4% of the total) were made available by the private sector. The total number of idle vacancies reached 1,632,212 and around 94.3% referred to the private sector. The total number of new entrants totaled 595,895 in 2016, with 75.8% taking courses provided by the private sector, according to the survey.
“Almost 2 million vacancies are in the private sector, with only 10.6% offered by the public sector. On the other hand, there are the reduced vacancies in the public sector disputed by more than 1.6 million students, that is, by most of the candidates who postulate to enter the course higher education (58.2%), attracted, above all, by the better quality that is usually socially imputed to these courses, by their gratuity, or by both reasons”, says the Publication.
The study also found that the number of vacancies offered in higher education for teaching degrees is large (2.2 million vacancies), but the number of entrants is limited (595 thousand in 2016). Of this total vacancies, 1.9 million refer to vacancies in private education.
The explanation for this phenomenon is the fact that students seek private higher education because of the increase in public subsidies for the sector, due to low monthly fees, the distance learning modality, the greater offer of courses in the evening period and the lower competition for vacancies available.
About 39% of vacancies in public institutions were not occupied. In the private sector, idle jobs exceeded 1.5 million in 2016. According to the survey, this is due, in the case of the public sector, to the lack of support for students who need it and also to the difficulty in modifying the structure and mode of operation of the courses. Of the total number of students who enrolled in undergraduate courses in 2013, half of them complete the course.
“The ideal would be to offer fewer vacancies, but guarantee support conditions for students who pass a difficult entrance exam to remain in higher education courses until graduation”, explained the researcher. This support, according to Elba, is not limited to offering financial conditions or financial support better, but also includes the creation of a more adequate curriculum and more systematic.
For the researcher, among the possible conclusions about the various portraits that were presented in the publication is the need to rethink some expenses that are made in Higher Education and also the quality of what is being offered. “We also need to review Higher Education growth targets. There are not enough students graduating from high school. High School is still very precarious”, she said.
(Source: Brazil Agency)
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