Introduction

This article is the result of a study developed by professors of higher education and basic education, members of a Research Group registered with the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, initials in Portuguese from Brazil), whose studies focus on school pedagogical work and the financing of basic education.

The financing of education in Brazil has been marked, since the approval of the Federal Constitution of 1934, by the linking of a minimum percentage of financial resources and by disputes between the public and the private sectors. This link, extinguished in the Constitutions of 1937 and 1967, is resumed for all federated entities in the Federal Constitution of 1988, which establishes in its Article 212 that, annually, the Union shall apply 18% and the States, the Federal District and the Municipalities 25%, as a minimum, of the tax revenue, including that from transfers, in the maintenance and development of education (^{Brasil, 1988}).

In the 1990s, the policy of funds in education began, first with the Fund for Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and the Appreciation of the Teaching Profession-Fundef (1997 to 2006), then with the Fund for Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and the Appreciation of the Professionals of Education-FUNDEB provisional (2007 to 2020) and from 2021 with the permanent FUNDEB. The process of formulation and implementation of these policies, marked by disputes between the public and private sectors, has a direct influence on the definition of enrollments and the allocation of resources.

The main goals of the provisional and permanent FUNDEB are: to guarantee the allocation of resources “[…] to the maintenance and development of public basic education and the valuing of education professionals, including their dignified remuneration […]” (^{Brasil, 2007}, art. 2º; ^{Brasil, 2020}); and to equalize the spending capacities in basic education. These funds are of an accounting nature and are instituted at the level of each state and the Federal District; strictly speaking, it is a sub-linking of tax resources, in this case 20%, of what is established in article 212 of the Federal Constitution of 1988.

With the approval of Law No. 14.113/2020 (Regulation Law of the permanent FUNDEB), some changes in relation to the provisional fund can be pointed out:

Since the impeachment of the elected president Dilma Rousseff in 2016, the financing of education has suffered threats through Constitutional Amendment 95/2016¹ by instituting a new fiscal regime within the Fiscal and Social Security Budgets of the Union (^{DIEESE, 2016}). According to ^{Silva (2016, p. 1)}, “[…] facing a scenario of attacks on social rights and democracy itself, the financing of education in Brazil tends to occupy a central role in the debate about the future of public education beyond academic spaces”.

It is in this scenario that this article discusses the Program for Administrative and Financial Decentralization (PDAF), the model for financing public basic education in the Federal District (DF), school performance and age/grade distortion in elementary school, based on legislation, documents and data from the Censo-DF.

The PDAF was established by Decree No. 28.513 ((^{Distrito Federal, 2007}) and became the Law No. 6.023 (^{Distrito Federal, 2017}), as established in item IV of Article 11 of Law No. 5.499 (^{Distrito Federal, 2015}), called as the Law of the District Education Plan of the Federal District – PDE 2015-2025. Its goal is to decentralize financial resources to schools in the public education network, in compliance with the principle of autonomy in democratic school management. According to the sole paragraph of art. 2 of Law No. 6023/2017, the program is a mechanism that aims to contribute to improving the quality of education and strengthening democratic management in the public school system of the Federal District, through “[…] financial decentralization, complementary and supplementary […]”. In other words, PDAF should not only guarantee the minimum necessary (complementary character), but go beyond that (supplementary character) with regard to financial transfers for the operation of schools.

Thus, PDAF aims to fulfill the purposes of education as set out in Article 205 of the 1988 Federal Constitution. Moreover, it is characterized as a policy that seeks to ensure the better functioning of schools and the fulfillment of their social function. In this sense, and as established in Article 13 of Law No. 6023/2017, the use of financial resources via PDAF must meet the requirements set out in the legislation for the implementation of the school’s political-pedagogical project (PPP), preceded by an annual resource application plan in which administrative and operational priorities are defined always in accordance with the PPP. This annual application plan must be approved by the school council and, in its absence, by the general school assembly, both collegiate bodies that integrate the democratic management of the public school system of the Federal District (^{Distrito Federal, 2017}).

In this sense, the PDAF is directly linked to the school’s purposes and is justified by its PPP and the State’s commitment to improving the quality of the educational process, which necessarily involves ensuring favorable material and human conditions for students’ learning and the fulfillment of the constitutional purposes of education.

However, data from the School Census of the Federal District (Censo-DF), from 2009 to 2018 (^{Distrito Federal, 2019}), raise the assumption that the relationship between financing the educational policy via PDAF and the improvement in the quality of elementary education is fragile, specifically with regard to school performance rates (approval, failure and dropout) and age/grade distortion (^{Distrito Federal, 2019}). It is understood that this weakness is due to the fact that the more than 800 million reais passed on to schools from 2008 to 2018 have not resulted in significant improvements in the educational indicators considered in the study. However, it is emphasized that this does not mean that basic public education in the Federal District can do without more financial resources, but that the PDAF needs to be evaluated based on its objectives. It is believed that this can contribute to political-pedagogical decisions that have an impact on improving the quality of basic education. Moreover, this is a program that began its implementation in 2008, therefore, with enough time to correct distortions and pathways.

It must be emphasized that performance data cannot be an end in themselves, nor should they be used to classify schools and students from a meritocratic perspective, which contributes little to the improvement of educational processes in a perspective of the social quality of public education. These data, however, are indicators that need to be analyzed and understood based on and from the reality of the public network and the DF schools in a self-assessment process capable of subsidizing the reorganization of the pedagogical work and the promotion of public policies.

Through the qualitative theoretical and methodological approach, we sought to understand the theme in a theoretical effort of abstraction and recomposition in its totality, understood as a unit of analysis that brings together smaller totalities articulated in the constitution of an internal logic, structured and dynamic (^{Paulo Netto, 2011}). In the case of this research, this logic includes the PDAF and educational indicators of elementary education in the DF public school system. The discussion took place through delimited procedures to explain legal documents and related phenomena, in an objective, coherent and confrontable view (^{Lakatos; Marconi, 2010}), based on data from educational indicators and resources decentralized to schools via PDAF.

Data analysis is based on Análise de Conteúdo [Content Analysis] (^{Bardin, 2016}), considering:

Thus, we discuss:

In the first part of the article, Law No. 6.023/2017 (PDAF Law) is addressed, with a view to clarifying the bases of the local policy of decentralization of financial resources for the DF public education network and its direct relationship with the implementation of the schools’ PPP. In the second part, some elements that show the relationship between administrative and financial decentralization and the neoliberal and patrimonialist policy in schools are presented. In the third part, the data from the DF Census are discussed, with a focus on the yield and age/grade distortion rates in elementary school, comparing them with the PDAF values predicted and published in the Diário Oficial do Distrito Federal (DODF) [Official Journal of Distrito Federal] for the schools.

Administrative and Financial Decentralization: relationship with the political-pedagogical project

The Program for Administrative and Financial Decentralization (PDAF) is effected, according to Article 16 of Law No. 6.023/2017, through funding and capital³ resources. In 2021, the capital resources were received by the Regional Education Coordinations (CRE), responsible for distribution, execution, and accountability.

There are two types of transfers via PDAF: the PDAF-Ordinary and those originating from parliamentary amendments, hereafter referred to as PDAF-Amendments. The Ordinary PDAF must respect “[…] the calculation factors and criteria applied to distribute the amount of resources to be decentralized, as well as the transfer procedures” (^{Distrito Federal, 2017}, art. 10), defined by SEEDF. The calculation and distribution factors take into account the number of students enrolled in each school unit and the total number of schools and respective students in each teaching region, etc.

The PDAF-Amendments, on the other hand, has no obligation to observe what is established in Article 10 of Law No. 6023 of 2017, with the only “restriction” being what is in its § 3, Article 35, namely: “The transfers of resources from parliamentary amendments directly to the UExL are limited to 3 times the value of expenses considered irrelevant under the budget guidelines law” (^{Distrito Federal, 2017}, emphasis added).

According to Article 92 of the Budget Guidelines Law, Law No. 6.934 (^{Distrito Federal, 2021}), irrelevant expenses are considered to be “[…] those whose amounts do not exceed the limits set forth in art. 24, items I and II, of Federal Law No. 8.666, of June 21, 1993. Article 24 of this Law determines that bidding is indispensable:

I - for engineering works and services up to 10% (ten percent) of the limit established in item ‘a’, from item I of the previous article [150 thousand Reais for engineering works and services], as long as they do not refer to parts of the same work or service, or even for works and services of the same nature and in the same place that can be carried out jointly and concomitantly;

II - for other services and purchases of value up to 10% (ten percent) of the limit provided for in item ‘a’, of clause II of the previous article [R$ 80 thousand for purchases and services not referred to in item I] and for sales, in the cases provided for in this Law, provided they do not refer to portions of the same service, purchase or sale of greater magnitude that can be carried out at once

(^{Brasil, 1993}).

It is noteworthy that the District Decree No. 42.403 (^{Distrito Federal, 2021}), which regulates Law No. 6.023/2017, extends the validity of the limitation in relation to the execution of PDAF-Emendments resources also to the Teaching Regionals.

Parliamentary amendments destined directly to the Local Executing Unit will be decentralized according to the annual limit established in §3 of art. 35 of Law No. 6.023, 2017.

Sole Paragraph: The amendment intended for the Regional Executing Unit, when the purpose is to benefit a Local Executing Unit, will be subject to the same limits provided in the caput of this article

(^{Distrito Federal, 2017}, art. 21).

This limitation⁴ has a significant impact on the execution of PDAF resources, especially with regard to works that add value, since these tend to exceed the maximum allowed. But beyond the administrative and legal aspects established in the PDAF Law (^{Law No. 6.023/2017}), this legal framework reaffirms aspects related to the participation of the school community, the improvement of the quality of the educational process, and the obligation to respect the PPP of the teaching regions and schools. Regarding the participation of the school community, the PDAF Law determines that, at the local level, there are two types of agents:

a) general school assembly - maximum instance of direct participation of the school community that covers all school segments and is responsible for monitoring the development of the school’s actions;

b) school council - consultative, supervisory, mobilizing, deliberative and representative body of the school community (^{Distrito Federal, 2017}, inc. I, art. 3).

Therefore, in addition to planning, the execution and accountability of PDAF resources cannot be carried out in absentia of the school general assembly and school council, which in the Democratic Management Law (Law No. 4.751/2012) are collegiate bodies, i.e., mechanisms for participation in decision-making at the same level as the school board.

In relation to improving the quality of the educational process, Article 4 of Law No. 6.023/2017 provides for the existence of local executive units (UExL), which have “[…] legal personality of private law, non-profit […], with the purpose of supporting and promoting initiatives aimed at improving the quality of the educational process” (^{Distrito Federal, 2017}, art. 4º, inc. I). Such purpose is further reinforced in the sole paragraph of Article 5 of the same Law:

The UEx is prohibited from exercising any administrative and financial activities that are not exclusively aimed at fulfilling the purposes established in the act of its constitution: to support and promote initiatives to improve the quality of the educational process

(^{Distrito Federal, 2017}, art. 5°, Only paragraph, our emphasis).

As for the PPP, the PDAF Law follows firmly along the same lines, since it directly establishes that the executing agent, in this case the UEx, must commit to

[…] to comply with the annual application plan, in line with the political-pedagogical project prepared by the school community and the management plan prepared by the school management, as well as to account for the transferred resources, meeting the deadlines set by SEEDF

(^{Distrito Federal, 2017}, inc. II, art. 6º, our enphasis).

The PDAF Law reaffirms the PPP as a systematizer of objectives, purposes, goals, procedures, and processes aimed at the organization, development, monitoring, and evaluation of school work. From this perspective, the PPP must result from the dialogue of the school with the community based on principles established in Law 4.751/2012, called as Democratic Management Law: participation, respect for plurality and diversity, autonomy of school units, transparency, quality assurance, democratization of pedagogical and labor relations, and appreciation of education professionals (^{Distrito Federal, 2012}). Thus, the PPP of the schools is a “[…] document in permanent construction, systematizing its pedagogical work, a process based on the search for unity theory-practice, objective-evaluation, content-form, teacher-student, teaching-learning” (Fernandes Silva; Veiga; Fernandes, 2020, p. 16). The implementation of this Project requires, therefore, articulated actions between government, school and school community.

The emphasis given to the PPP in the legislation that deals with the decentralization of financial resources to public school units in the DF is due to its relevance in the construction of the identity of each school and the systematization of a pedagogical proposal that favors the fulfillment of the purposes of education. Thus, a plan for the application of PDAF resources prepared and approved with the intention of implementing the PPP collectively is required, which legitimizes it with the school community, the State and society as a whole.

In this sense, since the 1990s, managers, teachers, pedagogical teams, students and families from DF have been living participatory experiences of elaboration of the school PPP. To this end, courses are offered by the School for the Improvement of Education⁵ Professionals and guiding documents⁶. The expectation is that they will understand the school PPP as a process and product of collective work aimed at the integral human development of students and the appropriation of knowledge accumulated throughout history by mankind. A perspective of democratic management and quality, referenced in the social subjects that materialize the school project and that according to Law No. 4.751/2012 is translated by the search for the full development of the person, the preparation for the exercise of citizenship and the qualification for work.

In short, the participation of the community in school decisions is in Law No. 6.023/2017 of the PDAF, which, in turn, links directly to Law No. 4.751/2012 of Democratic Management by instituting the participation of the community in the construction of the identity of the school inscribed in the political-pedagogical project and in the search for improvement of the social quality of the educational process.

However, the PDAF legislation, the National Education Plan 2014-2024 (Law No. 13.005/2014)⁷ and the District Education Plan 2015-2025 (Law No. 5.499/2015) reaffirm the logic of parameterization of school work and the school curriculum (^{Brasil, 2014}; ^{Distrito Federal, 2015}). In this perspective, quality is measured by international, national and local indicators, by assessments and examinations external to the public school. Based on these indicators, which are also relevant for the analysis of school work and student performance, managers and governments obtain data that can support them in the development and implementation of educational policies, including those of decentralization of financial resources to schools and even funding policies as a whole. However, we must be careful about using these indicators to hold schools and their professionals accountable for performance, disregarding that this is also the responsibility of governments.

The PDAF is characterized as another program of decentralization of financial resources at the school level within the movement of administrative decentralization of education. This movement expanded with the process of re-democratization of Brazil, in a more direct way since 1988, and became stronger in the 1990s, articulated with the neoliberal and patrimonialist policy in the field of education.

In this political and economic context, influenced by external agents such as international organizations and banks, the reform of the state emerged with the proposition of freeing up the market, privatizing state-owned companies, outsourcing public services, establishing public-private partnerships, and reconfiguring the functions of the state (^{Silva; Pacheco, 2021}).

Financial and administrative decentralization in education, initially argued to debureaucratize the “machine”, to perfect democracy and to improve the quality of basic public education, has become increasingly unaccountable to the Union, the States, the Municipalities and the Federal District. This logic gained strength, in a more direct way, starting in the 1990s, when governments began to demand that the school became the main responsible for its success or failure and that of the students as well. From then on, school managers have been required to play a central role in the implementation of several effective and efficient projects, usually regulated and controlled by national evaluations that generate rankings of institutions and impositions that lead to the standardization of educational processes, which, by principle, are singular and plural.

The myth that decentralizing financial resources would lead, by itself, to magical solutions that would improve the quality of education has spread. However, decentralization per se cannot solve the problems faced in and by public schools and that reverberate in the achievement of learning goals, especially in the human, academic and professional formation of those who have access to them.

In this regard, ^{Peroni (2013, p. 14)} highlights that “[…] with administrative decentralization, policies become even more precarious, among other problems, because competencies are transferred without the corresponding and necessary resources to execute them”. Based on this statement, simply transferring resources is quite different from transferring “corresponding and necessary resources”, as the author emphasizes. And these resources need to be, in fact, applied with a view to fulfilling the educational purposes, with a commitment to ensuring the quality of public basic education.

In this scenario, there is a strong movement of governments, in a way still invisible, that tries to build consensus that this decentralization phenomenon would be something modern and necessarily good. However, “[…] it is known that this modernization process was inspired by the neoliberal model […]” (^{Portela, 2006}, p. 29), which puts in doubt whether it is suitable for a public space like the school, since neoliberalism brings along, almost inexorably, a capitalist productive logic that has nothing or little to do with the pedagogical work developed in public schools.

Still on the Brazilian neoliberal model, “[…] decentralization has not prevented the State apparatus from concentrating for itself, at the level of the Union, the decision-making power on standardization, the prioritization of funding and national assessments” (^{Carvalho; Costa 2012}, p. 5). In this sense, decisions about school curriculum and initial and continuing teacher training have been centralized in the governments, an example of which was the preparation of the Common National Curriculum Base (BNCC) with fragile participation of the school community and strong alignment to external evaluations.

The concentration of this decision-making power also occurs at the state, municipal, and Federal District levels, at the tops of the education secretariats, reducing the decision space for managers, teachers, and the school community. Thus, the decentralization of attributions is reaffirmed, with the argument that financial resources will be transferred directly to schools, while the centralized decision-making power is maintained. What we observe are acts and measures of recentralization that deviate from the process of democratic management and weaken the autonomy of the school in decision-making about its project.

In this perspective, the decentralization of resources via PDAF is considered neoliberal in nature and reveals the inability of the local executive branch, and this is true for the entire period of existence of this program, to deal with the problems of public schools. This fact, in large part, can be explained by the way the program was conceived (without broad discussion with the civil society of the DF), and has been executed (with little participation of the school community), and also by the absence of follow-up and evaluation of its impacts on democratic management and the improvement of education.

The PDAF is a program that integrates the financing policy for education in the Federal District and must be monitored and evaluated systematically, in relation to the criteria for allocation of financial resources to school units, teaching regions and with regard to the evolution of educational indicators in the Federal District. In other words, it must advance in the understanding of the indicators without reducing the concept of quality of education to the control over the management, the teacher, the curriculum, the evaluation, and the pedagogical work. It is necessary to overcome the logic that classifies schools between good and bad, which contributes little (or nothing) to the construction of the sense of a teaching network and of educational policies aimed at guaranteeing access, permanence, and social quality.

Next, we discuss the decentralization of financial resources to public schools in the DF via PDAF and educational indicators (income rates and age/grade distortion). The aim is to problematize the repercussions of this program on the school performance of elementary school students.

Decentralization of Financial Resources: and the right to learning?

The discussion of the data from the School Census of the Federal District (Censo-DF) on performance (approval, failure and dropout) and age/grade distortion is made with reference to the financial resources channeled to schools via PDAF. The Census-DF collects data from public schools and private school enrollments in partnership⁸ with SEEDF (^{Distrito Federal, 2019}).

Table 1 presents the total number of students enrolled in the early years of Elementary Education from 2004 to 2018, school performance data in percentage terms, and the amount of PDAF resources, channeled to schools, from 2008 to 2018.

The data show that, in the initial years of elementary school, the average approval rate in the period was 90.18%, the failure rate was 8.4% and the dropout rate was 0.94%. From 2009 on (the year after the implementation of PDAF, in this case the first forecast published in DODF), the failure rate, which had been decreasing in 2005, 2006 and 2008, starts to grow again. In 2009, we also observe a downward cycle in the number of enrollments that will continue until 2018.

It is necessary to consider in the reading of the growth rate of failure in the period from 2009 to 2012, the implementation in DF of the school organization in cycle through the pedagogical strategy of the Initial Literacy Block (BIA), adopted by the Secretary of State of Education of the Federal District (SEEDF), availing itself of what is established in the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education – LDB (^{Brasil, 1996}).

The literacy cycle is structured in a three-year block with continuous learning progression, without failure between years. Students who have not achieved the learning objectives in the third year are allowed to fail, that is, only in the third year of the block, the end of the literacy cycle (^{Distrito Federal, 2014a}).

In reading the increase in the failure rate in 2009 and from 2010 to 2012, it is still necessary to consider the growth in enrollments with the inclusion of 6-year-olds in the BIA and also the possible retention, in this case, in the third year of the Block.

In 2009, the rate of 10.32% corresponds to 18,542 students in the early years who failed. In the BIA, six-year-old children, who used to be in kindergarten, as of 2005, were enrolled in the first year of elementary school, generating from then on, an increase in the number of enrollments in this stage. The number of enrollments increased from 159,318 in 2005 to 184,380 in 2008, the year in which BIA was implemented in all early grades schools of the public school system of the Federal District, that is, there was an increase of 25,062 enrollments.

As far as failure rates are concerned, students in the first Teaching Regional that implemented the BIA entered in 2005¹² in the literacy cycle and could only be failed at the end of the cycle, in 2007. In 2008, the cycles were universalized in all early-year schools of the public school system of the DF, and the failure of students was only allowed in 2010. However, the failure rates include students enrolled in the eight-year elementary school, abolished in 2016; therefore, it is not possible to generalize that the increase in failure rates is directly related to the continuous progression in the cycle. There are several factors that are not the subject of the discussion proposed here.

However, bearing in mind that the resources of the PDAF aim at the implementation of the political-pedagogical project, as discussed above, this increase in failure rates is problematic, especially because the pedagogical proposal of the BIA presents didactic and pedagogical strategies that should be systematized in the school’s PPP to ensure progressive learning for all students, including those enrolled in the 8-year elementary school, as indicated in the Pedagogical Guidelines of SEEDF 2009/2013 (^{Federal District, 2008b}).

The creation of the PDAF in 2007 accompanies the movement to institute public policies aimed at improving the quality of public education, in the wake of the expansion of primary schooling provided for in the LDB. But then, what may have had repercussions on the increase in the failure rate? This questioning is due to the fact that material conditions have been provided by public funding and by pedagogical guidelines that resulted from collective discussion in the public network and were the object of continuing education courses at the School for the Improvement of Education Professionals (EAPE), in the Reference Centers for Literacy¹³ and in pedagogical coordination in schools.

It is worth noting that in the Federal District, out of a 40-hour workday, teachers have a weekly workload of 15 hours allocated to pedagogical coordination, which is space-time for continuing education, studies, debates, planning, and evaluation of the work, among other actions provided for in the PPP. It is an achievement of the teaching staff, articulated through the Union of Teachers of the Federal District (SINPRO-DF), and that stems from historical struggles to improve working conditions in order to improve the quality of basic public education. The establishment of time for pedagogical coordination was accompanied by an increase in the time that students remain in school, from four to five hours a day since 1995. This increase required more time for teachers to conceive, plan and evaluate their pedagogical work. Thus, the perspective is that, besides increasing the permanence time of the student, it will be necessary to qualify the student, which can also be done through a high level of pedagogical coordination.

While the failure rate in the period from 2009 to 2012 increases, the dropout rate decreased throughout the period, from 0.91 to 0.62%. If the whole period under analysis is considered, the result is quite interesting: 2.29% dropout rate in 2005 and only 0.3% in 2018, the year the PDAF had completed 10 years.

Why has PDAF, in the early years of elementary school, contributed more effectively to ensuring the permanence of students (significant reduction in dropout rates) than to improving “learning” rates (modest improvement in approval rates)? This is a question that has guided the studies of the research group to which this study is linked and that will be the object of further and specific investigations. However, a possible explanation for this phenomenon is the improvement in the physical structure of the school, making it more pleasant for children and parents or guardians. In addition, the extension of the time children staying in school, with the implementation of full-time education through the Programa Mais Educação¹⁴ [More Education Program] of the Federal Government, favored staying in school to develop activities in the macro fields.

In the final years of elementary school, considering the same categories and periods, the rates show an improvement in school performance starting in 2008, although with a significant percentage of failure and dropouts, as shown in Table 2:

Table 2 shows that the approval rate goes from 72.14% in 2007 (a year without PDAF) to 85.47% in 2008, that is, with only one year of PDAF, an improvement of 13.33% percentage points. Then, in the period from 2009 to 2017, this rate has a drop, but still remains around 80%. And in 2018, it passes 90%. The failure rate also follows this trend and shows a reduction, going from a level around 25% in the period from 2004 to 2006 (without PDAF), to 7.60% in 2018, which means a decrease of more than 300% of the failure rate in 11 years of PDAF (since 2008 with the first forecast of transfers until 2018). The dropout rate was less affected in this period in the final years (4.81% in 2004 to 2.27% in 2018) compared to the initial years (3.19% in 2005 and only 0.30% in 2018).

Based on these data, we problematize: would the PDAF favor and contribute to keep in school more students from the early years than those from the final years of elementary school? One possible answer is that the permanence of children from 6 to 10 years old is related to the pedagogical work implemented since 2005 in the Literacy Block, which includes: regrouping and interventional projects to meet the learning needs of students; formative diagnostic evaluation; and integrated curricular treatment, favored by the fact that at this stage teachers with more consistent theoretical and methodological pedagogical training work.

The reading of the data, considering the totality of reality, requires that we also consider some aspects. With regard to school dropout, it is admitted that it is the result of several factors (family, economic, and cultural), but above all due to social inequalities that affect, in particular, older students, leading them to have to contribute to the family budget through informal jobs, often during the hours intended for schooling. Confronting this reality requires political actions from governments aimed at improving the living and working conditions of families.

In relation to the increase in approval rates from 2013 to 2018, after a drop from 2010 to 2012, even with a reduction in the number of enrollments, the implementation of cycles in the final years of elementary school must be considered gradually from 2012 on. The school organization in cycles in the final years is foreseen in the District Education Plan (PDE) 2015-2024 as a pedagogical strategy to ensure the continued progression of student learning and combat failure rates that cause differentiated schooling paths (^{Distrito Federal, 2015}) and affect the guarantee of students’ right to education.

If we consider only the year 2006 (the year without PDAF), two realities are observed: very good approval (91.95%) and a very low percentage of dropouts (1.26%) in the early years; a median approval rate (70.77%) and a not inconsiderable dropout rate (3.83%) in the final years. But beyond the discussion presented above and carried out based on percentages, we seek to understand the relationship between PDAF resources and the number of students who failed in the period from 2008 to 2018 in elementary education in the DF public school system. To this end, we considered the total enrollment in early and final years, the total number of approved and failed students and the amounts of resources provided to schools via PDAF-ordinary, in the period from 2008 to 2018, presented in Graph 1.

Source: ^{Distrito Federal (2014c}; ²⁰¹⁹⁾.

Graph 1 Total PDAF resources from 2008 to 2018 

Before discussing these resources and comparing them with the approval and failure rates, it is worth describing what Graph 1 shows:

The decrease of 42 million reais in PDAF from 2009 to 2010 may be justified by the political instability in the DF government, generated by the scheme called “Mensalão do Partido Democratas (DEM)” [Democratic Party’s monthly allowance] or “Caixa de Pandora” [Pandora’s Box] in 2009 and which culminated with the removal of then governor José Roberto Arruda in 2010 and soon after the implementation of the transition government until elections in the same year. This fact demonstrates well the political influences on the financing of public education.

However, some educational indicators still remain as challenges, even after this forecast and channeling of financial resources to schools via PDAF. As an example, we can highlight the approval rate in the early years of elementary school, which remained high (in general above 90%), but would only exceed the percentage of the second-to-last year without PDAF, in this case 2006 (91.95%), in 2013 (92.44%).

If the number of students who failed in the initial years in 2014 (PDAF of 43.37 million reais) and 2015 (PDAF of 68.34 million reais) are taken as references, we have the following scenarios: in 2014, 11,656 (7.53%) of the total of 154,792 students; in 2015, 11,489 (7.65%) of the total of 150,184 students. In other words, the number of students basically stayed the same. This means that even with the high pass rate, the number of students failing in absolute numbers is equally high, above 5% during the entire period under study (2004 to 2018), for a total of students in the early years around 150,000.

In relation to the final years of elementary school, although the approval data show some evolution, the absolute number of students failing is, in this case, unacceptable. In 2014, of the total number of students in this stage (136,808), 17.77% (24,304) failed. In 2015, the year in which there was an increase of 24.96 million reais via PDAF, 17.61% (23,787) of the total number of students (135,079) failed. Failures have repercussions on the rate of students with age/grade distortion, because after two years of schooling with retention, it is already characterized as a gap between age and year at the stage.

In view of this reality, we can see that the age/grade distortion continues to be a challenge to be faced in the public school system of the Federal District, considering its multiple determinations.

From 2009 to 2018, the age/grade distortion in elementary school shows a fall in the 1st and 2nd grades, remaining high in the 3rd grade as shown in data from 2010 and a slight reduction over the years. As the school organization in cycle in the initial years allows the failure of students in the 3rd year of the Literacy Block, it is possible that the culture of failure has not been understood and overcome, even with the continuing education offered by the School for the Improvement of Education Professionals (EAPE/SEEDF), Reference Centers in Literacy and, on a national level by the Programa Nacional de Alfabetização na Idade Certa¹⁸ [National Program for Literacy at the Right Age].

In the 4th grade it is possible to observe the following scenario in relation to age/grade distortion: increase in the distortion rate, from 9,166 students in 2004 to 11,337 in 2008; new drops in 2009 and 2010; return of growth in 2012; then, stability until 2018, but with a rate considered high for the reality of DF, especially if the implementation time of the Initial Literacy Block is taken into account. The same trend is observed in the 5th grade. These data are worrisome, since the Literacy Block is a long-lasting school organization proposal, despite the recurrent discontinuity of educational public policies in DF. Its implementation occurred in 2005. Therefore, its permanence represents the possibility of course correction and review of practices based on assessments and systematic monitoring.

In relation to the 6th and 7th grades, in ten years, the rates of age/grade distortion show a very significant and worrisome increase, from a total of 277,017 students enrolled in elementary education in 2018, the two schooling years gather 21,390 students with weaknesses in school performance, that is, 7.7% of the total enrollment. In the 8th and 9th grades, a difference is observed in relation to the 6th and 7th grades, however, the distortion rates are still significant.

The age/grade distortion portrayed by the data raises reflection on the fact that the cycles in the final years of elementary school were implemented with the objective of guaranteeing a longer time for the students to reach the learning objectives foreseen for each year in the school curriculum. This was adopted so that the school could organize itself and provide didactic and pedagogical conditions that would promote interventions in the educational process, committed to the development of the students, with funding being central. To this end, the Pedagogical Guidelines for the 3rd cycle (^{Distrito Federal, 2014b}) propose a reorganization of the pedagogical work systematized in the schools’ political-pedagogical projects. This reorganization includes:

Finally, in the analysis of failure and age/grade distortion, there are many problems, especially for students who are economically and culturally less privileged. Students in this situation cannot be seen only as statistical data, since they are children and adolescents in a process of educational exclusion inside the school, that is, the school “keeps in its bosom those it excludes” (^{Bourdieu; Champagne, 1998}, p. 224). In this regard, Mészáros alerts to the fact that under these circumstances,

[…] what is at stake is not only the political modification of educational processes – which practice and aggravate social apartheid –, but the reproduction of the value structure that contributes to perpetuate a conception of the world based on mercantile society

(^{Mészáros, 2008}, p. 11-12).

Thus, when analyzing the relationship between financial investment and school performance results, it is essential to consider the social inequalities arising from the capitalist mode of production, which has education as a strategic area to establish and strengthen a consensus favorable to the reproduction of the unfair and unequal social system. It is also worth mentioning that it sounds strange that the public school system of the Federal District, in which the democratic management of and in public education is assumed as a principle, admits the perpetuation of an excluding reality, especially of those who most need the school for the construction of their human emancipation.

Final Considerations

This article discussed the decentralization of financial resources to schools via PDAF and school performance (approval, failure, dropout) and age/grade distortion. The data show that, considering the period (2004 to 2018), there are differences between the early years and final years of elementary education in terms of improved school performance rates. The early years, perhaps due to the advances already achieved in the DF public network over the past few years, have remained stable since the creation and implementation of PDAF, with an increase in failure rates in some periods. This fact raises questions about how the political-pedagogical projects of the schools have become instruments in favor of student learning, as provided for in the PDAF Law.

The final grades, despite significant progress in approval and reduction in failure and dropout rates, present high rates of age/grade distortion, which puts in doubt the way school organization in cycles has been developed. It is suggested that its implementation be evaluated in light of data, studies and scientific-academic research. This evaluation should include listening to managers, teachers, students and families.

Moreover, when we consider the absolute numbers of students who failed in the period studied, we have a very complicated picture regarding the guarantee of the right to education with learning, permanence and condition for the emancipation of the subjects in a markedly unequal society.

Given the complexity involved in the analysis of the relationship between decentralized financial resources and educational indicators, it is suggested that the PDAF values in reais be disaggregated in the stages and modalities of basic education, by regional teaching coordination or even by set of schools. This disaggregation will favor a more accurate comparative reading. One possibility would be to survey the amount of resources made available for school-classrooms¹⁹, elementary schools²⁰, educational centers²¹, high schools, professional education schools, schools of a special nature, among others, taking into account the specific values for funding and capital. It is believed that this level of disaggregation would allow a deeper discussion about the financial resources made available via PDAF and the achievement of learning goals, especially with regard to income rates and age/grade distortion. These educational indicators can also be accessed at a very detailed level of disaggregation via the DF Census.

At the same time, it is recognized that the discontinuity of public educational policies in the DF public system impacts their implementation in schools. Over the years, governments change, policies change in content and/or form. There is a lack of evaluation processes of political actions that subsidize the decision making of the managers of the education secretariat, of the teaching regions and of the schools. However, it is worth noting that evaluation is needed as a process of self-reflection, and not as a mechanism of accountability, especially for those who work in schools.

We emphasize the need for further research to deepen the discussions and analyses about the PDAF Amendments in the Federal District, with special attention to the political influences linked to this modality of transferring resources to schools. A close relationship seems to have been established between the District’s parliamentarians and certain school managers. This relationship deserves to be evaluated in depth, in order to unveil to what extent the PDAF-Emendas can generate political dependency and contribute to weaken the democratic management of the public school system of the Federal District.

In view of the above, one should not overlook the purpose of the PDAF, which, from a theoretical and legal point of view, is intended to favor the implementation of the political-pedagogical project (PPP). Obviously, the PDAF cannot be solely responsible for the results presented, because there is a complex array of factors involved in this process. The social, economic and political contexts, for example, need to be taken into consideration, since the school is not an institution separated from society.

At the same time, from the pedagogical management bodies at central (Secretariat of Education) and intermediate (regional education departments) levels, responsible for the elaboration, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the educational policy of the DF, continuous actions are expected, articulated with schools in a participatory way, considering their specificities and the principles of democratic management.