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Educação em Revista

versão impressa ISSN 0102-4698versão On-line ISSN 1982-6621

Educ. rev. vol.38  Belo Horizonte  2022  Epub 10-Mar-2022

https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-469826309 

ARTIGO

WHEN THE STATE DOES NOT REACH: THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS IN SETTLEMENTS, INDIGENOUS, AND QUILOMBO COMMUNITIES

CINARA ARAÚJO LOBO1 
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9469-1695

JOAZE BERNARDINO-COSTA2 
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9937-893X

1Server at Fundo Nacional de Desenvolvimento da Educação (FNDE). Brasília, DF, Brazil. <cinaralobo@uol.com.br>

2Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology at the Universidade de Brasília (UnB). Brasília, DF, Brazil. <joazebernardino@gmail.com>


ABSTRACT:

The article evaluates the effective benefits of the policy to decentralize federal education resources to schools in indigenous and quilombo communities, and settlements. Based on the quantitative analysis of the Basic Education Census data, information on balance and transfer of values from the Dinheiro Direto na Escola Program, and data from the Federation of Industry of Rio de Janeiro, the article relates the volume of transferred resources, the physical structure of schools, and state capacity of the federated entities. The initial hypothesis is that historically excluded communities are in municipalities with low state capacity and greater difficulty to develop differentiated educational policies. The article also raises the hypothesis of the racialization of the State, which normalizes the precarious life of traditional populations. It concludes by calling attention to the complexity of implementing decentralized policies for these communities and the importance of including the role of the racial State in their reflections and evaluations.

Keywords: state capacity; decentralization; racial State; settlements; indigenous communities; quilombo communities

RESUMO:

O artigo avalia os benefícios efetivos da política de descentralização de recursos federais da educação para unidades de ensino situadas em comunidades indígenas, quilombolas e assentamentos. A partir da análise quantitativa de dados do Censo da Educação Básica, de informações de saldo e repasse de valores do Programa Dinheiro Direto na Escola e de dados da Federação da Indústria do Rio de Janeiro, relacionam-se o volume de recursos transferidos, a estrutura física das escolas e a capacidade estatal dos entes federados. A hipótese inicial é que comunidades historicamente excluídas se encontram situadas em municípios com baixa capacidade estatal e apresentam maior dificuldade em desenvolver políticas educacionais diferenciadas. O artigo também levanta a hipótese de racialização do Estado, que normaliza a precariedade das condições de existência das populações tradicionais. Conclui-se chamando atenção para a complexidade da execução de políticas descentralizadas para essas comunidades e a importância de se incluir, nas reflexões e avaliações, o papel do Estado racial.

Palavras-chave: capacidade estatal; descentralização; Estado racial; assentamentos; comunidades indígenas; quilombolas

RESUMEN:

El artículo evalúa los beneficios efectivos de la política de descentralización de los recursos educativos federales para unidades de enseñanza ubicadas en comunidades indígenas, quilombolas y asentamientos. Con base en el análisis cuantitativo de datos del Censo de Educación Básica, información de balance y transferencia de valores del Programa “Dinheiro Direto na Escola”, y datos de La Federación de Industrias de Rio de Janeiro, relaciona el volumen de recursos transferidos, la estructura física de las escuelas y la capacidad de las entidades federadas. La hipótesis inicial fue que las comunidades históricamente excluidas se ubican en municipios con baja capacidad estatal y que tienen mayor dificultad para desarrollar políticas educativas diferenciadas. El artículo también plantea la hipótesis de racialización del Estado, que normaliza las precarias condiciones de existencia de las poblaciones tradicionales. Concluye llamando la atención sobre la complejidad de implementar políticas descentralizadas para estas comunidades y la importancia de incluir en las reflexiones y evaluaciones el rol del Estado racial.

Palabras clave: capacidad estatal; descentralización; Estado racial; asentamientos; comunidades indígenas; quilombolas

INTRODUCTION

The federal government's strategy to decentralize resources for educational programs aimed at Basic Education depends on the state interest and capacity of subnational entities to implement them. For the money transferred to produce concrete results for the benefited communities, states and municipalities must have an administrative structure to purchase goods and hire services or, at least, provide technical assistance to communities so that they can build solutions to their common problems. They also need to consider the demands addressed to the State to be legitimate and agree on the need to develop policies (ARRETCHE, 2006). However, the population that most needs the public power to overcome the situation of social exclusion, which has historically been a victim of discrimination in the distribution of public services and resources, usually lives in small towns with low state capacity. In these situations, the resource decentralization strategy may not be effective in benefiting such communities.

The article analyzes the experience of the Direct Money at School Program (Programa Dinheiro Direto na Escola - PDDE). Based on data from the Census of Basic Education (BRASIL, 2019) and balance information and transfer of amounts carried out by the National Fund for the Development of Education (Fundo Nacional de Desenvolvimento da Educação - FNDE), in 2019, this article evaluates the effectiveness of the PDDE in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements. The reason for selecting the PDDE is because of the simplified execution model of the program, which does not require bidding processes, and because it is aimed at all elementary schools. There are a few requirements for schools to be entitled to receive the resources: the state or municipal administration must adhere to the program, update the register annually and send the FNDE the rendering of accounts on how the resources were used. Given the simplified execution model, there is no reason for municipalities and states not to adhere to it, nor, having received the money, not to use it. The administrative capacity required is minimal, as even accountability is a streamlined, completely automated process. The flexibility of the PDDE allows school communities to use the money to adapt teaching materials and develop didactic-pedagogical activities compatible with the sociocultural characteristics of the faculty and students. Due to its flexibility, the program is not a federal government policy aimed at a specific audience. However, the PDDE can be used to reinforce local actions, including initiatives by the school community.

This text aims to discuss whether this model of decentralization of resources contributes to improving the reality of traditional communities, historically excluded from access to public resources and services. The hypothesis is that these priority communities are located in municipalities with low state capacity and that, for this reason, they have greater difficulty in developing differentiated educational policies. Even programs with a simplified operational model, such as the PDDE, may not produce concrete results, as they come up against the interest of local managers in implementing them and also the limited state capacity of the federated entities.

For the development of this hypothesis, our text cites the theory of the racial state (GOLDBERG, 2002). The racial state consists not only of agencies, bureaucracies, and legislation, but also of the principles, values, policies, institutions, and individuals that enable state administration. This theory can be used to think about the formation of national identity, population flows, the construction of institutions, state apparatus, and functions. The State is not only racial because it acts directly in the regulation of a population in a given territory, but it can also be a racist state by guaranteeing differentiated inclusions and exclusions to racial groups in its territory. In other words, the racial state can be described as racist because it occupies a structural position in the production and reproduction of inequalities, in the constitution and performance of racially formed spaces and places, in access and restrictions, in the possibilities and management of life and in the conceptions and ways of representing life.

Therefore, when discussing the implementation of the PDDE with indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements, the objective is not only to assess the strict and supposedly technical state capacity of the municipality but rather to take into account the passivity and omission of the State in its federal, state and municipal dimensions for non-execution of the program. It is not a question of relieving the social actors who are at the forefront of the execution of the program, but of questioning how much there is an omission by the State as a result of the non-execution of the budget precisely in racialized communities of indigenous, quilombolas and settled population, that is composed in its vast majority by non-white people.

The development of specific policies for traditional communities requires greater coordination and cooperation of the three levels of management to implement them. In other words, it requires a greater effort from the public administration to understand the specificity of the public assisted and to think about local solutions. Clarice Cohn (2005), when studying indigenous education, observed that indigenous people in Brazil are a plurality of ethnicities and cultures, speak more than a hundred languages ​​and, for them to have access to differentiated education, it would be necessary to adapt specific materials and curricula, train professionals, etc. In short, this would require the development of a teaching methodology and didactic material compatible with the culture, language and education, and learning processes specific to each indigenous nation. The anthropologist observed that some indigenous languages are unwritten and, for them to be included in formal education, it is necessary to create their spelling. She added that it is difficult to record the knowledge in writing that, “originally, is not fixed in the form of a text, but, on the contrary, continually recreated in oral production” (COHN, 2005, p. 490).

Challenges similar to those mentioned above to carry out differentiated, specific, and intercultural education for indigenous people, are also present in quilombolas and other traditional communities. The situation of the quilombos is even more serious than the indigenous one, as the legislation that deals with the land issue of the territories of the quilombos is recent. As some authors point out, the term “quilombo” practically disappeared from Brazilian legislation, only to reappear in the 1988 Constitution. The silence was accompanied by the absence of reparatory or indemnity policies that would guarantee the possession of the territories in which they resided, as well as the lack of access to basic public services. In the 1990s, there was an intense discussion about the concept expressed in the Constitution, “quilombo remnants”3, because it was related to territorial law. The legalization of the occupied territories came to depend on the proof of descent from quilombos, until Decree nº 4.887/2003 (BRASIL, 2003) regulated the necessary procedure for land titling. However, bureaucratic-administrative obstacles continue to delay and hinder the recognition and demarcation of quilombola communities, so much so that, in a survey carried out by Santana (2018), it was pointed out that only 1.96% of quilombola communities had their land titles issued by the Union.

For this reason, the offer of differentiated education in these schools is an aspiration related to the resistance to remain in their territories and the recognition of their ethnic identity. Differentiated education is a way for the community to keep the identity bonds between its members alive and to fight for permanence in the territories where they live. Like the indigenous people, the quilombola communities demand differentiated education that respects their traditions, incorporates the knowledge of the community and its cultural manifestations, and contributes to promoting respect for cultural and racial diversity. In general, we can say that the functioning of schools is intertwined with the struggle for recognition of the culture and way of life of traditional populations.

Although their claims are extremely fair, considering that they are a public historically discriminated against and victims of violent processes of conflict over land tenure, to meet their demands, the administrative machinery of the State needs a greater effort to build a differentiated education. These are communities that are spread throughout the national territory, some with a very small population, which makes the process even more complex for public management to run a school and develop specific didactic-pedagogical material for a small number of students. However, they are Brazilian citizens who have the right to enjoy public and quality education, which respects their language, tradition, and culture, as provided for by law. The question of our text, therefore, is whether the universal programs of decentralization of resources of the federal government will be enough to compensate the deficit of state capacity of the federated entities and guarantee a quality education, or if it would be better to develop specific educational programs to meet the demands of these communities.

The transfer of resources does not guarantee that the money will be used, nor that it will be used to guarantee differentiated education. The transferred money can simply stay in the accounts of education departments, city halls, or even schools, without being used and without resulting in concrete benefits. State capacity is just one of the variables that interfere in the possibility of resources being transformed into goods and services for communities. The transfer of resources also depends on the consent of state and municipal administrations to develop specific policies and recognize the right of these communities to reside in the territories they occupy. Therefore, as important as state capacity, the recognition of the right to a different way of existence of indigenous, quilombola, and settled communities is also a central theme for the Program to be effective. Arruti (2009) highlights, for example, that quilombola communities have historically been discriminated against by populations and local governments - the statement also extends to indigenous peoples and settlers. Evidence of this is the treatment they receive when they go to court for the documentation of their lands.

It is necessary to recognize that most quilombola communities were excluded from formal education, as well as from participation in decision-making, debate, or even, in some cases, were excluded from simple municipal sociability, due to profound segregation processes. (ARRUTI, 2009, p. 29).

For this reason, money transfers may not be an effective government strategy to change the situation of exclusion and guarantee universal access to basic and quality education for traditional communities. To transform the reality of these communities, the government must commit to the results. These are populations that demand greater administrative effort from the State to reach them and greater articulation between the federated entities to provide quality services, according to their needs. As Amélia Cohn (1999) says, it is not just poverty that must be faced, policies need to be built to overcome social inequalities. Therefore, it is necessary to have a change in the way of treating social issues. In this case, one of the ways to achieve this objective is the development of social programs and policies that consider the specificity of the aforementioned communities.

Decentralization has always been associated with more agile, democratic, and efficient forms of management. It allows greater control by society over the execution of resources and proximity to the specific demands of the benefited locations. However, decentralization brings a challenge of executing the program to the edge, as if the execution step were elementary. It is worth repeating Hill's (2006) thesis, according to which, in the execution, numerous situations, conflicts, and negotiations arise not foreseen by the policy makers, which will have to be resolved by the implementers. In the Brazilian case, there are municipalities with low state capacity that have been elevated to the status of autonomous federated entities, but which do not even have the conditions to maintain a minimal bureaucracy. Furthermore, behind the technical-bureaucratic issues that can hamper the functioning of schools located in communities historically discriminated against and with economic need, there may also be a racialized conception that some should be well attended by government programs, while others do not deserve the same treatment, becoming trapped in a vicious circle of poverty and inefficiency. If the State plays a structural role in the production and reproduction of inequalities, its lack of commitment to results in the execution of certain programs should perhaps not be seen only from the perspective of state capacity and its efficiency, but thought together with the category that historically is to delimit the borders of the State: the racial one.

STATE CAPACITY AND RACIAL ISSUES

Historically, the Brazilian State was constituted by excluding a considerable part of its population. Isolated populations in the interior of the country were left out of access to basic public services, such as education, health, social security, among others. The reason is explained in part by the variable state capacity: it cannot be ignored that, to reach these isolated populations4, it would be necessary to make a greater effort from the State machine to provide public services and adapt them to the sociocultural characteristics of the countless nations that inhabit its territory. In a country with continental dimensions like Brazil, it was difficult for the State to even establish communication channels with populations far from the great political and economic centers. However, the absence of the State among populations farther from the center is explained not only by a geographical dimension but also by a worldview that does not recognize the existence of the other. Indigenous peoples and quilombolas, for example, did not have their existence fully recognized, and their territories were thought of as “empty lands”, not inhabited, beyond modernity and development. Therefore, “empty lands” are at the disposal of the great projects of transnational capitalism. To this representation of quilombola and indigenous territoriality as “empty lands” were also added social representations that did not recognize the full humanity of these people, relegating them to a non-human or sub-human zone, not being thought of as possible beneficiaries of certain public policies. It is not just a matter of having the necessary, but not sufficient, financial resources to guarantee the effectiveness of policies. It is necessary to consider the conceptions and modes of representation of life that are at stake. Why is the exclusion of certain social groups naturalized? Why does not excluding others cause discomfort? What is at stake when one accepts the precariousness of some and does not accept the precariousness of others?

Frantz Fanon (2006, 2008) faced similar reflections when he formulated the idea of Manicheism in the colonial world. For him, the white man inhabited the zone of being, while the black man inhabited the zone of not being. Therefore, it seems that, before a discussion about state capacity or even citizenship status, we have a first question: The ontology of the black, the quilombola, the indigenous, and the settler. Are these inhabitants of the zone of being? Would they enjoy the same status as humanity? These reflections lead to a deeper analysis of state programs, in general, and of the PDDE, in particular, intertwining the concepts of state capacity and racial state to assess the reach of public education policies in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements.

Although we can find traces of the theorizing about the racial state in a great tradition of researchers (DUSSEL, 1994; WINANT; OMI, 1994; MILLS, 1997), this theory is more synthesized by Theo Goldberg (2002). The main contribution of this theorization is the recognition of the centrality of race in the constitution of modern States. Not only state institutions, but also legislation, programs, policies, principles, values ​​, and public agents are racialized. The most explicit evidence of a racial state is its participation in the production and reproduction of national identity, controlling, for example, demographic flows and its active participation in the construction of nationality. As a rule, this historical process was accompanied by inclusions, preferences, and exclusions, which allows us to say that the State is not only racial but also racist. The State is also racist because it plays a central role in the production and reproduction of inequalities, in the constitution of racially formed spaces and places, in access and restrictions, etc. (GOLDBERG, 2002). In the history of the formation of the Brazilian republic, the participation of the State in the processes of exclusion and segregation of the indigenous, quilombola populations, and the settler populations, was evident, in its vast majority formed by non-white people.

We should emphasize that the racial state is not a separate and distant instance from the individuals. On the contrary, the effectiveness of their social power is due to symbiosis with social individuals. Its effectiveness can be seen when acting in the process of construction of individuals, without the need to be constituted as an external force or an institutional imposition. In other words, the racial State acts in the constitution of the subjectivities of individuals, making them subjects of the State and, at the same time, subjects to the State (GOLDBERG, 2003).

Understanding the symbiotic dimension between social individuals and the racial state is essential to understanding the naturalized view of the state's capacity for indigenous, quilombola, and settled communities. After all, according to the hegemonic social representations, these people maybe were not born to go through the school trajectory and contribute to the production of knowledge that takes place in universities, for example, or they were not born to contribute to public life and/or economy of the country. These reflections lead us to think that the issue of state capacity is intertwined with the racial dimension.

As a rule, discussions about state capacity are not articulated with the racial dimension, suggesting that the state would be a racially neutral instance. This is what prevailed during the validity of the myth of racial democracy and is still perpetuated today since not everyone is convinced of the structural weight of race in social life. The State is conceived as racially neutral, assumed equal conditions of competition, and did not differentiate the public from its policies, which resulted, in many cases, in the reproduction or even the increase of racial inequalities.

Aguiar and Lima (2019) carried out an extensive review of the literature produced in Brazil and abroad on state capacity and concluded that the most emphasized aspect of the studies is the bureaucratic dimension. He highlights the need for the State to have “a group of qualified professionals, with career perspectives, who share a certain perception about the objectives and desirability of intervention” (AGUIAR; LIMA, 2019, p. 8). Other dimensions explored in Brazilian studies on the concept, according to these authors, are relational - the ability of state bureaucracies to connect with different groups or mobilize political resources; coordination - the competence to interact and build policies together with governmental entities, or with representatives of civil society; and, finally, the ability to build consensus, negotiating different interests and building common policies. However, there are authors (CARBONETTI, 2012; HANSON; SIGMAN, 2013) who separated the technical-administrative dimension from the fiscal dimension - which relates to the competence to collect taxes necessary to cover expenses and make investments; and coercive, which means the power of the State to have the military force to guarantee security and enforce the legal system.

Gomide and Pires (2014) bring these various dimensions together in two main axes: the technical-administrative one about the competence of State agents to elaborate, implement and coordinate public policies) and the political one, which “refers to the skills of the bureaucracy of the Executive to expand the channels of dialogue, negotiation with the various social actors, processing conflicts and preventing capture by specific interests” (GOMIDE; PIRES, 2014, p. 20). Kjaer, Hansen, and Thomsen (2002) summarize these dimensions in other words, but similarly, in two major variables: structure and agency. In the first dimension, the resources and the bureaucratic-administrative organization of the State; in the second, the relational aspects, the competence to dialogue with different actors, design policies and build institutional arrangements.

In the set of variables that can influence the State in the elaboration and management of public policies, the proposition of Carbonetti (2012) deserves attention, when he says that few have explored how natural resources, geography, and climate are related to institutional aspects for whether or not to expand state capacity. He explains that having natural resources, for example, enables the State to be autonomous in a globalized economy, just as human and social capital facilitates the public administration to select qualified professionals to integrate the bureaucracy and obtain the participation of society in the management and execution of policies. On the other hand, these same variables can make it difficult for the state machine to work.

Unquestionably, all these dimensions listed by the bibliography to think about state capacity are fundamental. However, the absence of considerations about race as one of the dimensions of the concept is surprising. Carbonetti (2012) indirectly addresses the racial issue by including it as a component of social capital, which is indeed a constituent of state capacity. He argues that the more racial divisions there are in a society, the greater the challenges in developing social capital. However, he does not stop at the problem of how much the State bureaucracy may not be politically sensitive to think about specific actions for racialized people, that is, he does not pay due attention to the evaluative and racial dimensions that direct the actions of actors and, thus, of the State.

In Brazil, historically, the national state has always had difficulty in developing specific social policies for the so-called traditional populations, especially those geographically and symbolically distant from the center. The territorial extension of Brazil, the diversity of nations that integrate it and the dispersion of the population were factors that, inevitably, generated a cost to implement social policies. Other factors of an evaluative nature were added to these factors, associated with the process of formation of Brazilian society, which generated an immense contingent of excluded people: small farmers expelled from their plots, blacks, indigenous people, migrants, among other groups that do not even have their existence and recognized territoriality. The hegemonic worldview in Brazil not only produced a narrative that identified the territoriality of indigenous peoples, quilombolas, rural populations as a void, therefore, at the disposal of the expansion of capitalism but often identified such populations as an amorphous mass of peasants. Only in the 1980s, the claims for citizenship rights of these populations began to emerge on the political scene, from the action of the social movements that marked the opening of the military regime and established the political agenda that would guide the first election for governors, after the military coup, and the drafting of the text of the new Federal Constitution (1988). In the wake of the changes, a legal reference was developed to guarantee these populations' access to quality public education.

LEGAL REFERENCE AND THE CHALLENGES TO IMPLEMENT IT

Two processes were concomitant, from the 1980s onwards: the decentralization of social policies and the production of a regulatory reference to guarantee the rights of minorities. With the approval of the 1988 constitutional text, laws and infralegal norms were published to guarantee the permanence of quilombola and indigenous communities in their territories and the production of specific policies that recognize the influence of the cultural elements of these peoples in the formation of Brazilian society. In the education area, the enacted legislation outlined the guidelines for differentiated education, that is, bilingual (in the case of indigenous), intercultural, taught by specialized teachers, with didactic material and specific curricula, organized in flexible periods and with their learning methodologies. The contents to be studied should contribute to fostering anti-racist and emancipatory practices and reinforcing the identity of these peoples to produce what is conventionally called the “decolonization of curricula” (GOMES, 2018).

The LDBEN (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional), Law Guidelines and Bases of National Education n° 9.394/96 (BRASIL, 1996), reinforced the principles present in the constitutional text on indigenous school education. It granted freedom to indigenous communities to define, according to their particularities, their political-pedagogical projects. It established that content related to the history and culture of Afro-Brazilians and indigenous peoples should be taught within the entire school curriculum, highlighting the importance of black and indigenous peoples in the social, economic, and political areas, relevant to the history of Brazil. Similar guarantees were extended to the rural population: curricular content and appropriate methodologies, proper school organization, adequacy of the school calendar to the nature of work in rural areas, etc.

The National Education Plan (Plano Nacional de Educação), Law 10.172/2001 (BRASIL, 2001), set specific goals and objectives for indigenous education such as the universalization of elementary education, the didactic-pedagogical structuring of schools (in collaboration with the states), the institutionalization of exclusive indigenous sectors to take care of indigenous education in the education secretariats, among other actions. It was not as detailed as the law on quilombola communities but reinforced the guideline present in the LDBEN text by recommending the inclusion, in the training courses of education professionals, of content that contemplated the artistic and religious manifestations of the Afro-Brazilian segment. For students in rural areas, it provided for more flexible forms of school organization, adequate teacher training, distance education provision for young people and adults, reorganization of agrotechnical school networks, and the preservation of rural schools. The infralegal legislation came to complement the text of the LDBEN, such as Resolution CNE/CEB nº 8 of 2012 (BRASIL, 2012), which defined the National Curriculum Guidelines for Quilombola School Education in Basic Education (as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação Escolar Quilombola na Educação Básica).

Chart 1 summarizes the set of national legislation that contemplated the indigenous segments, quilombolas, and the rural population. This legal system created the production of state regulations to adapt national precepts to local particularities. These are norms and procedures that detail how indigenous and quilombola schools will be integrated into the state education system. The latest edition of the National Education Plan, Law 13.005/2014 (BRASIL, 2014), regulated that states and municipalities, when drawing up their education plans, contemplate the specific needs of rural populations and indigenous and quilombola communities, ensuring educational equity and cultural diversity.

Source: created by the authors (2020).

Chart 1 - Summary of federal legislation that regulates differentiated education for indigenous, quilombola, and rural populations. 

Chart 1 continuaton 

Therefore, since the 1980s, there has been significant production of national and state legislation to ensure differentiated and quality education for traditional populations. However, would this whole body of legislation have produced concrete results?

Cohn (2005) argues that, although the legislation is defined at the federal level, the functioning of schools depends on state and municipal administrations, which will regulate and regularize the situation of indigenous teachers as hired professionals and the functioning of school buildings. Araújo (2019) describes the experience as a teacher among the Tuxá peoples of Aldeia Mãe and the Pataxó Coroa Vermelha indigenous peoples, in Bahia, and considers that, although there is the mobilization of the indigenous community and efforts by the teaching staff to produce specific and intercultural education, many doubts and gaps remain on how to carry it out:

Teachers often use the terms: 'differentiated', 'specific', 'intercultural' education and say they work with these principles; however, in practice, the experiences presented by schools, object of this research and by others, the result of my journey towards education indigenous schools, are still very fragile, fragmented, punctual (ARAÚJO, 2019, p. 49).

A report produced by the Indigenous Missionary Council - CIMI Conselho Indigenista Missionário - (2018), linked to the Conference of Bishops of Brazil showed the adverse conditions of operation of indigenous schools across the country. The difficulties are many. There is a lack of official recognition of the teaching units (which is important for them to have access to public resources); lack of expansion in the number of vacancies; the functioning of the classrooms is improvised; the school buildings are in disrepair; there is a lack of school transport, among other problems. The report summarized that “schools, in general, are in poor conditions of infrastructure and basic sanitation. The poorly maintained buildings, with leaky roofs, rotting walls. There are no school supplies, no chairs, and tables” (CIMI, 2018, p. 108).

These testimonies lead to the question of whether the federal government's strategy, focused on issuing normative policies and decentralizing resources through universal programs, would be effective in guaranteeing quality and differentiated public education for traditional populations. Much of the research carried out on indigenous and quilombola education has not addressed this issue and is focused on answering three main points:

a) if the regulatory framework that provides for the teaching of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous history and culture is being complied with, that is, if schools and teacher training courses have included themes related to African and indigenous contributions in the formation of the society in the Brazilian syllabus (NASCIMENTO, 2017; MARQUES, 2018; CUSTÓDIO, 2019);

b) if the methodologies, contents, and didactic strategies adopted in indigenous and quilombola schools enable the construction and affirmation of the identity of traditional peoples if there is room for the construction of intercultural teaching and learning (COHN, 2005; OLIVEIRA; NASCIMENTO, 2012); CARRIL, 2017; SILVA et al., 2017; ARAÚJO, 2019);

c) if indigenous and quilombola schools contribute to fostering a counterculture that will destabilize or question current social standards to enable the process of emancipation of indigenous and quilombolas and encourage political organization (CHATES, 2011; MIRANDA, 2012; ALVES, 2017; SANTANA; MAGALHÃES, 2017).

Although these are important aspects, few articles discuss the issue of school dropout, school performance, the age-grade gap, and other topics related to the lack of specific policies for such population segments. Most research focuses on recognition policies, but few have verified the effectiveness of redistributive policies, that is, if the minimum conditions for the functioning of schools located in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements are being ensured, and if these communities have access to quality public education. These are aspects that will be dealt with in the next topic, based on the experience of the PDDE.

ACCESS TO INDIGENOUS SCHOOLS, QUILOMBOLAS, AND IN SETTLEMENTS TO PDDE

According to the 2019 School Census, published in 2020, there are 140,242 active public schools in Brazil. Of these, 114,295 are assisted by the PDDE. To receive program resources, the school must have an Executing Unit (ExU), that is, a duly registered social organization (school council, parent-teacher association, school fund, etc.), or be represented by an Executing Entity (ExE) - State Department of Education or City Hall -, when having less than 50 students. In addition, the municipality must have joined the program, and the school must update its enrollment annually and be up to date with the accountability.

In the country, there are 10,416 schools located in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements, which the School Census (2019) groups in the “differentiated location” category, corresponding to all schools officially registered as located in traditional communities. Chart 2 shows the distribution of these schools.

Source: MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019.

Chart 2 - Number of schools in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements, by region and state, in 2019. 

Of the 10,416 schools, 2,993 (28.7%) do not have an ExU, nor do they receive funds through the city hall or state secretariat. They simply do not participate in the PDDE and in any of its aggregated actions (Mais Educação, Ensino Médio Inovador, Escola Acessível, PDDE Água, PDDE Campo, Escolas Sustentáveis), according to data from the National Fund for the Development of Education (FNDE). The fact that they do not have ExU hinders for them to receive funds from shares, even when they are represented by an ExE. It is important to highlight that many educational policies of the MEC started to adopt, as of 2008, the PDDE as a way of transferring resources to schools due to the simplified execution model. Therefore, if schools do not have ExU, it can automatically be deduced that they were excluded from policies, such as Mais Educação aimed at promoting integral education; and the School Development Plan - Plano de Desenvolvimento Escolar - PDE Escola, a school management support program aimed at improving the Basic Education Development Index - Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica - IDEB - and school management, among others.

The lack of ExU means that schools are unable to receive direct transfers from the federal government, although the fact that they have ExU is still not a sufficient condition for them to have access to PDDE resources. If the school does not update the register or is in default with accountability, it is also not entitled to the PDDE and aggregate actions. According to the FNDE, in 2019, 670 of the schools present in quilombola, indigenous, and settlement communities were in these conditions. Thus, adding up the schools that do not have ExU/ExE, those that are in default, and those that have not updated their enrollment, we have 3,663 (or 35.5%) educational units in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements not covered by the program, harming 285 thousand students (Table 1).

Table 1 - Schools in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements, which did not receive PDDE funds, according to location and administrative sphere, in 2019. 

FEDERAL STATE MUNICIPAL TOTAL ENROLLMENTS
Urban INDIGENOUS 0 14 4 18 2,481
QUILOMBOLAS 0 12 23 35 11,544
Rural SETTLEMENTS 3 138 1,078 1,219 99,120
INDIGENOUS 0 760 1,000 1,760 124,414
QUILOMBOLAS 1 59 571 631 48,264
TOTAL 4 983 2,676 3,663 285,823

Source: MEC/FNDE e MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019.

The units that were assisted by the PDDE, in 2019, totaled 6,753 schools that, together, received R$ 28,3 million, benefiting 656 thousand students (Table 2). However, there were still 366 units that did not have the right to the fixed part, they only had access to the value per student, because they are represented by ExE and do not have their entity.

Table 2 - Schools in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements, which received funds from the PDDE, according to location and administrative level, in 2019. 

STATE MUNICIPAL TOTAL TRANSFERS(R$) ENROLLMENTS
Urban INDIGENOUS 21 11 32 174,404.11 6,961
QUILOMBOLAS 43 113 156 1,231,591.30 54,348
Rural SETTLEMENTS 166 3,129 3,295 13,968,285.88 321,639
INDIGENOUS 738 818 1,556 5,257,454.08 114,806
QUILOMBOLAS 41 1,673 1,714 7,696,974.63 158,305
TOTAL 1,009 5,744 6,753 28,328,710.00 656,059

Source: MEC/FNDE and MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019.

The values not transferred from PDDE resources are related in different ways to state capacity, not only in the bureaucratic-administrative dimension of the State but also because it deals with social capital, that is, how much the organization and Community participation can help the public administration to achieve better results (CARBONETTI, 2012). The absence of resource transfers through the PDDE is an indicator of this variable, as one of the reasons for the school not participating in the program is that it does not have a representative body. Education departments also play an important role, encouraging them to form their ExU and guiding them on how to manage resources and perform accountability. The lack of an administrative team in the secretariats, which knows the program and can provide technical assistance to school managers, influences the regularity of federal transfers. Thus, the state capacity of states and municipalities may have a strong relationship with the effectiveness of the PDDE.

Table 3 shows an approximate calculation of the total PDDE resources that quilombola, indigenous and settlement schools did not receive in 2019, as they did not have a representative entity. The calculation was based on the rules that govern the PDDE, FNDE Resolution 10, of April 18, 2013 (BRASIL, 2013). Approximately R$ 16 million were not transferred by the federal government - a resource that is guaranteed by law to all public elementary schools - Law 11,947, of June 16, 2009 (BRASIL, 2009). In these amounts, only the amount to which schools would be entitled as a Basic PDDE is accounted for, not considering the aggregate actions, whose per capita values are much more expressive5.

Table 3 - Amounts not transferred from the PDDE to schools located in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements, according to location, in 2019. 

Fixed Amount (a) Per capita (b) Number of ENROLLMENTS (c) Number of schools (d) c *b d*a Total R$
Urban With ExU 1,000 20.00 3,406 9 68,120.00 9,000.00 77,120.00
Without ExU 0.00 40.00 10,619 44 424,760.00 424,760.00
Rural With ExU 2,000 20.00 30,632 295 612,640.00 590,000.00 1,202,640.00
Without ExU 0.00 60.00 241,166 3,315 14,469,960.00 14,469,960.00
TOTAL 285,823 3,663 15,575,480.00 599,000.00 16,174,480.00

Source: MEC/FNDE and MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019.

* The value of the basic PDDE is made by the sum of the fixed and per capita value (Resolution of the FNDE nº 10/2013).

The volume of funds held by schools is another important indicator to assess the ability of the school community to use the transferred funds. In December 2019, R$ 26 million remained in the ExE and ExU bank accounts - approximately 92% of the amounts transferred that year (Table 4). The highest rate of non-execution was in the state education secretariats, which kept in cash almost ten times the amount corresponding to what they were entitled to, reaching the amount of more than R$ 8 million. Schools and their entities had lower non-execution (59%). On average, each entity had a bank balance of R$3,554.68, with the maximum amount reaching R$287,395.50 in the account of a municipal government in Pernambuco.

Table 4 - Amounts transferred and balances from the PDDE, in indigenous schools, quilombolas, and settlements in 2019, by Entity and Executing Unit. 

Transfers (R$) Balance (R$) Non-execution (%)
City Halls 6,180,670.00 5,665,872.00 92%
State Secretaries 840,930.00 8,014,512.50 953%
ExU 21,307,110.00 12,517,593.70 59%
TOTAL 28,328,710.00 26,197,978.20 92%

Source: MEC/FNDE and MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019.

* The balance considered in school bank accounts refers to December 2019.

Among those that received funds, 30% of the ExU had more than 100% of the PDDE transfer amount in a bank account that year. Among the schools that received the PDDE through the education departments and city halls, the rate of non-execution above 100% of the annual value of the PDDE reached 40%. A balance greater than the transfer is possible, as the ExU and ExE can accumulate resources from one year to the next and also the financial income.

We noted that the volume of resources per student transferred to state departments and city halls is small - R$ 40,00, if urban schools; and R$ 60,00, if rural, and the schools that receive these entities cannot have more than 50 students. If the fragile bureaucracy of small municipalities can find difficulties in executing the PDDE, in the case of state education secretariats there is no need to talk about state capacity because they have an administrative structure to carry out bids and purchases6. However, the inevitable question is: why did not they use the money to improve the physical structure of the schools or acquire didactic-pedagogical material?

According to the Basic Education Census (2019), schools located in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements have a very precarious physical structure. They are small, with an average of three to four classrooms, most are installed in a school building, but the building has a shed, ranch, or hovel structure for 30% of indigenous schools and 11% of schools in settlements. Indigenous schools are the ones with the most precarious structure: 41% do not have drinking water, 34% do not have electricity, only 57% have a bathroom and 80% do not have access to the Internet. Few schools have a library, cafeteria, and computer lab (Table 5).

Table 5 - Physical structure of schools located in indigenous communities, settlements, and quilombolas, in 2019. 

SETTLEMENTS % INDIGENOUS % QUILOMBOLAS %
It works in school building 4,094 91% 2,413 72% 2,450 97%
It works in shed 482 11% 1,004 30% 106 4%
Potable water 3,707 82% 1,994 59% 2,228 88%
Public mains water 890 20% 352 10% 859 34%
Public grid energy 3,861 86% 1,755 52% 2,404 95%
Non-existent energy 398 9% 1,144 34% 55 2%
Bathroom 3,956 88% 1,915 57% 2,401 95%
Library 572 13% 307 9% 352 14%
Kitchen 4,115 91% 1,972 59% 2,405 95%
Cafeteria 784 17% 389 12% 401 16%
Computer lab 597 13% 225 7% 338 13%
Internet 1,537 34% 647 19% 954 38%
Broadband Internet 978 22% 393 12% 712 28%
Average number of rooms used 4 3 4

Source: MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019.

Few schools use specific pedagogical material aimed at their students: 29% of indigenous schools; 13% of those located in quilombos; and 17% of those located in settlements. This indicator shows that the proposal for differentiated education, as described in the legislation, is far from happening (Table 6). The Census information reinforces the argument that classes are taught only in Portuguese for 25% of indigenous schools.

Table 6 - Specific pedagogical material in schools located in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements, in 2019. 

Pedagogical Material SETTLEMENTS INDIGENOUS QUILOMBOLAS
Count % Count % Count %
INDIGENOUS PEDAGOGICAL MATERIAL No 3,242 72% 1,029 31% 1,832 72%
Yes 37 1% 983 29% 17 1%
Not informed 1,235 27% 1,354 40% 687 27%
ETHNIC PEDAGOGICAL MATERIAL No 3,135 69% 1,896 56% 1,526 60%
Yes 144 3% 116 3% 323 13%
Not informed 1,235 27% 1,354 40% 687 27%
COUNTRYSIDE PEDAGOGICAL MATERIAL No 2,510 56% 1,757 52% 1,590 63%
Yes 769 17% 255 8% 259 10%
Not informed 1,235 27% 1,354 40% 687 27%
INDIGENOUS EDUCATION Não 4,510 100% 113 3% 2,533 100%
Sim 4 0% 3,253 97% 3 0%
INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE Indigenous 1 0% 119 4% 0 0%
Indigenous and Portuguese 0 0% 2,299 68% 1 0%

Source: MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019.

However, due to the flexibility of the PDDE, the money from the Program could be used to purchase didactic-pedagogical material, books for the library, purchase of water filters, equipment for a computer laboratory, small improvements in the school building, among other actions. The non-use of resources points to the possibility that the state capacity of city halls is one of its possible explanations since most of these schools are located in small municipalities, with a fragile economy, which does not even collect to support its payroll.

STATE CAPACITY OF MUNICIPALITIES

To measure state capacity, in the bureaucratic-administrative dimension, the Firjan Fiscal Management Index (Índice Firjan de Gestão Fiscal - IFGF) was used, but mainly one of its indicators, the one that assesses autonomy. The index was developed by the Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Firjan- Federação das Indústrias do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) and has national coverage and annual comparison. The data are taken from official results, declared by city governments to the National Treasury Secretariat, and available to the public by the Brazilian Public Sector Accounting and Tax Information System (Siconfi- Sistema de Informações Contábeis e Fiscais do Setor Público Brasileiro). The index consists of four indicators:

  1. ) Autonomy - it measures the municipality's ability to finance the administrative structure; calculated by local revenue minus administrative structure, divided by current net revenue;

  2. ) Personnel costs - it measures the degree of rigidity of the budget; calculated by personnel expenses divided by net current income;

  3. ) Liquidity - it measures the fulfillment of financial obligations; calculated by the cash value minus the balance payable, divided by current net income;

  4. ) Investment - it measures the capacity of the federated entity to generate well-being and competitiveness; calculated by the volume of investments divided by the total revenue.

For this research, we observed the IFGF, focusing mainly on the Autonomy indicator, as it is important to know the capacity or inability of the municipality to sustain the professional bureaucracy, capable of carrying out the execution of programs and the management of transferred resources. The Autonomy index verifies the relationship between the revenue from the municipality's economic activities and the costs necessary to maintain the city council and the administrative structure of the city hall. It varies from zero to one, and the closer to zero, the lower the capacity of the municipality to generate enough local revenue to fund its administrative structure. For the research, the last published values were considered: IFGF 2019, the base year of 2018. Although some of the schools selected for this research belong to the state education network, 80.8% are in the municipal network 7, which enables to use of the aforementioned indicator.

We also used the Firjan Municipal Development Index (IFDM- Índice Firjan de Desenvolvimento Municipal), of a socioeconomic nature. In this case, the objective is not to measure state capacity, but to verify the influence of the socioeconomic variable on the use of resources. The IFDM classifies all Brazilian municipalities according to three areas: employment and income, education and health (Table 3). The data are obtained from information from the Ministries of Labor and Employment, Education, and Health. Based on them, the municipalities are grouped into the categories low (0.4 to 0.4), regular (0.4 to 0.6), moderate (0.6 to 0.8), and high (0.8 to 1). For the analysis, the latest published data were considered: IFDM 2018, the base year of 2016.

Source: FIRJAN. Available at: http://publicacoes.firjan.org.br/ifdm2018/11/#zoom=z, p. 11. Access on: Jan. 24. 2019.

Chart 3 - Summary of IFDM Components - 2018. 

The schools are concentrated in 1,623 municipalities, distributed by region as follows: 45.9% in the Northeast; 18.5% in the North; 13.2% in the Southeast; 11.6% in the South; and 10.8% in the Midwest. There is IFGF and IFDM information for 1,546 and 1,594 cities, respectively. Of the municipalities, 82% have critical or difficult IFGF, in which 83.4% of educational establishments are concentrated (Table 7). When focusing on the Autonomy indicator, it appears that the management of 76.1% of the cities was classified as critical or in difficulty, where 81.1% of the studied teaching units are located. This means that they are federated entities that do not generate enough revenue to even bear the costs of their administrative structures. Therefore, we can deduce that they are fragile bureaucracies, which work through temporary contracts, with low salaries and low-qualified professionals. They are also municipalities that are more dependent on transfers from the federal government and, for this reason, should use all the resources of decentralization programs. However, this is not the result found, as shown before: ExU and ExE had significant bank balances in specific PDDE accounts. The average of the IFGF - Autonomy was 0.2986, below the national average, considered very low by Firjan, which was 0.3855.

Table 7 - Distribution of schools located in settlements, indigenous communities, and quilombolas according to IFGF (2019), IFGF - Autonomy (2019), and IFDM (2018) of municipalities. 

IFGF_AUTONOMY (N= 9,722)
CRITICAL IN DIFFICULTY GOOD MANAGEMENT EXCELLENT
Settlements 3,155 30.3% 470 4.5% 183 1.8% 445 4.3%
Indigenous 2,469 23.7% 252 2.4% 121 1.2% 229 2.2%
Quilombolas 1,972 18.9% 133 1.3% 110 1.1% 183 1.8%
Total 7,596 72.9% 855 8.2% 414 4.0% 857 8.2%
IFDM (N= 10.019)
LOW MODERATE REGULAR HIGH
Settlements 28 0.3% 2,694 25.9% 1,531 14.7% 56 0.5%
Indigenous 133 1.3% 2,357 22.6% 752 7.2% 36 0.3%
Quilombolas 21 .2% 1,527 14.7% 878 8.4% 6 0.1%
Total 182 1.7% 6,578 63.2% 3,161 30.3% 98 0.9%
IFGF (N= 9,722)
CRITICAL IN DIFFICULTY GOOD MANAGEMENT EXCELLENT
Settlements 2,626 25.2% 1,170 11.2% 305 2.9% 152 1.5%
Indigenous 1,759 16.9% 922 8.9% 350 3.4% 40 0.4%
Quilombolas 1,501 14.4% 712 6.8% 142 1.4% 43 0.4%
Total 5,886 56.5% 2,804 26.9% 797 7.7% 235 2.3%

Source: Firjan and MEC/INEP, Basic Education Census, 2019.

The performance of the IFDM is slightly better than the other indicators: 42% of the municipalities are classified as having low or moderate performance and concentrate 65% of the studied teaching units. However, the average IFDM of the cities where indigenous, quilombola, and settlement schools are located is 0.62, while the national IFDM is 0.6678. However, the indicator also considers data from education, but for many of these schools, there is no information of this nature.

When analyzing the Basic Education Development Index (IDEB- Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica) 2019, an indicator that makes up the IFDM, there is IDEB information for 13.7% of schools in the early years of elementary school and 10.1% for those in the final years. The few schools evaluated had an average IDEB of 4,43 (in elementary school, early years) and 3,79 (in elementary school, final years), below the national average, which was, respectively, 5,9 and 4,9 (Table 8).

The lack of information on the IDEB is also a fact that points to the absence of the State in these communities, as the indicator assists the MEC to define public policies and prioritize the public benefiting from the programs. If the schools did not participate in the IDEB (N=10,416) 8, it means that the reality of these teaching units, at least in terms of school performance, will not be considered in the planning of public policies. In the analysis, we observed that data from high school were not considered, as only 14% of schools offer this stage, although this is an old demand of these populations as a way of guaranteeing the permanence of young people in the territories9.

Table 8 - Percentage of schools located in settlements, indigenous and quilombola communities that have IDEB for elementary education, in 2019. 

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL EARLY YEARS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FINAL YEARS
Average IDEB Valid % Missing % Average IDEB Valid % Missing %
Settlements 4.57 771 17.1% 3,743 82.9% 3.98 585 13.0% 3,929 87.0%
Indigenous 3.66 162 4.8% 3,204 95.2% 3.01 104 3.1% 3,262 96.9%
Quilombolas 4.48 499 19.7% 2,037 80.3% 3.70 365 14.4% 2,171 85.6%
TOTAL 4.43 1,432 13.7% 8,984 86.3% 3.79 1,054 10.1% 9,362 89.9%

Source: MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019, and IDEB 2019.

The IFDM considers the municipality's data, but it may be that the reality of the communities is even more critical. An indicator that reinforces this argument is the one that deals with the age-grade distortion for elementary school. It measures the proportion of students who are more than two years behind in school. According to INEP data (BRASIL, 2019), 23.4% of students who study in schools located in settlements are out of school-age; in indigenous schools, it is 38.9%; and 21.5% are concentrated in schools located in quilombos. The average of this indicator for the municipalities where there are indigenous, quilombola, and settlement schools is 22.4%; the average of the same indicator focusing only on the group of target schools of this research rises to 27.92%. There are schools in this group that present 97.6% of age-grade distortion, with practically all students out of school-age (Table 9).

Table 9 - Age-grade distortion index, in elementary school, of municipalities that have schools in settlements, indigenous and quilombola communities, compared to the schools, in 2019. 

Variables Average Minimum 1st Quartil 2nd Quartil 3rd Quartil Maximum
Age-grade distortion (Municipality) 22.4% 1.20% 14.9% 22.5% 29.8% 62%
Age-grade distortion (schools) 27.92% 0% 12.2% 25% 39.9% 97.6%

Source: MEC/INEP Basic Education Census, 2019, and age-grade indicator 2019.

In Brazil, the age-grade distortion rate in 2019 was 16.2%. Therefore, it was much better than the average of municipalities that house indigenous schools, quilombolas, and settlements. The rate of these municipalities is below the national rate, but it can be even worse when only the schools selected for this study are focused, as shown in Table 9.

Several correlation tests were performed between non-execution of resources (as a dependent variable) or bank balances and IFGF and IFGM, and no values were found that indicated a strong correspondence. The IFGF - Autonomy index is an important indicator of state capacity, although it does not represent the concept in all its dimensions. The schools selected for the study are concentrated in municipalities with low IFGF, but it is necessary to consider other indicators of state capacity that will also interfere, such as the experience of community organization and social control. Also, we have to consider variables such as the stability of school operation (conflicts over land tenure, climate variations, and other factors that can suspend classes) and the political interest of municipal and state administrations in providing technical assistance to school managers. The indexes were calculated for the municipalities, and the balance and transfer data were extracted by schools, which tend to have worse performance indicators than their municipalities.

An exercise to compare the performance of indigenous, quilombolas, and settlements schools for the municipalities where they are located (N=1,623) can be done using the distribution indicators of the balance of the PDDE per capita, in 2019. These schools presented values higher than those observed in their respective municipalities, that is, the non-performance of these schools was worse than the other schools in the same municipalities, demonstrating that it is not just the state capacity variable that influences the results. The average PDDE balance of schools with different locations, for example, was R$ 114.29, while the average of all schools in the municipalities was R$ 12.52 (Table 10). In 60% of the municipalities, quilombola, indigenous and settlement schools had a higher average balance than the set of schools in their respective municipalities.

Table 10 - Comparison of the distribution of the per capita balance of the PDDE by the municipality of all schools and in indigenous, quilombola, and settlement schools in 2019. 

Indigenous, quilombolas and settlements schools All the school
Number 1,623 1,623
Average 114.29 12.52
Median 18.70 10.24
Minimum 0 0
Maximum 17,566.62 98.87
Percentiles 10 0.22 3.27
20 2.03 5.09
30 6.54 6.59
40 12.63 8.30
50 18.70 10.24
60 27.91 12.51
70 38.85 14.99
80 61.18 18.00
90 159.27 24.46

Source: MEC/FNDE, 2019.

In this way, the data allow us to deduce that other variables interfere, in addition to state capacity, raising the hypothesis of racial criteria. The fact that the State does not prioritize these communities or does not spend the necessary administrative effort to make the educational program work ends up indicating a racialist action, of discrimination since the students of these schools are not entitled to the benefits of a universal program, guaranteed by law - Law 11,947/2009 (BRASIL, 2009). As Dye (2013) states, public policy is also what a government chooses to ignore.

Other results that reinforce the argument that there are other dimensions of state capacity to influence the results of the programs are the raw balance and transfer data, grouped by IFG - Autonomy (Table 11). It appears that the more the administrative autonomy of the municipality increases and the more the municipality collects enough to cover its administrative expenses, the greater the volume of balance and the average bank balance per school, amplifying the non-execution of the transferred amounts. Therefore, the results go in the opposite direction to the initial hypothesis. The richer the municipality, the greater the administrative and financial autonomy, the less interest there is in spending federal government resources - although the non-execution rate is very high for all schools located in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements.

Table 11 - Transfers from the PDDE to schools in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements, according to IFGF - Autonomia, in 2019. 

IFGF-Autonomy Quantity of Schools Balance Average Balance (R$) Transfers (R$) Non-execution (%)
Critical 7,596 17,324,258.29 3,273.67 19,763,228.83 87,7%
In difficulty 855 2,242,970.32 3,424.38 2,406,664.24 93,2%
Good management 414 1,582,859.27 5,089.58 1,433,454.89 110,4%
Excellent 857 3,903,419.63 5,740.32 3,221,977.53 121,1%
Without information 694 1,144,470.69 2,649.24 1,503,384.51 76,1%
Total 10,416 26,197,978.20 3,554.68 28,328,710.00 92,5%

Source: MEC/FNDE and Firjan.

The results of non-execution of resources indicate that transfers cannot occur without being accompanied by a policy agreed by the three levels of the federation, especially when it comes to needy populations, which require greater attention and effort from the State to design specific solutions for their realities. Grinet al. (2019) argue that the greater the level of state capacity of municipalities, “the greater the possibilities that they can define their government agendas with autonomy and independence from the intrusions and conditioning of higher levels of government” (GRIN et al., 2019, p. 3). The federative model grants equal political autonomy to the three levels of government, none is subordinate to the other. Therefore, to develop public policies on a national scale, interaction and agreement on concerted action are necessary. Some situations arise in the execution stage that will need to be negotiated by the entities, which cannot be left to school managers.

In this way, the edition of a regulatory reference, such as the one existing in the case of traditional communities, although important for the recognition of indigenous, quilombola, and rural issues is not enough to be carried out in practice, even when accompanied by the transfer of resources. The Government, meeting with representatives of municipal and state powers, and with entities representing society, need to design specific strategies, establish goals and deadlines to guarantee “differentiated education”. We highlight the challenge of carrying it out as it will require specific knowledge of public servants who will provide the service and the development of their pedagogy and didactic material. Paraphrasing Peter Evans (1993), the expansion of State attributions and responsibilities is not reflected in an increase in state capacity, which tends to grow more slowly than the expansion of tasks, as it demands a period of learning, of elaborating administrative solutions, techniques and, in this case, pedagogical techniques. Secchi (2012) explains that in the implementation phase, bureaucrats exert greater influence on the results of policies, as they will interpret them, being able to direct them to results different from what was initially programmed: “The autonomy of implementation of street level bureaucrats can go from a level of super-compliance, in the case where employees decide to implement a political orientation to the letter, to levels of total disobedience to the rules” (SECCHI, 2012, p. 85).

However, as we highlighted, the problem in the execution of the Program does not seem to be resolved in the technical-bureaucratic dimension. The State's passivity about the non-execution of public programs, in general, and the PDDE, in particular, can be informed by the raciality of the State. The precariousness of physical facilities, the absence of adequate teaching material, the high rates of age-grade distortion in schools in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and in settlements, given the availability of financial resources, do not seem to be a surprise to public managers, nor to society. This state of normalization of poverty and precariousness can perhaps say a lot about the hegemonic social representations of these populations.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The analysis of a government program, apparently not very complex for its execution, such as the PDDE, allows important reflections on the effectiveness of decentralization policies, state capacity, and the racialist practices of the Brazilian State.

The data demonstrate that the simple issue of a new regulatory reference is not enough to guarantee the results of a differentiated and intercultural education policy. The precarious functioning of schools and the absence of specific teaching material shows the lack of commitment of public management to guarantee access to quality basic education for quilombola, indigenous and settlement children. Even when federal resources are available, these populations do not benefit from the programs. The situation is even worse when we knew that it was not only the Basic PDDE that they did not have access to, but also several other policies of the Ministry of Education, which, since 2007, have started to use the PDDE resource decentralization model.

Therefore, the automatic transfer of public amounts does not mean that they will reach the public most in need. It is necessary to follow up and monitor the execution and agree, between the levels of federal, state, and municipal government, the results to be achieved. Although essential, the existence of a qualified technical-bureaucratic body and fiscal availability is not enough, there must be a political orchestration for the policies to be successful. The idealized advantages of decentralization may not be done if there is no connection between politics and local reality. It is often assumed that the agents responsible for implementation have understood the technical-administrative dimensions and are committed to the macro-objectives of the policy - which may not happen in practice. In the case of the PDDE, we assumed that public managers and school communities would be interested in constituting the ExU and adhering to the program; however, research revealed that this is not always the case.

Local managers may assess that the costs of implementing the Program are greater than the political gains, simply choosing to ignore, in this way, the needs of traditional populations. Intentional State action or inaction leads to the same result, that is, to a racialist attitude, which contributes to reinforcing the situation of social exclusion and racial discrimination to which these populations have historically been subjected. Difficulties in reaching distant territories, where these populations often reside, or in preparing specific teaching materials, teaching classes in their languages, selecting qualified teachers - all this can be an obstacle to carrying out a differentiated and intercultural policy but does not justify the absence of the state. We can speak of the absence that, although there is an educational program, although there is a budget to benefit schools located in traditional communities, the program is not effective, the money does not translate into concrete benefits for the community. Therefore, studies on state capacity can be made more complex when introducing the racial dimension. It is not a mere coincidence that indigenous, quilombola, and settlement schools are located in municipalities with more negative levels of state competence, resulting in a high rate of financial failure, precisely in the social contexts that most need resources. It is astonishing to see that precisely the municipalities and schools that most need resources are those that do not access them, or, having received the money, do not use it. In other words, the astonishing thing is to see that, even when the money exists, it is not used.

Combined with explanations centered on the idea of state capacity, which calls attention to the technical-bureaucratic, fiscal, and political dimensions (consensus building), we also highlight the racial dimension of the state. This does not mean that the State, in the face of one or another indigenous or quilombola community or settlements (mostly made up of non-whites), acted in an explicitly racist manner. However, it is necessary to highlight the passivity and even the omission of the State in the face of the existence of a vicious circle of poverty and inefficiency that affects the schools of these communities. The absence or low quality of the public education service offered by the State seems naturalized. The normalization of this reality allows us to speak of the State's participation as a structuring actor of social life, by delimiting its borders, by defining who is included or excluded, by contributing to the production and reproduction of social inequalities.

Universal programs for the decentralization of resources are not enough to deal with complex realities such as those experienced by schools located in indigenous communities, quilombolas, and settlements. When the State does not arrive with its policies - not only physically, but symbolically -, it is up to the same State to listen to the social actors involved and evaluate their practice to seek new technical-administrative and political solutions. The overcoming of the racialist position that, historically, has marked the performance of the Brazilian State will only take place from a propositional stance, with the elaboration of differentiated policies and the agreement of goals and deadlines by the federated entities.

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3“The remaining meaning of quilombo was a negotiated formulation handle with the great diversity of processes of access to land by the enslaved black population, which include: escapes with occupation of free lands, generally isolated; inheritances, donations, receipt of land as payment for services rendered to the State; permanence on cultivated land within large properties. Mocambos, black lands, black territory, among other meanings, were brought together in the definition of remaining communities of quilombos to identify populations that could not be confused with the historic quilombos nor associated solely by descent” (MIRANDA, 2012, p. 372). Several researchers have criticized this idea of “remainder” for meaning something that is left or something residual. On the contrary, what ethnographic research has revealed is the dynamics of what is recognized as a quilombo, its historicity. Hence the whole discussion about its resemantization. However, the discussion about the concept has not been enough to reduce bureaucracy and speed up the process of demarcation of quilombola lands, as impasses arise related to what should be considered: the area of the property or the territory self-recognized as quilombo; other issues related to the federal government's resistance to recognizing indigenous and quilombo areas in border or national security regions; and the overlap between areas of environmental preservation or settlement and areas of quilombos. (ALMEIDA, 2011).

4Isolation does not necessarily mean physical distance, as space is a relative category. Isolation can happen even in nearby areas or in urban centers, in areas marginalized by the government.

5The study considered only the Basic PDDE, and not the aggregated actions, as these are not regular transfers and are not universal. The selection of schools, in the case of aggregated actions, are based on criteria of the Ministry of Education.

6City Halls and State Department of Education, which are Executing Entities (ExE), must obey the law 8.666, that concerns to the use of public resources, in order to use the PDDE’s resources. In the case of Executing Units, which represent schools, it is not necessary to follow the mentioned law. It is enough to present three price cotations and choose the best price.

7 As schools located in indigenous communities, quilombolas and settlements demand a differentiated methodology of education, the legislation recommends, in the case of indigenous people, that schools be the responsibility of the state education system - Opinion CNE/CEB nº 14/1999 (SÃO PAULO, 1999). However, in 2019, 80.8% of schools aimed at people in the municipal network.

8According to the 2019 IDEB Informative Note, IDEB is not calculated in the following situations: exclusively private schools, Vocational Education, Youth and Adult Education and Normal/Teaching High School; schools with fewer than ten students enrolled; who did not adhere to the SAEB 2019; who carried out the SAEB 2019, but did not provide information to the School Census about the approved students; who did not register at least ten students present at the time of application of the SAEB; and schools where the number of SAEB participants did not reach 80% of the enrolled students.

9The demand for Secondary Education (Regular, Vocational or Proeja) to be taught in indigenous territory is part of the proposals approved in the final plenary of the I and II National Conference on Indigenous School Education, held in 2009 and 2018, respectively.

* The translation of this article into English was funded by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES-Brasil.

Received: November 16, 2020; Accepted: March 02, 2021

Cinara Lobo - Project coordination, conceptualization, data collection and analysis, and original writing.

Joaze Bernardino-Costa - Project coordination, conceptualization, and review of the final writing.

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest with this article.

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