Early Childhood Education

This section received very few changes throughout the term of the LDBEN, all resulting from Law 12,796/2013. Despite the advent of the BNCC to establish references for the essential learning to be developed throughout basic education for the changes related to the section on early childhood education in the LDBEN/1996, nothing was incorporated, unlike the section dedicated to secondary education, which had changes specifically aimed at restructuring the curriculum policy for this stage of basic education.

Having been maintained as the first stage of basic education, early childhood education aims at the integral development of the child, up to the age of 5, in its physical, psychological, intellectual, and social aspects, complementing the action of the family and the community. In the previous version of Art. 29, this stage extended up to 6 years old. Art. 30 contains another change also related to the age group, this time to specify the age range of the dissociable sub-stages in which early childhood education should be offered. The first of these, the nursery, or equivalent entities, remains unchanged, being intended for children up to 3 years old. The second, the preschool, was changed, starting to be offered to children from 4 to 5 years old.

There is also a modification for including the rule that now regulates the provision of the initial stage of school. Among the common rules for organizing early childhood education, added to Art. 31 of LDBEN/1996, the first of them was extracted from the former caput of this article, having been partially converted into the current wording of Item I. This item establishes that the evaluation, at this stage of teaching, must be carried out “through monitoring and record of children's development, without the objective of promoting, even for access to elementary education”, which represented a great advance (^{FURTADO; PAIVA, 2016}).

Therefore,

in addition to the fact that the law has saved the right to start basic education at the ideal age, the child, up to 5 years old, has also been assured a school path free of eventual failures, since the effect of the learning assessment, in this age group, should not generate retention in the school career (^{MACHADO; ANDRADE, 2021}, p.53).

The following two rules give early childhood education the same norms valid for the other teaching stages. Effectively, early childhood education is now offered with a minimum annual workload of 800 hours, distributed over a minimum of 200 days of educational work (Section II); child care for at least 4 hours a day for part-time shifts, and 7 hours for full-time shifts (Section III);

As for the attendance control to be carried out by the preschool education institution, unlike the elementary and high school stages, which require 75% attendance, early childhood education is required to attend at least 60% of the total hours (Item IV). The fifth rule requires the issuance of documentation that allows attesting to the child's development and learning processes (Section V).

The paper organized by ^{Zoia, Pasqualotto, and Cossetin (2019}), entitled “Childhood Education: in defense of a humanizing education in times of struggles and resistance”, contains a set of studies with relevant reflections on the achievements concerning the guarantee of the right to early childhood education in the country as well as the challenges in the current historical context. Regarding the repercussions of Law 12,796/2013 on the provision of early childhood education, the study by Zanotto, Zen, and Machado (2019), which is part of the aforementioned work, recognizes the extreme importance of everyone's access to education but also considers that “the expansion of the obligation, which could be a step forward, ends up being affected, since it provides for access, but does not create conditions for the permanence and for the effectiveness of teaching and learning with quality” (Idem, p.25).

The reality is that the advance in the legal requirement of a minimum annual workload, a minimum of days and hours of educational work, as well as attendance control to be carried out by the institution of preschool education, demands the confrontation of persistent basic problems along the historical trajectory of this level of school that involve “the formation of teachers, the provision of adequate structural conditions to be with young children, the provision of diversified materials for the development of activities, among others” (^{LIRA; DREWINSKI; SAPELLI, 2016}, p.94-95).

These demands reinforce how much legal progress must be accompanied by public policies that assert formally instituted rights, particularly in the early childhood education stage since overcoming the challenges pointed out by the aforementioned authors is an urgent agenda. In effect, we understand, as well as the authors, that “the extension of compulsory education must be accompanied by public funding so that early childhood education is offered in institutions with adequate structure and faculty conditions and with a specific pedagogical proposal for this age group” (Idem, p.95).

We must recognize that the changes made in LDBEN/1996 are essentially favorable to advances in guaranteeing the right to early childhood education. One of the contributions of Law nº 12.796/2013 to the Education Law was precisely the proclamation of the guarantee of compulsory and free basic education, starting, unprecedentedly, at the age of 4. Therefore, it incorporates preschool as an undeniable right in school education since those responsible for the child were responsible for enrolling their sons and daughters, just as the State was charged with the duty of offering this stage of compulsory schooling.

Elementary School

Elementary education was originally chosen by the legislature as the only mandatory stage of education in the country. Even though there is no longer a requirement for compulsory completion of a stage of basic education, the achievement of mandatory education from 4 to 17 years old, currently in force, was preceded by a process of extending the mandatory duration of this teaching stage, moving from the legal provision (LDBEN/1996, Art. 32) that established the minimum duration of eight years for its experience, to the wording given by Law nº 11.114/2005 (^{BRASIL, 2005a}), authored by senator Ricardo Santos (PSDB/ES), who made it mandatory to start this stage from 6 years old.

The current version of Art. 32, resulting from the wording given by Law nº 11.274/2006 (^{BRASIL, 2006}), authored by Deputy Raquel Teixeira (PSDB/GO), asks for this progressive expansion, by establishing that compulsory fundamental education now lasts 9 years, free in public school, to be started at the age of 6, with the objective of basic citizen formation.

As in the section on early childhood education, the section dedicated to elementary education in the Education Law has not been altered to comply with the curriculum policy established through the BNCC. To Art. 32, which already contains devices related to this matter, two paragraphs were added that seeks to qualify the curricular dimension of fundamental education, in the case of an insertion that precedes the advent of the BNCC. Under Law 11,525/2007 (^{BRASIL, 2007a}), authored by Senator Patrícia Saboya Gomes (S/Partido/CE), the elementary school curriculum now includes, obligatorily, content that deals with the rights of children and adolescents, having as a guideline the Child and Adolescent Statute, observing the production and distribution of adequate didactic material (LDBEN/1996, Art. 32, § 5º).

The other addition complied with the provisions of Law 12,472/2011 (^{BRASIL, 2011}), which, 11 years after its proposal by Senator Luzia Toledo (PSDB/ES), became § 6 of the current LDBEN, to establish that the study on national symbols is now included as a cross-cutting theme in elementary school curricula.

Less than two months after the LDBEN was sanctioned, federal deputy Nelson Marchezan (PSDB/RS) presented, on 02/19/1997, a project that resulted in Law nº 9.475/1997 (BRASIL, 1997a), being the first law that brought changes to the Education Law. Until then, the changes had resulted from decrees and provisional measures issued by the executive branch, exercised by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Law 9,475/1997 gave new wording to Art. 33 of the LDBEN. Until its amendment, this article advocated that religious education was optional, constituted a discipline in the normal hours of public elementary schools, and was offered free of charge to public coffers. Items I and II of the original version of Art. 33 established that religious teaching had a confessional character, according to the religious option of the student or his guardian, taught by teachers or religious counselors prepared and accredited by the respective churches or religious entities; or interconfessional, resulting from an agreement between the various religious entities, which would be responsible for drawing up the respective program.

The modified version of Art. 33, currently in force, states that “religious education, with optional registration, is an integral part of the citizen's basic education and constitutes a discipline in the normal hours of public elementary schools, ensuring respect for Brazil's religious cultural diversity, prohibited any form of proselytism”.

The optional condition of enrolment is maintained but there is the insertion of an excerpt that formally conceives religious education as an “integral part of the citizen's basic education”. From this, it can be deduced that, despite granting the faculty to decide whether or not to accept the experience of this teaching and discipline in the elementary school stage, the law suggests that the abdication of the religious dimension also leaves the basic formation of the citizen incomplete.

The inclusions of paragraphs 1 and 2 that were integrated into Art. 33 set the tone for the character and extent instilled in the State's action in this matter. According to § 1 of Art. 33, “the education systems will regulate the procedures for defining the contents of religious teaching and will establish the norms for the qualification and admission of teachers”. Paragraph 2 provides that “the education systems will listen to a civil entity, constituted by the different religious denominations, for the definition of the contents of religious education”.

There is an evident emphasis on the performance of education systems regarding the regulation of contents related to the religious dimension that, listening to religious denominations, must be incorporated into the school process in the elementary school stage. Another equally important aspect to be highlighted is that, unlike what was established in the previous version of the law that religious teaching should be “given by teachers or religious counselors prepared and accredited by the respective churches or religious entities”, under the terms of the § 1 of Art. 33 the LDBEN, it is also the education system that must establish the norms for the qualification and admission of teachers who will teach religious education in the country.

When weaving his analysis of this change in the law, ^{Saviani (2016}) formulates an epistemological note that appropriately synthesizes the essence of the changes in the LDBEN regarding the provision of religious education. According to the author

the reason for this change was pressure from the Catholic Church, which, in addition to guaranteeing the inclusion of religious education as a compulsory subject in the elementary school curricula, already guaranteed by the Constitution, also intended that this teaching be remunerated from public coffers. The aforementioned law enabled us to meet this claim by excluding the expression “without charge to the public coffers” that appeared in Art. 33 of the text was approved on December 20, 1996 (^{SAVIANI, 2016}, p.255. Emphasis added).

This concise synthesis, extracted from ^{Saviani's (2016}) broad and in-depth analysis of the LDBEN's trajectory, shows what is essentially inferred from the interests that moved this first modification made to the Education Law, after seven months of its effectiveness. This is exactly a resumption of the historical dispute over public funds to finance education, with the return to the scene of the Catholic Church's interlocutors. Since always, and once again, they distinguished in the LDBEN's processing process, had demonstrated great impetus in its crusade to maintain religious education as a basic formative dimension of the citizen but with the financial co-guardianship of the State. In this sense, this change in the law constitutes a countermovement in the process of secularization of the State, so often questioned by agents moved by anti-republican interests.

High school

This stage of basic education was significantly altered under Law nº 13,415/2017 in which we have already commented previously on its authorship and context of its proposal and sanction in the Michel Temer government. With the advent of this law, secondary education received inclusions of an article and a set of paragraphs and items that, formally, radically modified its offer and perspectives of its experience.

With the inclusion of Art. 35-A advocates one of the main changes made in the teaching stage focused on this section of the law: the institution of a National Common Curricular Base (BNCC- Base Nacional Comum Curricular) that should define rights and learning objectives of secondary education, according to the guidelines of the National Council of Education, in four areas of knowledge that were also included by the aforementioned law: languages and their technologies (Section I); mathematics and its technologies (Section II); natural sciences and their technologies (Item III); applied human and social sciences (Item IV).

Despite the caput of Art. 35-A contains a textual articulation between the proposal of the BNCC and the achievement of areas of knowledge in the curricular organization of secondary education, what is evident in the paragraphs of this article is the emphasis on what is up to each education system to define and implement such as the diversified part of the curricula, § 1º; the number of hours allocated to comply with the BNCC, § 5; and the contents, methodologies and forms of procedural and formative evaluation, § 8.

An explanation of curricular components selectively conceived as mandatory or optional in the three years of high school is “the teaching of the Portuguese language and mathematics” (§ 3), implying that one wants to adopt the logic of living each subject per se. We observe that to refer to the mandatory components, the expression “the teaching of” [Portuguese language and mathematics] is used, while for the components that do not achieve such status, the expression “studies and practices of” [physical education, art, sociology, and philosophy], § 2; or simply “the study of” [English language], § 4. The possibility of offering other modern foreign languages appears even more discredited, since that same § 4 of Art. 35-A is complemented with the section that says: “They may (education systems) offer other foreign languages, on an optional basis, preferably Spanish.

Thus, the idea given to the organization of areas of knowledge “as a means to carry out a pedagogical practice that results in the development of skills and competences, taking interdisciplinarity and contextualization as a principle, without, however, defining them” (^{MENDES, 2020}, p. 483), is not carried out in the article under consideration.

In this way, it becomes pertinent to endorse a preliminary question also contained in the study published by ^{Mendes (2020}). The author specifically asks the following question: what is new in the areas of knowledge in the new high school? We can at least partially answer this question, recognizing that the main novelty is the inclusion of areas of knowledge in the body of LDBEN/1996, which was not yet included, despite its mention in infrarenal norms.

In fact, from how the areas of knowledge are mentioned in the LDBEN, it seems that this expression already has a fully consolidated meaning in other norms, which is why it can be inferred that the Education Law only reserves the formalization of which areas must compose the curriculum. In general, the expectation hovering over the achievement of areas of knowledge converges with the idea of promoting the articulation of what is common between the disciplines of the curriculum. The fact is that, according to ^{Mendes (2020}), in the analysis of the documents that underlie the “new secondary education”, the areas of knowledge are not linked to the idea of “a relationship between particularity and totality that forms a unit”, but “denote a dilution of specificity in favor of generalization, in a mistaken perspective on interdisciplinarity” (Idem, p.488).

Therefore, there is very little to record in response to the question about what is new in the areas of knowledge in the new high school. Therefore, we conclude, based on the studies that were directly or indirectly interested in this question (^{PFEIFFER; GRIGOLETTO, 2018}; ^{FERRETTI, 2018}; ^{KUENZER, 2017}), that the most appropriate answer for the moment was formulated by ^{Mendes ( 2020}) when he records the following assertion at the end of his study:

It is believed that what is new would be the uncertainties about curricular configurations, as this depends on the interest and interpretations in the state systems, and the certainty that young people in Brazilian public secondary education will have usurped their constitutional rights of equality in educational training (Idem, p.488).

This assertion by the author, with emphasis on the uncertainties of the real curricular configurations that will be implemented by the education systems but also on the certainty that young people with the right to secondary education are at the imminent risk of an unequal experience at this stage of basic training, has a direct connection with the debate on the publicized training itineraries, a topic that we will analyze next.

To carry out the main promise propagandized by the Federal Government, in the period of conversion of Provisional Measure 746/2016 into the High School Reform Law, Art. 36 of the LDBEN received a new wording, taking effect with the following terms: “The high school curriculum will be composed of the BNCC and training itineraries, which should be organized by offering different curricular arrangements, according to their relevance to the local context and the possibility of education systems.”

Another highlight of the nature of the reform imposed on secondary education concerns the technical and professional emphasis that is purposely adopted by the legislator. It is possible to verify this assertion by reading especially three of the twelve paragraphs included in Art. 36. according to the provisions of paragraph 6, at the discretion of the education systems, the offer of training with a technical and professional emphasis will consider “the inclusion of practical work experiences in the productive sector or simulation environments, establishing partnerships and using, when applicable, the instruments established by the legislation on professional learning” (Item I); and “the possibility of granting intermediate qualification certificates for work, when training is structured and organized in stages with terminality” (Section II).

Paragraph 7 of Art. 36 also makes more flexible the possibilities of offering experimental courses related to technical and professional formation, in areas that are not included in the National Catalog of Technical Courses, provided that the education system processes its proposal within the scope of its respective State Council of Education. Paragraph 8 of this article specifies that “the offer of technical and professional training, carried out in the institution or partnership with other institutions, must be previously approved by the State Council of Education, homologated by the State Secretary of Education and certified by the education systems”.

With the mention of these additions to Art. 36, we want to emphasize that the High School Reform Law, while highlighting one of the qualities recognized in the educational literature regarding education systems, which is their autonomy to propose, implement and evaluate their educational policies, also formalizes and even instigates a training perspective that is closely connected and committed to the private-mercantile sector. In addition, with the inclusion of § 9 in the article in question, “the educational institutions will issue a certificate with national validity, which will enable the high school graduate to continue studies at a higher level or in other courses or training for which completion of high school is a mandatory stage”.

At the same time that it is worth noting the flexibility regarding the possibilities of organizing the secondary education proposal in each federative unit, it is also worth noting the due recognition that the law gives to the State Council of Education, which is a fundamental instance of the state system of Education. Under the terms of the law, through this body, possible proposals for experimental courses related to technical and professional training must be submitted, in areas that are not included in the National Catalog of Technical Courses, for example. This means that, in addition to the pertinent and necessary criticism that has been made of the form and content of secondary education reform, it is also necessary to assert the historically defended progressive ideals for this stage of education through the democratic exercise of the decision-making power of society by occupying its rightful place in the education councils, as the current version of the LDBEN also supports.

Finally, we return to one of the elements that received great emphasis throughout the advertisements that helped build a media discourse that was interestedly favorable to the reform of secondary education. Each student can build their training course. Between the promise made by the defenders of the reform and the text that makes it effective legislation throughout the country, there are indispensable considerations. Paragraph 5 of Art. 36 provides that education systems, subject to the availability of vacancies in the network, allow the student completing high school to attend one more training itinerary referred to in the caput.

At first glance, this paragraph seems to consolidate the broad right to choose routes, as propagated by the Michel Temer government. However, it is worth considering that “the Law is not explicit regarding the number of training itineraries that each federative entity can include” (^{FERRETTI, 2018}, p.29). Actually,

each entity will not be obliged to offer the five itineraries but must include at least one. In other words, the state public networks will have to make choices between the itineraries to offer, something that was, in some way, sanctioned by the National Council of Secretaries of Education (Consed), one of the active entities in the formulation of MP 746, as well as in its transformation into Law 13,415 (Idem).

According to the author's assertion, what is effectively contained in the law is the possibility for the education system, at its discretion, to offer one more itinerary, in addition to the five areas explained in the caput of Art. 36. Even in the face of this evident absence of choices for students, § 12 of Art. 36 establishes that “schools should guide students in the process of choosing areas of knowledge or professional activity”. On this matter, we agree with ^{Ferretti (2018}, p.29), when he considers that

this article assumes that the choice of one or more itineraries is defined by the student, but the previous assumption must be considered, that is, that the definition of curricular arrangements to be defined by a given federative entity is its prerogative, not of the student, as proclaimed by official propaganda. Students will make, at most, choices between the training itineraries stipulated by the public education system of the aforementioned federative entity.

^{Ferretti (2018}) goes to the heart of the matter by instigating attention regarding the real impossibility of the student choosing the itinerary that suits him. By imposing a certain itinerary, the education system will also exclude other possible itineraries, opting for the one that matches the private-mercantile interests that eventually move the executive on duty. This is the conclusion reached by our author when he considers that

The possibility should not be ruled out, given the country's current economic and political context, that the aforementioned flexibility of training itineraries by the states is limited, insofar as, following the spirit of the Law, the State Councils of Education of each entity may be, in a way, pressured to offer, as a priority, or in greater numbers, training itineraries more in tune with the perspective of economic interests, namely, those referring to the areas of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Languages, and Professional Education, aligning them with the expectation of improvement in the rates obtained by young Brazilians in international assessments such as PISA (^{FERRETTI, 2018}, p.29).

The fact is that, with the determination of only one itinerary, even so despite the students' own choices, there are favorable conditions for the deepening of educational inequalities, since those social subjects who can always, pay for their varied formation itineraries will continue to do so. Those who will only be able to experience the itinerary imposed by the system will not have any right to expand itineraries, since this is already the rule of the game in progress.

As important as the repercussions arising from the changes made in the stages are the changes made in the modalities of basic education, the focus of the approach is in the sequence of this article.

High School Technical Professional Education

This modality of teaching basic education was completely changed in LDBEN under Law nº 11.741/2008 (^{BRASIL, 2008c}), proposed by the Executive Power, exercised at the time by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the first year of his second term (2007-2010). These are additions to the following articles: 36-A; 36-B; 36-C; and 36-D. When compared, in the same scientific article that ^{Ferreira (2017}) titled “counter-reform of secondary education in the context of the new order and progress”, to appropriately refer to the expected effects of Law nº 13.415/2017, this author refers to Law No. 11.741/2008 with the following terms:

The enactment of this law can be considered an advance in educational policies and a response to the struggle of many teachers for the establishment of a State policy for the integrated offer of technical courses with an emphasis on the school process of workers combined with a professional qualification (^{FERREIRA, 2017}, p. 299).

This assertion by the author contains an epistemological note that, in our view, expresses the due recognition that Law nº 11.741/2008 deserves, above all for having broken with the logic of disintegrated formation, that is, basic education separated from professional education, which had been imposed through Decree nº 2.208/1997 (^{BRASIL, 1997b}), enacted by the Executive Power, exercised at the time by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Effectively, Law No. 11,741/2008 incorporates the content and spirit of Decree 5,154/2004 (^{BRASIL, 2004}) which had been enacted by the President by Lula, to revoke the aforementioned Decree 2,208/1997.

With the inclusion of Art.36-A, the Education Law now recommends that “high school, once the student's general education is met, will be able to prepare him for the exercise of technical professions”. The sole paragraph of this article introduces the possibility of developing general preparation for work, as well as a professional qualification, in secondary education establishments or cooperation with institutions specialized in professional education (^{BRASIL, 2008c}).

Art. 36-B disciplined how secondary-level technical professional education can be developed and can be articulated with secondary education, or subsequent, courses aimed at those who have already completed this stage of basic education. Another addition arising from this article was the obligation that this teaching modality observes the objectives and definitions contained in the national curriculum guidelines established by the National Council of Education, as well as the complementary norms of the respective education systems, and also the requirements of each teaching institution, in terms of its pedagogical project (^{BRASIL, 2008c}).

In Art. 36-C, there are the formal possibilities to carry out the articulated the technical professional education alternative, provided for in Art. 36-B:

I - integrated, offered only to those who have already completed elementary school, the course is planned in such a way as to lead the student to a high school technical professional qualification, at the same educational institution, with a single enrollment for each student;

II - concurrently, offered to those who enter high school or are already enrolled in it, with separate enrollments for each course, and the following may occur:

a) at the same educational institution, taking advantage of the available educational opportunities;

b) in different educational institutions, taking advantage of the educational opportunities available

c) in different educational institutions, through inter-complementarity agreements, aiming at the planning and development of a unified pedagogical project.

Finally, Art. 36-D establishes that the diplomas of secondary-level technical professional education courses, when registered, will have national validity and will enable the continuation of studies in higher education. When structured and organized in stages with terminality, these courses make it possible to obtain qualification certificates for work after completion, with the use of each stage that characterizes a qualification for work (BRASIL, 2008c).

As a whole, the insertion of Articles 36 A, B, C, and D reaffirms the perspective of integrating secondary education with secondary technical professional education. It is fair to recognize that these provisions of the law are in favor of guaranteeing the right to an education of a polytechnic nature, to be necessarily constructed by the set of social subjects, in particular, by education professionals and other members of the school and local communities. The fact is that this legal apparatus constitutes an essential instrument so that this action claimed by the school segments can effectively gain concreteness.

Youth and Adult Education

This modality of teaching basic education was little reformulated over the years of the validity of the Education Law. There were only two changes. The first, carried out in compliance with Law nº 11.741/2008, included § 3 of Art. 37, to establish that the education of young people and adults should be articulated, preferably, with professional education, in the form of the regulation. This alteration follows the same integrating principle in which the aforementioned law was used to promote articulation within the scope of secondary technical professional education, as we appreciated in the immediately preceding section.

The second change was made in the caput of Art. 37, in our view, making it more consistent, since the original wording, which established that “youth and adult education will be aimed at those who did not have access or continuity of studies in fundamental and secondary education at the appropriate age”, has the complement properly integrated to that part of the article that was maintained, by establishing that the right to education of young people and adults “will constitute an instrument for education and lifelong learning.” It should be noted that this second change was due to the wording given by Law No. 13.632/2018 (^{BRASIL, 2018}), authored by Federal Deputy Eduardo Barbosa (PSDB/MG).

Although short, these alterations corroborate the understanding that the promotion of education for young people and adults constitutes a fundamental political mechanism for the repair of educational inequalities. For this very reason, we endorse the understanding established by law, according to which the school of young people and adults must be conceived as a right to be guaranteed throughout life. Thus, there is, on the horizon, the possibility of confronting the very restrictive notion that the law still adopts to delimit the age range considered as the proper, or ideal, age for the development of compulsory basic education.