Introduction

Brazilian offer of basic education concentrates a large amount of state resources that enable an extensive educational network. According to the 2019 School Census, there are 139,176 public primary schools operating in the country, which add up to 41,434 private establishments. The institutions - public and private - have enrolled 47,874,246 students and hire 2,212,018 teachers. The data are not only great, but draw the complexity of brazilian education management that, in addition to ministering the set of knowledge and activities considered fundamental for the intellectual, scientific and citizen education of children and adolescents, in each given historical period, still has a set of services - health and prevention; equipment maintenance; supply of power; school transport; and distribution of textbooks - which enable school operation.

The proportion of public investments made in the educational sector as a whole, in relation to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), increased from 4.6% in the years 2000 to 6.3% in 2017, and of the total, 1.1% of the increase was concentrated on Basic Education (BE), and 0.6% in higher level (INEP/MEC, 2017). Considering the size of the networks and the number of students served, the disproportion of resources allocated to the two sectors - Basic Education and Higher Education - is alarming. ⁴

It is important to mention that, when taking the numbers of the percentage of GDP applied, other expenses such as resources for scholarship, student financing and the modality of application current and capital transfers to the private sector are included. It is evident that, given the high volume of public resources invested in the educational sector, there are now strong market interests in competing for a share of public funding. The argument of this paper is that, in the recent period, private interest has increased over public resources for Education, particularly those destined to Basic Education.

Relevant aspects of recent history

The relations that the Private Sector establishes with government administrations in the educational area have been the object of academic researches that addresses the theme in several aspects: the origins of public-private association (^{PAIVA, 2016}); the implications for the strengthening of state policies (^{FALABELLA; PIRES; PERONI, 2019}); the concrete quality of supply (^{SILVA, 2016}); distortions due to the growing monopolisation of the private sector (^{PEREIRA, 2017}).

To start a dialogue on the issue, it is essential to understand how educational legislation regulates investments passed on to the Private Sector. Law No. 11,494 of 2007 (BRASIL, 2007), which institutionalizes FUNDEB, Fund for Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and Valorization of Education Professionals, guarantees the transfer of funds to community, confessional and philanthropic institutions, non-profit and contracted to the public authorities, which meet the demand for preschool enrollment. In addition, it provides that at least 60% of the Fund's resources are used to pay teaching salaries, while the remaining 40% need to be invested in Maintenance and Development of Education, without vetoing the use of this amount for practices such as the acquisition of didactic material provided by private institutions, making room for them to occur. The new FUNDEB (BRASIL, 2020), promulgated in August 2020, updates to 70% the minimum percentage of resources allocated for payments to basic education professionals, but continues not to veto the purchase of didactic material from private systems or the payment for vacancies in early childhood education.

The National Education Plan - which aims to raise education spending to 10% of GDP by the end year of its validity in 2024 - also does not explicitly veto the transfer of resources to the market. More serious, however, was the approval, in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, of Constitutional Amendment No. 95, known as Pec do Teto (BRASIL, 2016). The Amendment, which came into force in the 2017 financial year, changes the tax regime in force in the country by proposing a limit on public spending over the next twenty years.

According to ^{Rossi and Dweck (2016}), the measure will have a strong impact on the educational area, which will lose proportionally budget due to population growth. Thus, public education, which already suffers from insufficient resources, will have even more difficulties to meet all students who will depend on it.

The fiscal situation of the country, in this scenario marked by austerity and the reduction of the size of the state, further expands the effect of the transfer of resources to the Private Sector, which has already occurred in a remarkable way. Even in the previous two decades, when Brazil experienced a period of economic prosperity combined with the expansion of Higher Education and Vocational Education, the paths chosen for the expansion of vacancies strengthened private educational groups.

Public policies of benefits such as PROUNI - which guaranteed the offer of vacancies in Private Institutions of Higher Education, through the reduction of taxes charged by the company - and FIES - educational credit with lower interest rates than those practiced by the market - consolidated the business model of private universities, which began to use them as a source of direct financing: according to specialized publication in the investment sector (InfoMoney) , FIES, in 2014, accounted for 49% of the total revenues of Ser Educacional (SEER3), 44% of Kroton (KROT3), 40% of Estácio (ESTC3) and 38% of Anima (ANIM3), the largest private educational conglomerates in the country (^{UMPIERES, 2015}).

During this period, these companies were the most profitable on the Bovespa, as Sguissardi explains:

From August 2012 to August 2014, for example, while the Ibovespa (total index of about 350 companies) had a reduction of 3.67%; Vale (VALE5), a reduction of 13.48%; and Petrobras (PETR4), an appreciation of 9.32% of its shares; Kroton (KROT3) had a 314% appreciation and Estácio (ESTC3), 240.97% of its respective shares (^{SGUISSARDI, 2015}, p. 870, our translation).⁵

As of 2015, the rules for the concession of FIES became stricter, which led to a loss of market value for these companies. Since then, there has been a change in the investment profile: previously attracted by higher education, educational conglomerates are currently seeking an approximation of primary education institutions.

It corroborates the situation described, the purchase of the group Somos Educação by Kroton, in early 2018. Owner of the Anglo college network; Saraiva, Attica and Scipione; and the Red Balloon language school, the brand is responsible for the enrolments, in elementary schools and language courses, of 62,000 students⁶. With the acquisition, Kroton expanded its share of the basic education market, still little explored: while 73.7% of higher education students attend private institutions - which demonstrates clear market limit for supply growth in the segment - only 25.3% of daycare and preschool enrollments, 18% of elementary school and 12.6% of high school were in private schools in 2019 , according to the Continuous PNAD published by IBGE (2019).

The presence of private educational groups in BE, although it has been expanding in recent years, is not recent. Seeking to benefit from concessions such as transfers, grants, tax exemptions, debt forgiveness, agreements and partnerships, private institutions sought to maintain close relationships with municipalities and state governments.

In the case of municipalities, with the municipalization of Elementary School (ES), this participation was more intense⁷. Local teams turned to private education companies in the search for management advice, since, in most cases, municipalization occurred without managers being prepared to assume the required legal responsibility. The purchase of teaching materials⁸ and the direct transfer of resources to private institutions that offer vacancies in Early Childhood Education - a teaching stage in which local authorities cannot meet the demand - become common practices.

The media daily expands the discourse that the public school is “outdated”, since knowledge transmitted in the school space does not agree with contemporary reality; strengthens the argument favorable to private education systems: an alternative “tuned” with the trends of the digital world, an alternative that prepares students for the technological world embedded in teaching methodologies that are used in the daily life of private schools. The pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus has broadened this perception: there are certainly doubts about the ability of public schools to offer adequately sanitized environments to the students who attend it.

The issue of teaching material is an example. Through the Programa Nacional do Livro Didático, the federal government makes available to schools didactic material acquired, often from the same publishers that publish books sold by private education systems. By refusing to participate in the PNLD and adhering to the purchase of paid material, public schools therefore collaborate for the double transfer of resources to the private sector, in addition to finally using similar books.

The SESI System can be taken as an emblematic case. Financed with public resources - 1.5% on the total remuneration paid by companies in the industrial sector - and with the purpose of providing social services - among them, basic education - to industry employees, the institution currently profits from the sale of teaching materials and education systems to municipal networks. They are an environment conducive to the various legal mechanisms that allow the private sector to be the final recipient of public investments in the field of education.

In the early 2000s, a group of entrepreneurs interested in the educational theme founded the movement “Todos pela Educação”. The flag that adds them to this day is the defense of an “education for the 21st century” that will only be possible - according to the movement - if there is the accountability of the school team for the results obtained by students in large-scale assessments. It is evident a model of public-private partnership, which allows the transfer of resources to the market and, at the same time, imputes to the public sector the burden of the failure of the policy.

It describes the current scenario where the public-school moves: few direct investments and numerous performance requirements. Aggravating factor: high age-grade distortion rate - in 2019, 16.2% of students enrolled in THE were older than recommended for their grade, a problem that also reached 26.2% of students attending high school, according to the Basic Education Census (INEP, 2019). Aggravating factor: attempt to expand Distance Learning, including to ES.⁹

There is a movement, therefore, to weaken the education offered in a public and free way, identifying it as an inadequate environment for: teaching and learning of different literacies and scientific languages; construction of significant knowledge; acquisition of the use of digital technological tools; socialization of citizen values; experience of plurality in diversity and respect for the natural environment; in short, formation of better human beings.

The movement described characterizes strategic bid on the board to direct public resources to strengthen private companies that offer Education.

Legislative proposals and market movements

In recent years, Brazil has undergone political and economic transformations: after a period of macroeconomic stability and growth above the world average, with broad social impacts and the inclusion of a considerable portion of the population of the so-called middle class, the country is now suffering from a severe financial crisis - aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic - with a sharp increase in unemployment and a decrease in revenue, which puts at risk the financing of social policies , especially those focused on Education.

As already mentioned, in an attempt to reduce public spending, a Constitutional Amendment was approved that prevents the expansion of federal investments in areas such as Education and Health for twenty years. In practice, there are fewer public resources for both areas: thus, there is room for the advancement of the private sector in the provision of social services, justified by a discourse of greater business efficiency, in the face of the “low” results offered by organizations of state prominence.

While Brazilian universities went from 2,314 institutions - 2,069 private and 245 public - in 2009 to 2,448 - 2,152 private and 296 public - in 2017, basic schools fell from 191,466 establishments in 2007 to 181,616 in 2014. Unlike Higher Education, which had only 83 more private institutions in the period mentioned, private schools of early childhood, elementary and secondary education jumped from 28,647 in 2007 to 34,898 in 2014, while public schools decreased from 163,074 in 2007 to 147,123 in 2014 (InepData). Analyzing: Higher Education, in the period, had a growth that reached public and private institutions; Basic Education, in addition to having decreased the number of schools, saw growth in private supply over the public, a movement expanded by the provision of direct service offered by educational companies.

Among the jurisprudence that crystallizes the trend described, one can mention the Proposed Constitutional Amendment No. 03/2019, defended in the Special Committee to discuss the continuity of FUNDEB as a permanent fund, which suggests changing Article 3 of PEC 15/2015 and Article 213 of the Federal Constitution, to enable states and municipalities to choose to direct part of FUNDEB resources to civil society organizations and to finance scholarships in private educational institutions.

According to the pec's justification:

It is necessary to direct fundeb's focus to the central reason of educational policy, which is the educated student and not the state school structure. It is given that it is the responsibility of the State to guarantee public education to Brazilian children and young people. However, it should be noted that the school itself is only a means to achieve educational purposes. The purpose of the educational process is student learning; Meaning the student should be funded, not the school. Therefore, it is urgent to allow everyone access to better quality schooling regardless of whether it is in the public or private sector. Allowing children from families in situations of social vulnerability also have access to quality education while seeking solutions to boost the performance of public schools is also a matter of social justice. That is why it is important to explore innovations in the teaching model in Brazil, such as offering scholarships in private educational institutions to public school students and allowing the expansion of conveniadas schools (called “charter schools”). The advantage of these schools is that they bring the benefits of private management to public schools. Within this model, governments can conclude contracts with non-profit social organizations that can work in the area of education for the benefit of society. To this end, the proposal aims to enable states and municipalities to use FUNDEB resources to finance grants similar to ProUni for basic education as well as to finance schools organized under the legal framework of civil society organizations. It is important to remember that, approving this proposition, public education will not be abandoned. Contrary. With evaluations and tests of other management models, there will be tools to improve public networks, thus taking an important step to build a system that has the reach of public education with the quality of private management. (BRAZIL, 2019a, p. 2, our emphasis, our translation).¹⁰

Proposed by deputies of the Novo political party - self-titled liberal - and of Citizenship - which claims to be committed to founding a new socialism - the PEC considers that public resources should be directed, to the networks that present “better results”, stating in the text the intention to stimulate “private management for public schools”. Two other bills in Congress today propose the establishment of the “Daycare-voucher” and the “Education-voucher”, aid granted to employees of private companies to cover expenses incurred with the basic education of their children.

The Private Basic Education Market is in full swing, as of 2017. The notable incorporation of Somos Educação by The Saber holding company, a subsidiary of Kroton that operates in BE, has already been mentioned. The Estácio group, the second largest private conglomerate active in Higher Education, also began its operations at BE, offering high school classes on their own campuses. New players present themselves, such as Eleva Educação, the holding company of the investment fund Gera Venture Capital, which has as main investor Jorge Paulo Lemann: the company, in just over a year of operation, has won 70,000 students in partner schools of the network.

Thus, a second strategic bid is described on that board to direct public resources to strengthen private companies that offer Education.

Indicators and indicatives for the New FUNDEB:

The legislator's intention to establish the organization of a National Education System is explicit: the Law that determines the guidelines and bases of national education, promulgated in 1996 (LDB, 1996), establishes in its eighth article:

TITLE IV

From the National Education Organization

Art. 8º The Union, the States, the Federal District and the Municipalities will organize, under a collaborative regime, the respective education systems (BRASIL, 1996, our emphasis, our translation).¹¹

After 24 years, Brazil has not yet been able to build its System. Greater evidence of the absence is that the theme, practically with the same wording, returns in the Constitutional Amendment enacted in August 2020, when it is available on the new - and now permanent - FUNBED:

Art. 211 [...]

§ 4 - In the organization of their education systems, the Union, the States, the Federal District and the Municipalities will define forms of collaboration,in order to ensure theuniversalization, quality and equity of compulsory education (BRASIL, 2020, our emphasis, our translation).¹²

EC 108/20 also provides that part of the resources allocated to educational networks via FUNDEB should be allocated to those who improve their indexes:

Art. 212-A. The States, the Federal District and the Municipalities shall allocate part of the resources referred to in the caput of art. 212 of this Constitution to the maintenance and development of education in basic education and to the decent remuneration of their professionals, respecting the following provisions: [...]

V - the complementation of the Union shall be equivalent to at least 23% (twenty-three per cent) of the total resources referred to in item II of the caput of this article, distributed as follows: [...]

c) 2.5 (two integers and five tenths) percentage points in public networks that, after compliance with management improvement conditionalities provided for by law, achieve evolution of indicators to be defined, attendance and improvement of learning with reduction of inequalities, in accordance with the national system of evaluation of basic education (BRASIL, 2020, our emphasis, our translation).¹³

It is therefore necessary to ask: what are the “indicators to be defined”? Currently, the index that measures the quality of the national BE is the IDEB - Basic Education Development Index, prepared in 2007 by INEP - National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira. The index reflects the results achieved by the students in the evaluation of the Brazil Test - applied to students enrolled in the fifth year of the EF, seeking to evaluate Portuguese language and mathematics skills.

The IDEB is used to monitor the quality goals of the Education Development Plan (PDE) for BE. The national challenge is to arrive, in 2022, with IDEB equal to 6.0 - an average that corresponds to an educational system of quality comparable to that of developed countries. The stipulated period is based on the symbology of the bicentenary of Independence, proclaimed in 1822. Each educational system must evolve according to different starting points, which requires greater effort from those who leave worse off. The aim is to reduce educational inequality.

Another conjuncture factor that should be highlighted concerns the environment of widespread criticism of state actions, constructed by neoliberal currents, very active in the 1990s. International bodies - financial and advisory - recommended that countries considered 'in development' redefine the functions given to the public sector and adjust the tax that balanced national accounts. The need to ‘dry up’ the size of the State, reducing it to a structure that fulfilled only tasks considered essential, gave strength to the pragmatic idea that the efficiency of public management should be constantly measured, preferably through external evaluations without the participation of local managers. Thus, indicators become indispensable instruments for the formulation and evaluation of policies, including educational ones.

The question therefore remains: how has the IDEB, the current quality indicator, been used in policy formulation? For ^{Assunção and Carneiro (2012}, p. 15, our emphasis, our translation), not satisfactorily:

The IDEB, as the essence of the PDE, reveals the contradictions of an evaluation model that may be interesting from the point of view of an income verification mechanism, however, it is used as a regulatory mechanism that also meets the interests of private companies that have direct interference in Brazilian educational policy. Thus, quality in education begins to be compared with growth in scores, generating illusory situations, since responding to multiple choice tests means only the act of choosing an answer, without necessarily having any reflection on it, which is of paramount importance in the process of knowledge construction. Using this type of instrument in education serves only to classify and define positions, favoring segregation and disintegration and, of course, causing wear and suffering. In addition, one of the serious consequences is the increased pressure on teaching work, given the avalanche of awards and punishments, which is another illusion, since this logic has no lasting effect.¹⁴

Several authors point out the governmental difficulty in using evaluative tools to develop strategies that can help and promote the improvement of the quality of teaching. Horta Neto, in a thesis defended in 2013, considers that in the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo:

[...] evaluation tests had a marginal influence on educational policies aimed at elementary school, as they became an end and not central elements for the formulation of educational policies. Moreover, the results of the tests are used by the State as an instrument to regulate the work performed by the school and its professionals (^{HORTA NETO, 2013}, p. 29).¹⁵

It is possible to add that - in addition to the choice and use of an indicator - there is practically consensus in the literature specialized in educational evaluation that linking the results of standardized tests to the funding that the school receives - or no longer receives - is not pedagogically beneficial. After promulgating the Law No Child Left Behind in 2002, the United States experienced the so-called teach to the test . By conditioning federal resources to networks that achieved results in standardized tests, it was observed as a consequence that teachers began to devote classroom time to teach: how to correctly fill out test sheets - read mechanically -; what to do when the evaluation time approaches the end; when to kick a question or not (^{PHELPS, 2011}). Moreover, the teacher's own autonomy is questioned:

Item teachers narrow their instruction, organizing their teaching around clones of the particular questions most likely to be found on the test-and thus teach only the bits of knowledge students are most likely to encounter on exams. For example, item teachers might drill students on a small set of vocabulary words expected to be assessed rather than employing instructional strategies that help students develop the kind of rich and broad vocabulary that best contributes to strong reading comprehension (^{JERALD, 2006}, p. 2).

The problem is greater in contexts in which basic education is confronted with structural challenges: historical social and educational inequalities. Sodel (2015) - working on the implementation of neoliberal reforms in education in the state of Louisiana, which has one of the smallest IDHs in the United States - considers that:

Teachers’ lack of capacity and freedom to develop participatory and justice-oriented citizens stands in stark contrast to the justice-based rhetoric employed by market-based reformers and further calls into question the assumption that increased test scores are an indication of successful reforms (^{SONDEL, 2015}, p. 1).

Such experiences reinforce the idea that international and national indicatives question the validity of indicators to evaluate educational success, advising caution in the adoption of similar models of school organization. The flogging to assume the indicators as indicative, in Brazil, becomes another strategic bid on the board to affirm the value of the educational market in the face of the fragility of public schools.

Final considerations

When analyzing the Brazilian educational situation, the first observation is the lack of a Unified Education System - similar to the Unified Health System - that could provide transparency in the complete educational care offered to the population. Fundamental data are lost - particularly those concerning public, private and third sector services - in multiple sectorial documents.

A second observation - mainstream of the analysis contained in this article - is that, in a recent period, public financing of Brazilian education has become more available to private conglomerates, provoking a redirection of business interests, directed towards a diversification in market segmentation: after years betting on higher education institutions, private capital now turns to investments in BE.

The work analyzed three strategic bids on the board placed: 1. in a dispute for results between public and private schools, the latter are an environment conducive to enable students to face the current world, technological and connected; 2. the rules and procedures have opened gaps so that public investment can be directed to private schools, not only in hotlines, but in services and scholarships that minimize the risks of default, that is, the risks of capitalist market investment; 3. despite indications that demonstrate failures in the indicators to evaluate teaching-learning relationships, a public image is created that educational indicators corroborate the superiority of the private sector against public schools, since they strongly favor the healthy results of the competitive market in Education.

Checkmate! For all that has been presented so far, it is possible to realize that, given the disqualification environment of the public school, the facilities of the public to finance the private school and the reduction of resources, specifically for Basic Education, in the coming years, there will be a barbaric invasion of private conglomerates to dispute this consumer market.