Education in Brazil According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, Brazil is ranked 53rd among

countries that are not achieving and are not close to achieving the Education for All Goals by 2015. (3) This is a concerning statistic for those living in Brazil. Although they are making progress towards these goals, something needs to change in order for this country to better succeed and meet the requirements in place by the UN. The United Nations had three major priorities in mind when creating the Education For All goals: 1.) Put every child in school. 2.) Improve quality of learning. 3.) Foster global leadership. (4) My goal for this essay is to assess Brazils efforts in meeting the first of the three priorities. In Brazil, much of the educational process is left up to the individual states and municipalities, thus creating a variety of different circumstances throughout the country. The municipalities are responsible for the education of students up until the age of six, then once the child reaches primary education (1st-9th grade) they are under the combined responsibility of the municipalities and the state, and lastly the higher education is the sole responsibility of the state. For example, funding and how it is used towards education can vary from state to state. According to this chart, Brazil, one of the three largest countries in the world, has the highest percentage of citizens who did not complete high school by the age of 25. Brazil also has the lowest percentage of citizens to complete any form of higher education

after high school compared to the United States and India. Currently Brazil is doing its best to modify their educational system in an attempt to be in compliance with the goals established by the United Nations. Over the years they have also seen many results. They have worked to make primary and lower secondary education more readily accessible to the population. As of 2013, 94.4% of the population in the ages 7-14 are included in primary and lower secondary education. Brazil has also been able to double the amount of secondary education students compared to the statistics from 1995 by making the education more accessible. Due to results such as these we know that efforts are being made to achieve the goals set by the United Nations by the year 2015; however, the question now is are these efforts enough to meet the goals in time. Putting more children into school is the first of the three priorities and in Brazil there are a great deal of resources and efforts being put into making that a reality for every child in Brazil. One way this is being achieved is by making primary education free and compulsory for children ages 6-14. (1) Brazils average reading writing and mathematics scores, when compared to other nations in the world rank very low on the charts. (2) One aspect that could still use improvement is the requirements put on primary education. Currently primary education is seen as option and not a national requirement. This could be a major catalyst in bring Brazils overall average of enrolled students closer to the bottom than the top. Brazil still has a year left to continue working towards achieving the three priorities of the United Nations but from the looks of it they have their work cut out for them with the first one alone. The second and third priorities will continue to be

a work in progress but getting students into the classrooms will be a major advantage to the success of the other two.

Sources: http://academicexchange.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/10-facts-about-theeducation-system-of-brazil/ (1) http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-educationrankings-maths-science-reading (2) http://www.unesco.org/new/en/brasilia/education/education-for-all/ (3) http://www.globaleducationfirst.org/ (4) http://www.clrsearch.com/Demographic?state_id=349363&city_id=320935&place =Brazil%2C+IN&state=Indiana&chart=educationlevelprofile image source