Ideb: since 2013, the Brazilian secondary school has not reached the expected level of quality | Education

The Ideb ranges from 0 to 10 and takes into account two factors: how many students spend the year and what is their performance in Portuguese and mathematics (understand below). In 2019, the national goal to be reached, adding public and private schools, was 5, but the result was below expectations. The average was well below that: 4.2.

Although all states, with the exception of Sergipe, have increased the Ideb compared to the previous edition, the result is unsatisfactory. A “score” of 4.2 does not even reach the level expected for the country in 2015.

READ MORE: Brazil reaches the goal again in the first grades of primary school, but still fails in recent years

Which states have met their goals?

Schools, municipalities and states also have their individual goals, calculated according to each socioeconomic reality. They may be higher or lower than expected for the country’s average (note 5). In Amazonas, for example, it was 4; in Santa Catarina, 5.4.

In 2019, of all the states, only Goiás reached the proposed index (4.8).

Inep draws individual averages for the states, precisely because they are heterogeneous situations, there are regions with a higher rate of poverty, for example, that will have greater obstacles to improving the quality of education.

Therefore, when analyzing a national Ideb ranking, it is necessary to take into account that each state has its own challenges. The list is only for educational purposes, the ideal comparison criterion is to analyze how much the region has evolved in recent years, in its own indices, in addition to verifying if it reached the goal defined by the Inep.

Espírito Santo, for example, ranks first, but has not met the expected index for 2019:

Analyzing only the state schools, responsible for more than 97% of public school enrollment in secondary school, the 2019 result was 0.4 points higher than 2017. Despite progress, the goal set for these schools was not met.

The national Ideb of Brazilian public schools was 3.9, the goal was to reach 4.6. In the individual goals, only the schools in the Pernambuco and Goiás networks exceeded the proposed index.

The figures show the inequality between regions. When making the cut by municipality, 39.4% of the cities in the North and 21.1% of the Northeast have very low Ideb (less than 3.1) in public schools. In the southeast, only 2% of the municipalities have such a worrying index.

The gap is also large when public and private schools are compared. In the private network, responsible for 12.2% of the high school enrollment in the country, Ideb was 6. In the state network, a much lower level: 3.9.

Despite the far superior performance of private schools, they have not achieved their national or state goals.

Find out more about Ideb below:

The Basic Education Development Index (Ideb) is an indicator of the quality of primary and secondary education.

It was created in 2005 by MEC, who have released it every two years since.

How is Ideb calculated?

Ideb is an index from 0 to 10, calculated based on two factors:

• passing grades/ student failure and dropout, measured in the school census;
• Portuguese and math test results in Saeb (System of Evaluation of Basic Education).

To have a good Ideb it is necessary to have low failure and dropout rates, as well as satisfactory results in Saeb. This evaluation is always applied at the end of each school stage: 5th and 9th grade of primary school and 3rd grade of high school.

What do high school students know about math and Portuguese?

Analyzing the national averages of Saeb (one of the components of Ideb), it is concluded that Brazil is at the following levels of knowledge:

Maths: students are able to solve basic operations, recognize proportions, associate a table with a graph, and make arithmetic progressions. In general, they cannot determine probability, calculate a percentage, solve an algebraic expression, or analyze geometric shapes.

Portuguese: Students have the ability to recognize an explicit opinion in an article or topic in a chronicle, interpret strips, and infer the meaning of a word in a song. They have difficulty identifying arguments in texts, recognizing cause and consequence relationships, understanding irony or humor, and detecting the main information in reports.

How is Ideb advertised?

The National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep) publishes the Ideb of each school, municipality and state. In addition to calculating averages, the agency details the performance of municipal, state, public and private networks.

The indices are always calculated in three stages of basic education:

• initial years of primary school (grades 1-5);
• last years of elementary school (6th to 9th grade);
• high school.

What are Ideb’s goals and how are they calculated?

The MEC defined that the country’s goal is to achieve a score of 6 in Ideb. According to the portfolio, this score corresponds to the average performance of students from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in Pisa (acronym in English for “International Student Assessment Program”).

Pisa is a math, Portuguese and science test, taken by 15-year-old students. Brazil is usually among the worst placed in the world ranking of this evaluation.

The deadline to reach the level 6 goal in Ideb is different at each stage of teaching:

• Initial years of primary school: 2021
• final years of primary school: 2025
• high school: 2028

To achieve the desired Ideb, the Inep set intermediate goals. In 2017, for example, the goal was for the national average for students in grades 1-5 to be 5.5. The required grade increases every two years, until reaching 6 in 2021.

As already explained in this report, schools, municipalities, and states also have their individual goals, calculated based on each socioeconomic reality. They have been established so that the national average reaches level 6 within the timeframes indicated above.

See what are the intermediate objectives for Brazil in Ideb 2019, published this Tuesday (15):

• Primary school grades 1-5: 5.7
• Primary school grades 6-9: 5.2
• High School: 5.0

First years of elementary school

The first stage evaluated by Ideb goes from 1st to 5th year of primary school. See the full review here.

Considering the national average, which includes public and private schools, Brazil has achieved all intermediate goals since the beginning of the historical series.

In 2019, the goal was to reach at least level 5.7. The country registered an average of 5.9. Among public schools, the goal was also achieved. However, on the private network, the performance was below expectations:

States that have not achieved their individual goals (public and private networks): Amapá, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul and the Federal District.

Last years of elementary school

Since 2013, the national average has not met the target in Ideb for the final years of elementary school (grades 6-9). In 2019, the goal was to get to 5.2, but the “grade” was 4.9.

In individual goals, only seven states managed to reach the goal: Amazonas, Piauí, Ceará, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Paraná and Goiás.

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