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Fifty scientific and / or education-related entities sent a letter to the Minister of Education, Milton Ribeiro, requesting a new postponement of the Enem (National High School Exam), amid the increase in cases and deaths from covid-19 in Brazil. The associations also demanded a plan from the MEC to “cover the emergency health needs of this moment.”
Enem is scheduled for next January 17 and 24 and is the main access route to higher education.
In the document, the entities defend that the proposals presented by the INEP (National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira) to prevent coronavirus infections are not enough to guarantee the safety of the Brazilian population.
They argue that the incidence of covid-19 has increased in the last month, “the prediction that it will increase in the next two weeks as a result of the recent large exposure is almost unanimous.” In addition, remember, the vast majority of the participants in the exam are adolescents or young adults, a part usually more exposed to exits and crowds.
In this sense, scientific entities express the urgent need, as already proposed by the UNE (National Union of Students) and the UBES (Brazilian Union of Secondary Students), to postpone the Enem for another time in which transmission rates and capacity response rates are within acceptable levels, “they suggest.
The associations also mentioned the social issue, noting that the conditions of impoverishment and social exclusion, intensified by the pandemic, cannot be neglected by the MEC, given its impact on the school life of Brazilians.
“This examination”, they add, “exists to focus on reducing inequalities in access to higher education and cannot serve to widen inequalities or, what is unacceptable, to become a vector of a pandemic already out of control by government negligence “.
The document is signed by Ildeu de Castro Moreira, president of SBPC (Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science); Geovana Mendonça Lunardi Mendes, president of ANPED (National Association for Graduate Studies and Research in Education); and Gulnar Azevedo e Silva, president of Abrasco (Brazilian Public Health Association), in addition to 47 other entities.
DPU wants postponement
The DPU (Defensoria Pública da União) filed a request to try to postpone Enem in the Federal Court of São Paulo. The measure, carried out as a matter of urgency, was also motivated by the advance of the pandemic in the country, which yesterday reached the mark of 200,000 deaths from covid-19.
“There is no sure way to conduct an exam with almost six million students at the moment, during the new peak of covid-19 cases,” says public defender João Paulo Dorini, responsible for the application. “The situation is new, especially since it is a second wave of infections,” he adds.
Dorini also points out that the federal government is not “clear about the measures adopted to avoid contamination of the test participants, students and employees who will apply it.” He calls for the test to be postponed “until it can be done safely, or at least while the situation is not as dangerous as it is now.”
