By Eliana Sousa Silva* and Ricardo Henriques**, for the newspaper O Globo »
One of the biggest challenges that the country's public schools face, as they begin the third school year since the emergence of covid-19, is to reverse the negative impacts on the training of a generation of students, especially the poorest. The pandemic has completely changed the education landscape. From the suspension of face-to-face classes, in March 2020, to efforts to offer remote, hybrid learning and, finally, reopening schools, there were 20 months in which students, guardians and teachers saw their routines completely changed.
The effects tend to be even more severe in peripheral areas, such as the favelas complex of Maré, in Rio de Janeiro, where, historically, the challenges for ensuring quality education are greater. So says the research “Covid-19 and the access to education in the 16 favelas of Maré: impacts on the final years of Elementary and High School”, which will be launched by Redes da Maré in partnership with Instituto Unibanco. The survey heard 921 people, including students, guardians and education professionals linked to local public schools.
According to the Maré Population Census, around 140,000 people live in the region, more than in 96% of Brazilian municipalities. In 2019, about 20,000 students were enrolled in the 50 public schools in the region. That’s why it is essential that the information obtained from the research be considered in the strategy and promotion of more effective public policies, especially in an election year.
The study, carried out in 2021, points out that about three quarters of the students in the sample say they learned little (48%) or nothing (26%) in the first two years of the pandemic, and 57% say that their desire to study has decreased (33 %) or decreased a lot (24%). The main reason for this, according to the students, is the difficulty in adapting to remote teaching (35%). Students have the perception that they didn’t learn what was expected and, given the long period of suspension of classes, the drop in appetite for studying is understandable. The survey also showed that 38% of them were unable to follow the online activities and that 43% did not use the apps created by the municipal and state education departments. In the case of mental health, four out of ten students faced some kind of emotional distress.
It is worth noting that just over half of the interviewed educators (56%) believe that it’s possible to reverse the situation through the recovery of content. Almost all of them (95%) did their best to work remotely, asking colleagues for help or searching solutions on the internet. Struggling teachers trying to deal with remote classes, but divided on the hope of facing the adverse scenario resulting from the period of online teaching. An optimistic view allows us to recognize that an important part of teachers continues to believe in the power of education and in the ability to change the game.
We cannot waste time. The suppressed learning was enormous and, sometimes, in essential dimensions for the continuity of the studies. The ways to overcome the challenges are already known: active search; reorganization of the curriculum to recompose learning trajectories; use of technology for pedagogical innovation; guarantee of necessary infrastructure of equipment and internet access; strategies for more family participation; and the creation of programs to care for the mental health of the school community.
The right to learn must be guaranteed to everyone. More than ever, new investments and the recovery of old commitments are necessary. In this way, we will have a quality public education, with equity, for students from Maré and from across the country.
*Director of Redes da Maré
*Economist, executive superintendent of Instituto Unibanco
Rio de Janeiro, February 24, 2022.
