O ensino fundamental no Sul/Sudoeste de Minas Gerais : matrículas, gastos e desempenho dos alunos

Abstract

Brazilian elementary education faced major transformations in the last thirty years: access to the education was practically universalized, municipalities gained importance in educational policies, private institutions were consolidated, evaluation policies were instituted and concern with the quality of education became a priority. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze these transformations and expose the current situation of elementary education in the country. In order to do so, the analysis will focus on the South/Southwest mesoregion of Minas Gerais, comparing it to Minas Gerais state and Brazil. The dissertation is composed by two papers. The first one adopts a broader view: it presents the main lines of changes in elementary education in 1991, 2000 and 2010, at three regional levels (Brazil, Minas Gerais and South/Southwest mesoregion of Minas Gerais) concerning the expected years of study and school frequency rate (both gross and net). In addition to that, the paper also provides a more detailed view of elementary education in the South/Southwest mesoregion of Minas Gerais concerning the number of basic education schools and number of enrollments per administrative dependency (federal, state, municipal and private). In turn, the purpose of the second paper is to investigate the relationship between public expenditures with education and educational performance focusing on municipal public elementary education in the South/Southwest mesoregion of Minas Gerais. The first paper found no shortage of schools or places for students, however there is a strong variation between the number of schools and enrollment of small-sized municipalities and the medium ones. On the other hand, the second paper showed that the correlation between expenditure and school performance is weak, indicating that the teaching-learning process does not depend exclusively on the amount of financial resources. According to the methodology employed, smaller municipalities are more efficient than medium and large ones. Therefore, the main results of the study are the observation that managing the resources applied to education is more important than the amount spent and that the South/Southwest mesoregion of Minas Gerais does not differ considerably from the Brazilian public educational profile.