Whilst Brazil has largely overcome the challenge of poor provision of elementary education – with numbers close to the total number of children enrolled in primary education and increasing enrollment rates in early childhood education and secondary education -, the Legal Amazon still faces difficulties in access to education, particularly in early childhood and secondary education.
Currently, there is a decline in basic education enrollment numbers across the country, with increases in dropout rates as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic (UNICEF 2021b). This drop in enrollment was higher, on average, in the states that make up the Legal Amazon (1.8%) than in the rest of the country (1.5%). Although at first glance the percentages may seem small, they represent the absence of 169 thousand students, in the case of the Amazon region, and 427 thousand students in other states (INEP, 2019 and 2020), which reinforces the importance of analyzing the provision of education in the Legal Amazon in order to take greater action in reducing inequalities in access to quality education. With this need in mind, this document seeks to describe and critically analyze basic and higher education in the Amazon region, considering the geographic and population distribution, as well as the economic needs of the states that comprise it.
Access to quality early childhood education is a fundamental strategy to combat poverty and social inequality and should be a priority of educational policies in the region. However, gross enrollment rates indicate that this phase, particularly with regard to day care centers, is undersupplied in the Legal Amazon compared to other Brazilian states. This rate is 51.0% for early childhood education in the states of the Legal Amazon (compared to 66.4% in the rest of Brazil) and 25.6% specifically in day care centers (compared to 44.8% in the rest of the country). Unlike pre-school, day care is not mandatory according to the Law on National Education Guidelines, but Brazil has a goal that 50% of children under 3 years and 11 months of age are supported at this stage (PNE 2014). Research indicates that the low supply of vacancies in day care centers in rural regions is an important factor for the low school enrollment rate at this stage.
A similar pattern is observed in secondary education, whose average gross enrollment rate corresponds to 72.6% in the Amazon region, 10 percentage points below the average of other Brazilian states. This stage still faces a situation of high age-grade distortion: in the Legal Amazon, 31.2% of students are older than expected for the year in which they are enrolled, with failings and school dropout being two explanations for such a discrepancy. High failing rates also reduce the Ideb [national indicator to monitor the quality of education] of secondary education, which is below the target established by the Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Educational Studies and Research (INEP) approximately ten years ago. The Legal Amazon is also characterized by high school dropout rates, which are around 10% in the states of the region, indicating that many young people enter the job market without even having completed elementary education. Although the available data do not yet fully capture this effect, there are strong indications that high dropout rates will be accentuated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
