As políticas públicas de educação básica de jovens e adultos no Brasil do período 1985/1999

Abstract

This research retrieves the history of public policies for youth and adult basic. education during the period in which Brazilian society and its political institutions were being redemocratized (1985-1999), focussing on the drafting process and the content of federal educational plans, laws, guidelines, and programs. lt analyses the evolution of public financing, of indicators of school coverage in basic education for young people and adults, and it outlines the schooling offered to this age group. lt also describes the National Worker Training Plan (PLANFOR), the Alfabetização Solidária Program (PAS) and the National Program for Education in the Agrarian Reform (PRONERA), alI after 1995. Although the public sector allocated less than 1% of educational expenditures towards this category of education throughout this period, enrollments has doubled on the basic leveI and has grown fourfold in secondary education. This occurrence has been made possible mainly due to the effort of the States but a tendency towards municipalization has also been observed the late 1990s, school attendance had stagnated at 2.2 million registrations, which represented a coverage index of less than 5% of the potential demand for youth and adult basic education. Besides showing a deficit, school availability was unfair. The educational reform introduced by the Ministry of Education as of 1995 strengthened the marginal position held by youth and adult basic education within educational policies, which triggered the active resistance of organized civil society, the replacement of the frontier between public and private, the multiplication of non governrnental suppliers of education, and disarray among Federal governrnent initiatives. One part of the social demand for youth and adult education was taken up by PLANFOR, PAS and PRONERA, which can be seen as examples of the tendency to disseminate partnerships among public organizations, universities and civil society organizations. Using these data we break this process down into periods, identifinna initial moment of public legitimization and legal consolidation of the entitlement of the young and adult population to ftee public basic education (1985-1989), followed by a period in wich this right was undetermined both on a symbolic leveI and actual public policies (1990-1999). Public policies in youth and adult basic education ftom 1985 to 1999 are thus part of the untinished process of constructing democracy and citizenship in Brazil, whose outcome depends on the capacity of the autonomous civil society organizations to interact with state institutions, broadening public spaces in which rights and deliberation of social policies are recognized