Full-time education helps improve the academic performance of Bolsa Família beneficiaries

The higher number of full-time schools available for children and adolescent beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program helps improve the academic performance of the poorest students. Data from 2013 show that the majority of students in more than 32,000 full-time schools in the Mais Educação Program are Bolsa Família beneficiaries.

“They learn more. In addition to Portuguese, science and math, they learn to coexist, enjoy reading, play sports and create situations that make sense to their inclusion in society “, says Jacqueline Moll, researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). She is the author of one of the papers in the Study Textbook released by the Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger (MDS).

The publication brings together five articles about the results, advances and challenges of Bolsa Família education conditionalities. In April and May, 14.8 million students monitored by Bolsa Família complied with the minimum school attendance rate required by the program. They account for 96.4% of the 15.4 million students whose attendance rates were monitored during that period. The data is from Sistema Presença, a Ministry of Education (MEC) tool used to record the class attendance of program beneficiaries.

The Mais Educação Program was launched in 2010, offering full-time education. A partnership between the program and MDS has allowed schools wherein Bolsa Família students are a majority to extend their school hours. Students from households receiving benefits from the cash transfer program are present in 80% of public elementary schools, which represents approximately 160 thousand schools and covers about 30% of school enrollments. Data from the 2013 School Census, published by the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP), shows an increase in the number of students enrolled in school full-time – from 1.3 million, in 2010, to 3.1 million, in 2013, a 139% increase.

According to researcher Jacqueline Moll, increasing the number of school hours per day is not a mere detail, but rather a condition for upholding individuals’ rights – especially those of children living in social vulnerability. She offers some thoughts on the matter: “We must overcome the prejudice barrier that continues to affect poor students.”

Moll believes that when these children and adolescents are respected and welcomed, especially in terms of their life stories, their development and learning skills are improved. Jacqueline Moll headed MEC’s board of Curricula and Integral Education from 2007 to 2013.

The quality made possible by full-time education has positive ramifications on the academic performance of Bolsa Família beneficiary students. According to the director of the Conditionalities Department at MDS, Daniel Ximenes, strategic education policies are increasingly targeting families and children in poverty.

“The amount of time these children spend in school is an important variable in improving school performance. Working with this target population warrants stronger universalization efforts. “

On the other hand, the director warns that full-time education brings with it another issue to be addressed: infrastructure. In addition to factors outside the school, such as socioeconomic levels, in-school factors are also determinant in influencing school performance.

“Full-time education requires that the government ensure our schools have decent standards in every location. The education conditionality is a primary responsibility of the government. It exists to improve the access of vulnerable children and adolescents to basic educational services,” says Ximenes.

Beyond the confines of the classroom, the school environment should provide the conditions for the school to serve the population, in terms of academic productivity, and to allow children and adolescents to experience different educational dimensions.

School progression – Another study in the Textbook reveals that the performance of Bolsa Família students is similar to – or even higher than – that of other public school students. The dropout rate of non-Bolsa Família students in primary education is 3.2%, while for beneficiary students it is 2.8%. The difference is even greater in middle school: 11.3% versus 7.4% for Bolsa Família students.

The study also shows that Bolsa Família students staying longer in school leads to better academic outcomes. For example, at the middle school level, students who receive the benefit boast higher passing rates (79.7%) than those of other students in the public network (75.5%).

View the Study Notebook in Portuguese here.