| Hello, Leitor School dropout has been the focus of attention of IMDS since its inception. One of the bottlenecks to intergenerational mobility is the "high school barrier." Children of less educated parents are less likely to graduate, as identified in our first studies. Due to this direct association with educational mobility, we have prepared technical documents that synthesize the impact assessment literature (see here); cataloged experiments from the Impact Monitor (see here); organized a collection of indicators (here), and provided consulting resources to governments so as to structure programs to combat infrequency (here). School dropout has multiple causes and is the ultimate result of a gradual distancing from school, which begins in the early years of elementary school. A fact little explored by programs to combat abandonment and dropout is that students with age-grade distortion (whose age is at least two years older than the age corresponding to the grade they attend) have a 17.3% chance of dropping out – compared to 2% among the group without relevant delay (according to data from the 2019 School Census, organized by IMDS here). The gradual distancing, revealed by the age-grade delay, is also evidenced in IBGE questionnaires, with the reason given for the high incidence being "lack of interest" when those out of school between the ages of 15 and 21 are asked why they have dropped out: 27.7% of dropouts had done so because they were not interested in studying. That said, the lack of financial resources seems to be one of the main causes of school dropout. According to PNADC data (2022), among men aged 15 to 21, the need to work represents the main reason for 31% of young people (40.7% among men), as can be seen here. Last month, the federal government, reacting to this fact, launched the "Pé de Meia" program, a financial incentive for the permanence and school completion of students enrolled in public high school. Low-income students regularly enrolled in public high school, aged between 14 and 24 years, who are part of families enrolled in CadÚnico, are eligible for the program, with priority given to students belonging to families benefiting from the Bolsa Família program. Receipt of the incentive will be conditional on i) engagement with the school, measured through enrollment, attendance, and participation in external assessments, and (ii) completion of each school year. The contingent portions conditional on merit and engagement, however, will be withheld until the time of graduation from high school, while the remainder of the scholarship is paid immediately. It would not be surprising to find heterogeneity in the impact of the program, to the extent that students in situations of extreme financial vulnerability do not feel motivated to stay in face of a reward so distant in time and dependent on the fact that events outside the beneficiary's control do not occur (such as the loss of a parent's job). In addition to questions about the design, the management of the program is challenging. Mechanisms for monitoring school attendance and other conditionalities are unclear. Operationalizing an incentive of this nature requires uniformity in data consolidation, which will require education systems to follow the same protocols for data collection and organization. The federal government's program comes in the wake of many initiatives of state governments with similar characteristics and purpose, the latter of which will require course corrections. The arrival of federal resources should redirect state budgets to complementary actions for which they are understandably more efficient than the federal government, due to their proximity to the target audience. Examples that we have highlighted in our studies are curricula that are more integrated with the world of work; well-structured acceleration programs that take special care of students with age-grade distortion; personalized service with recurring tutoring and mentoring practices; support of the Social Assistance Service Network in the development of programs focused on adolescent mental health, in addition to encouraging the participation of families in their children's education, among other actions that make up an integrated strategy to combat the lack of interest in studying and to increase the student's actual engagement with the school community.
See you at the next “Letter from IMDS”! Paulo Tafner CEO | 
