2025 - Edition 82 | October 14

IMDS Technical Note evaluates the capacity of the Brazilian educational system in the provision of literacy

Hello Leitor,

Education is one of the main determinants of social mobility. And, among the components of quality education, literacy and reading exert a central role. In a new Technical Note, entitled "Public policies and inequalities in learning reading skills: How much is it possible to level the playing field?", researchers Samuel Franco (Oppen Social) and Flávio Riva (IMDS) propose an analysis of how the Brazilian educational system has been able to reduce inequalities in the learning of reading skills during the early years of elementary school.

The authors combined two sources of data from 2009 to 2023. The microdata of the Basic Education Evaluation System (Saeb) for the 5th grade that allow the monitoring of Portuguese language learning levels in each year of the test, for the entirety of students from public schools in Brazil. Data from the socioeconomic index of the schools, where these students studied when they took the test, allow us to group and order the students in tenths of their socioeconomic level

The note documents significant differences in the rate of students who achieve adequate performance in each tenth of the socioeconomic index. In 2023, the most recent year analyzed, only 3 in 10 students in the bottom tenth reached this level, compared to 8 in 10 in the top tenth. More surprisingly, between 2009 and 2023, all tenths advanced in a similar way, by 1.6 to 1.9 percentage points. As a result, the socioeconomic gradient of learning reading skills is, in the most recent data, very similar to that of 2009.

When considering the data from students in Ceará, the note shows that there has been a process of convergence of learning levels between the tenths of the socioeconomic index, concentrated temporally between 2009 and 2015. Between these years, students affected by an innovative set of state policies to improve learning and literacy (such as the Literacy Program at the Right Age, PAIC and the Escola Nota Dez Award) reached the 5th grade and took the SAEB tests. Also, between 2009 and 2015, socioeconomic inequalities in learning deepened among students from public schools in other states in the Northeast, similar to that which occurred in Brazil as a whole.

Due to the potential that the literacy process and the development of adequate reading skills have to provide conditions for more equitable educational trajectories, the theme is a frequent object of attention by IMDS (see, for example, the Pisa 2037 Project). The results of the note reinforce the potential of public policies aimed at basic education and, in particular, effective policies for children's literacy, to reduce the weight of socioeconomic factors on educational trajectories.

See you in the next "IMDS Letter"!

Paulo Tafner

CEO