Educational inequalities in Brazilian High School

an analysis of the socioeconomic profile of young people who conducted the National Examination of Secondary Education

Abstract

The expansion of access to basic education in Brazil in the last decades, although surrounded by contradictions, has enabled children and young people in the country to have higher levels of schooling. However, this expansion did not translate into the guarantee of the quality of teaching by school institutions. An inherent problem in the current scenario is related with the absence of data and references about the new public that is found in Brazilian schools, especially at the high school level in the country. The objective of this article is to analyse the phenomenon of progressivity in the socioeconomic profile of students who completed ENEM in Brazil in the historical series from 1998 to 2014. The research was done using the data provided by INEP about a questionnaire applied to all the students who carried out the ENEM in this period. One of the major challenges posed to educational policies for high school education in Brazil is a part of the objectives of this study: the need to adapt educational proposals to the reality experienced by students in their socioeconomic, cultural, school and work contexts, in different regions of Brazil.

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