Brazil’s Ministry of Education Cuts R$348 Million From Basic Education

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The MEC (Ministry of Education) has decided that the most recent budget block, announced in late July, will affect basic education. In all, the portfolio blocked R$348,471,498 (US$87.650 million) in the “production, acquisition and distribution of books and teaching and educational materials for basic education.”

The information, published yesterday in the Integrated System of Financial Administration (SIAFI), was collected and passed on to UOL news site by the NGO Contas Abertas.

On July 30th, the federal government announced the decision to block R$348 million from the MEC budget as part of a more significant contingency, of R$1.442 billion. It would be up to the ministry to decide on where to cut, to be broken down into several portfolio operations.

Gil Castello Branco, Secretary-General of Contas Abertas, says that “the exact amount of the recently announced blocking was the same as the amount blocked in textbooks.”

The government has slashed another R$94.4 million in advisory and technical assistance from international organizations, R$35 million in basic education assessment and R$94.4 million from PRONATEC (grants and aid).

This amount, however, has been offset by the release of another R$94.4 million related to the April contingency.

A total of R$1.7 million returned to the budget for supporting non-federal higher education institutions and R$21 million for the administration of information technology.

Additionally, R$1.7 million were released for the initial and continuing strategic training plan for basic education professionals, R$26.5 million for the Sustainability Challenge project, R$29.5 million for the budget management of educational policies and R$14 million for “other expenses”.

“The relocations come from earlier decisions,” explains Castello Branco. “The decrees only specify the amount to be subtracted from each portfolio. Internally they may transfer these contingencies as they wish.”

The government’s decision once again counters president Jair Bolsonaro’s speech, who said in an interview in May that he did not intend to “cut resources for the sake of cutting. The goal is to take it and invest in basic education,” he said.

That same month, the Minister of Education, Abraham Weintraub, said in the Chamber of Deputies plenary that basic education is outdated. “Fifty percent of our children go through primary school without learning to read, write and count,” he said.