Fundação Getulio Vargas

Economic Perspective on Education Policy in Latin America

Professor: Paulo Nascimento
Student: Artur Vilas Bôas - C359303
Topic 3: Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic on Education
The education cost of Covid-19: What can Brazil do?
Introduction
In the decades before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic,
middle-income countries were making strides towards universal basic education. But
following the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 in 2020, schools around the world were
closed for significant periods of time, and there was a huge loss of government revenues
that led to substantial cuts in funding for public education. This policy briefing is going to
exploit these impacts on government funding and remote learning based on the literature
and analysis of policies.
Impacts on Resources
Government funding for education is often procyclical: during economic downturns,
revenues for education are likely to experience declines. Global economy has shrunk in
2020, with a strong recuperation in 2021 and slower and smaller growth in 2022, according
to data from the World Bank. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Brazil already had spending
levels per student below those of other OECD countries, was unable to complete several
goals of the National Education Plan, and invested 3 to 5 times less than it should invest per
student if values ​of the Initial Student-Quality Cost (Pellanda and Cara, 2020) were taken as
a basis.
Since the Coleman Report, in 1966, there has been a debate on literature about the
importance of financial resources to education. This and the subsequent studies has shown
results and conclusions that related school performance to family background, that is,
family-related factors (family size, social class, context) were more determinant than school
spending (Coleman, 1966; Hanushek, 1986). However, analyzes of recent educational
policies, such as Excellence in Cities (EiC), in the United Kingdom, and the Preferential
School Subsidy Act (SEP), in Chile, demonstrate that there is a relationship between
increased financial resources and quality. education (Machin, McNally, and Meghir, 2010;
Vegas and Coffin, 2015). The EiC consisted of providing additional resources to selected
schools that were most in need, while the SEP consisted of increasing the voucher for
low-income students by 50%.
When covering the analysis of the period following the Great Recession in Texas
(USA), it was evident that districts that had high poverty rates had disproportionate cuts
when compared to wealthier districts (Knight, 2019). Still in relation to the analysis of the
subsequent period of the Great Recession, it is noticeable that different collections can lead
to disproportionate distributions of revenues for certain levels and locations: low-income
districts, due to stronger cuts and greater dependence on external financing, had an even
greater negative impact (Jackson, Wigger, and Xiong, 2018). Moreover, despite the federal
government’s efforts to minimize the negative effects of the Great Recession on America’s
public education, federal aid was short-lived and was not enough to offset the disproportional
loss of revenues in low-income districts (Baker, 2014).
Considering the importance of funds to education quality, declines in spending
caused by economic recessions can have serious negative consequences to school
outcomes.
Impacts on Learning
 The Covid-19 pandemic, as it impacts different aspects of people's lives, can lead to
a sharp increase in not only financial but also educational inequalities (Afonso et al. 2020).
The difference in adaptation and the search for education, although not face-to-face
demonstrates this: the search for technological support grew significantly more in areas
inhabited by families with high socioeconomic status (Bacher-Hicks, Goodman, and Mulhern,
2020). In this way, it is interesting to note that educational gaps and inequalities tend to
increase not only due to the drop in education revenues, but also due to the singularities of
Covid-19.
With the closing of schools, the alternative to maintain the link between the school
and the students and their families was the adoption of remote teaching. The means used to
transmit these activities and their frequency varied from one network to another. Educational
networks had to innovate and adopt the use of technological resources that they had not
used before. This new practice demanded adaptability from teachers and students. All state
networks claimed to have adopted some remote teaching strategy, and some adopted more
than one strategy to reach the largest number of students (IPEA, 2021).
Lichand et al found that under remote learning, dropout risk increased by 365% while
test scores decreased by 0.32 s.d., as if students had only learned 27.5% of the in-person
equivalent in São Paulo. Partially resuming in-person classes increased test scores by 20%
relative to the control group.
The need for technology and access to electronic equipment, in addition to being
difficult to adapt, are costly, which ended up preventing several students from accompanying
the school during the pandemic period. This abyss is very evident between public and
private networks, considering that, with the financial capacity of families in the private
network, the return to face-to-face classes will be a continuity of the work carried out during
the isolation phase, while public networks will have, and are having to create different ways
to resume learning, which in many cases has been interrupted.
Policy Recommendations
With what has been explained about the importance of resources for Education, it is
extremely important that policies that focus on better funding for education are expanded.
This is the case with Fundeb, for example, which became permanent in 2021. However,
Brazil cannot limit itself to Fundeb. There needs to be an increase in resources devoted to
education, bringing our Spending per Student closer to OECD countries, and the
implementation of policies that focus on the quality of education.
In view of the policies implemented in education networks that have already resumed
the hybrid, it is of paramount importance that policies that seek out students in content lag,
and that there is a reserved period in the school year so that they can try to recover through
reinforcement. This character of resumption of education once again highlights the country's
social inequality: while private networks resume face-to-face teaching with a character of
learning progression, public networks need a new beginning.
The performance of the country's education networks is evident so that the maximum
number of students could be reached by remote learning. The forms of outreach ranged
from the delivery of printed material (in schools or sending it to homes), through the use of
not-so-usual means of communication (social networks, television, radio), to synchronous
teaching through virtual meeting platforms. . Along with the availability of classes, public
policies of active search for students in truancy, distribution of internet chips and even tablets
were evidenced.
Thus, although several policies have been implemented, and an attempt has been
made to reach all students, this has not been possible. It is evident the differences in the
decisions between municipal and state networks, in relation to the given format
(asynchronous and synchronous), in the form of evaluation, periods that the networks were
without classes and in the policies of access to technologies and study materials, which
depend heavily on educational investment.

References
Bacher-Hicks, Andrew, Joshua Goodman, e Christine Mulhern. 2020. Inequality in
household adaptation to schooling shocks: Covid-induced online learning engagement in
real time. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Coleman, JAMES S. 1966. “EQUALITY OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY”.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED012275 (17 de novembro de 2020).

IPEA – INSTITUTO DE PESQUISA ECONÔMICA APLICADA. Políticas

Sociais: acompanhamento e análise, Brasília, n. 23, 2015. Disponível em: <https://
bit.ly/30a3eGR>.

Hanushek, Eric A. 1986. “The Economics of Schooling: Production and Efficiency in Public
Schools”. Journal of Economic Literature 24(3): 1141–77.

LICHAND, G. et al. The impacts of remote learning in secondary education during the
pandemic in Brazil. Nature Human Behaviour, p. 1–8, 26 maio 2022. Available at:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01350-6.

Jackson, C. Kirabo, Cora Wigger, e Heyu Xiong. 2018. Do School Spending Cuts Matter?
Evidence from The Great Recession. National Bureau of Economic Research.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w24203 (12 de novembro de 2020).

Knight, David. 2019. “Project MUSE - Are High-Poverty School Districts Disproportionately
Impacted by State Funding Cuts?: School Finance Equity Following the Great Recession”.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/688011 (10 de novembro de 2020).

Machin, Stephen, Sandra McNally, e Costas Meghir. 2010. “Resources and Standards in
Urban Schools”. Journal of Human Capital 4(4): 365–93.

Pellanda, Andressa; Cara, Daniel. Educação na pandemia: oferta e financiamento remotos.

In: DWECK, Esther; ROSSI, Pedro; DE OLIVEIRA, Ana (org). Economia Pós-Pandemia:
Desmontando os mitos da austeridade fiscal e construindo um novo paradigma
econômico.1ª ed. São Paulo: Autonomia Literária, 2020. p. 183 – 188.