MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

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  GeoffWard

  IBGE's 'Illiteracy' is not simply the flip-side of the 'literate' coin.
  
  To be FUNCTIONALLY LITERATE is the OECD worldwide measure of literacy;
  and here the population fares much more poorly.
  On any measure of
  (i) sophisticated use of language,
  (ii) knowledge of the structure of language, and
  (iii) the interpretation of standard texts,
  the performances are much, much worse.
  
  This is totally understandable since most of the Brasilian *adult* population never progressed beyond primary school, and in many States high proportions never regularly attended any school or never completed primary phase.
  
  For the last 10 years, with the introduction of the Bolsa programmes, school attendance has been linked to 'social security' payments (though this has been progressively failing in the last few years.)
  
  The Federal Education Budget has been diverted disproportionately into tertiary education (uni),
  and state secondary has been the poor, under-provided sector.
  Primary sector teaching has been, and still is, 'Poor' and 'Politicised' (OECD).
  
  The key reference is: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/33/46581300.pdf
  
  Key statements:
  ”Rios (Embraer HR) noted that the link between education and development is critical to Brazil’s future in a competitive global environment, and the status quo cannot get the country where it needs to go.”
  
  “The limited number of university spaces enables only 15% of (those that went on to secondary) students to attend university; only 10% graduate because of their poor preparation in basic and secondary education.
  This is one more reason why it is difficult to motivate young people to strive for education excellence in high school.”
  
  Please read it before trying to refute my statements.

  Apr 30th, 2011 - 11:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0
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