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Législations et politiques nationales sur la scolarité payante ou gratuite – Brazil

Le fait que l'éducation délivrée par l’Etat soit gratuite ou payante n’est pas anodin. Tous les pays du monde ont signé au moins un traité international les obligeant à délivrer une éducation primaire gratuite et obligatoire, suivie progressivement par l’enseignement secondaire. L’éducation ne peut pas être obligatoire si elle n’est pas gratuite, mais cette contradiction est trop souvent ignorée. De plus, que signifie exactement la gratuité dans un monde où les apprenants, les parents et les communautés locales supportent une multitude de coûts officiels ou déguisés ? Une enquête de Katarina Tomasevski en 2006 montrait que dans la grande majorité des pays à travers le globe, l’éducation n’était pas réellement gratuite. Les citations concernant votre pays ci-dessous (selon la disponibilité des données) sont extraites de cette importante étude.

 

Les lois et les politiques nationales sont des applications de la Constitution, qu’elles devancent parfois car elles sont plus souvent révisées et renouvelées. Les lois sont faites par le gouvernement, les parlementaires et l’administration, souvent en consultation avec la société civile. Cela les rend vulnérables et soumises à un risque de régression dans la mesure où elles deviennent souvent des instruments au service de visions politiques et de priorités à court terme. Les lois et les politiques sont ouvertes au changement et à l’influence par le biais du processus démocratique et des campagnes de la société civile. Et leurs violations doivent, si possible, être dénoncées devant les tribunaux ou les autorités judiciaires.

 

 

 

 

L’Etat est l’acteur central de toute réclamation relative au droit à l'éducation, il est le premier responsable de sa délivrance, le premier à le mettre en œuvre, le premier garant, le signataire vis-à-vis des normes et des standards internationaux, et il est lié par l’obligation de respecter, protéger et mettre en œuvre le droit à l'éducation. C’est en conséquence l’Etat qui doit être jugé et questionné sur les textes relatifs au droit à l’éducation, qu’il s’agisse de la Constitution, de lois ou de stratégies politiques.

It was no coincidence that Brazil, alongside Argentina, announced in January 2006 that it paid its debts to the IMF so as to re-gain freedom for a future “built on strong investment in education”. The (previous) government noted in 2001 that it “needed to overcome a number of major barriers comprising adjustment programmes and a series of international financial crises before it could implement wide-ranging social policies”. 

Education is defined as a collective good as well as an individual public right in Brazil. This associates individual entitlements with corresponding public responsibilities. The principal bearers of this responsibility are the local authorities and the federal states. The 1988 Constitution specified obligatory allocations of 18% for the federal budget, and 25% for state and municipal budgets: 

With Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, the percentage of government funding to be assigned to [education] increased to 18 per cent at the federal level and 25 per cent at the state and municipal level. More recently, the Teaching Development and Enhancement Maintenance Fund (FUNDEF) was introduced, with the immediate objective of ensuring a minimum expenditure per student and a special minimum wage for teachers. The Fund reaffirmed the need for the states, federal district and municipal districts to comply with the provisions of Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, which stipulates that 25 per cent of the tax revenues and other transferred income should be allocated to the maintenance and development of the education system and that states must allocate 60 per cent of this funding to basic education as from 1998, ensuring that 15 per cent of tax revenues are also allocated to this area.

 This new legal provision stated that the responsibility for providing the necessary funding falls within the competence of the states, the federal district and the municipal districts. However, owing to their widely varying social and economic levels, which results in low annual outlays per student, particularly in north-east and north Brazil, the Federal Government, under Decree 14/96, assumes responsibility for supplementing the amounts allocated to FUNDEF whenever the allocation per student falls below a nationally defined minimum level.

 This scheme, which was in 2004 extended to all basic education, necessitates monitoring so as to determine whether funds are earmarked for education as they should be, and whether the earmarked funds are deployed as they should be. Because financial responsibilities for education are allocated to different tiers of government, from central to local, monitoring reveals a variety of best and worst practices in this huge and diverse country. Transparency Brazil has shown that in 63% of municipalities there were cases of embezzlement and in 60% the funds earmarked for education were used for other purposes. The contribution of the civil society has also proved crucial in exposing and opposing budgetary allocations inconsistent with constitutional mandates. The law gives standing to a broad range of actors, from individual citizens to trade unions, to vindicate the right to education. This entitlement encompasses primary education for all, while free secondary education is to be realized progressively. 

In an illustrative case, initiated by the federal ministry (Ministerio Público) against municipal authorities of Novo Cruzeiro, the court has ordered the municipal authorities to ensure free transportation to children within 30 days or pay fines. The children had not been able to go to school three years. The federal ministry, after many attempts to enforce the children’s right to education, resorted to court so as to ensure that obligations mandated by the Constitution were implemented. The case revolved around repairing roads and organizing transport for school children but the issue was much broader: 

Without education, the fundamental objectives of the Republic, namely the construction of a free, fair and understanding society, the guarantee of national development, the eradication of poverty and marginalization, and the reduction of social inequalities, will not be achieved. 

The definition of free education is indeed broad, as described in the introduction to this section. Governmental policy includes the elimination of charges as well as supplementary entitlements. These span teaching and learning materials, school transport, school-based food or health services where these are indispensable to enable children to complete the schooling they are entitled to. Bolsa escola has been extended to some 10 million children to enable the children to regularly attend school. Its elimination of opportunity costs enabled 97% of children aged 7 to 14 to enrol in school, a higher percentage that 93% in the United States of America […]