In order not to have to drop out of school, Gustavo Pontes, 17, had the only option this year to attend a school in a neighboring city more than 40 kilometers from where he lives.
Him need to work to help with the bills at home, and the only state school in its city, Mira Estrela, in the interior of São Paulo, offers full-time classes only. O model increased class time from 5 to 7 hours per day and led the unit to not offer classes at night.
“Classes at school are from 7 am to 2 pm and I need to work. No one will give me a job to work only after that time. So, I have to go to another city where there is still the option of studying at night”, says the teenager. , who is in the 2nd year of high school.
Mira Estrela, a municipality with just over 3,000 inhabitants, is located in the Fernandópolis region, the first in the state to have all its 25 state schools with the full-time education model, educational policy prioritized by the governments of João Doria and Rodrigo Garcia (PSDB) over the past four years.
The toucan management bet on the accelerated expansion of PEI (Integral Education Program) to try to solve the low quality of education in São Paulo🇧🇷 In 2018, 364 state schools offered the extended day (about 6% of the total). For the next year, there will be 2,311 with the model, reaching 45% of the entire network.
Expansion has been one of the country’s main goals in the area of education for years, as international and local experiences have demonstrated a series of benefits in keeping students longer in the classroom.
Experts, however, claim that the implementation needs to be done carefully so that the model does not end up excluding precisely the most vulnerable students.
A rapid expansion in São Paulo it has already made it possible for small regions and municipalities in the state, such as Mira Estrela, to have all schools offering full-time courses, without offering part-time options for young people who need to work.
Gustavo lives in the rural area of the city with his mother, who is a fisherman on the Rio Grande. He got a job at a floorcloth factory, with an eight-hour day, and became the main source of income for the household.
In order to reconcile work and study, Gustavo faces a routine of 18 hours of activities per day. He leaves home at 5:30 am to arrive at the factory at 7 am. There, he spends all his time on his feet, as his job is to clean and maintain the weaving machines.
When the office closes, at 5 pm, he takes a bus to Fernandópolis that leaves him at the door of the school where he studies — one of four in the region that maintained the night shift. Classes start at 7 pm and end at 10 pm. He returns on a city hall bus, which is used by students at a college, and arrives home after midnight.
“It’s tiring, but I need to finish school. The weekend comes and I just sleep to get through the other days,” says the teenager, who dreams of opening a barbershop after graduating.
Gustavo’s routine is no exception among young people in the region. Jenifer Soares, 18, also works at the factory in Mira Estrela and travels every day to study at night in Fernandópolis.
“We try to handle everything, help at home, work and study. But it’s tiring, I often get to school and sleep in class because of tiredness”, says the young woman, who is also in her 2nd year of high school. .
The two say that if there was still an option to study part-time, they could get a job at a different time so they wouldn’t have to go to school at night and in another city.
The implementation of full-time education without changing teaching has also led students who do not need to work to look for jobs to “escape” from the model. National legislation provides that adolescents with an employment contract have the right to study at night.
Lívia Santana Dias, 16, attended the 1st year of high school full-time this year at the state school Joaquim Antonio Pereira, in Fernandópolis. She says she has not adapted to so much class time and is looking for a job.
“The classes are all the same, I don’t feel like I’m learning more. I feel like I’m wasting time being locked up in school for so long, doing the same thing. I prefer to go to work”, she says.
The young woman has her mother’s support. “She was very discouraged with school this year, I’d rather she go to work, learn other things. I’m even afraid that she’ll give up studying completely if she has to continue this model over the next two years”, says Viviane Santana, 39, administrative assistant .
Data from the Department of Education itself show that the number of students who started to study at night this year grew 41%. In 2021, the Fernandópolis region had 386 enrolled at night. This year, there were 546.
Even so, the secretariat says that the transfer requests are not a consequence of full-time, but of the young people’s need to work. Questioned, the folder did not respond about the difficulties of students who need to travel to continue studying.
