IDEB 2021: Literacy is the most impacted by the pandemic

The Basic Education Development Index (Ideb), the main indicator of Brazilian education, points out that literacy is the most impacted by the pandemic in the country.

Compared to the period before Covid-19, the biggest drop in performance happened with students in the 2nd year of elementary school – in the literacy period – in the Portuguese language subject.

In 2019, the average recorded among students was 750 points; in 2021, the average dropped to 725.5. This means, as shown in this edition, that four out of ten children who took the test cannot read a single word.

In addition to the immediate results, the future consequences of the drop in student performance are also of concern to specialists.

Effect of the pandemic

The pandemic was also directly reflected in the total pass rate by municipality in the initial years of elementary school.

In elementary school, the percentage of those approved went from 91.7% in 2019 to 98.4% in the first year of the pandemic (2020). In 2021, the rate dropped to 96.3% (still 4.6 percentage points higher than in 2019). In public high school, approval went from 84.7% in 2019 to 94.4% in 2020. The percentage was reduced to 89.8% in 2021.

The increase in the approval rate, according to the data, is due to the adjustments of the National Education Council (CNE) in the approval criteria for basic education during the pandemic for a period of two years. During the period, there was adoption of the “curricular continuum”, which, in practice, resulted in students not failing.

The Ministry of Education recognizes that the data were expected, including the distortion caused by the pandemic. One of the consequences of this is that the complementation of the National Fund for the Development of Education (Fundeb) will take into account the figures for 2019 and not for 2021.

“These losses are the result of both the long period of closed schools and the historical difficulties of our educational systems,” said Education Minister Victor Godoy.

*With information from Iuti Pitta, Giovanna Inoue and Gabriela Bernardes, from CNN