New research shows that factors like family income, mother’s education level and race significantly affect the performance of students in the National Secondary Education Examination (Enem). The information comes from a study published this Wednesday (17) in the Revista de Administração Pública.
The article entitled “Impact of socioeconomic variables on the performance of Enem: a spatial and sociological analysis” had the participation of researchers from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) and the University of São Paulo (USP).
To arrive at the results, the group surveyed the scores of the objective test and the writing of the students who took the exam in 2018. Then, they crossed the numbers with three different databases: the socioeconomic questionnaires of the exam, the information from the School Census of 2018 and statistics from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
In the study, we showed that a large part of the factors that influence Enem’s grade are socioeconomic, that is, infrastructure is important, but it’s no use building the best school in the world if students have less economic and cultural capital
Anne Caroline de Freitas, doctoral student at the USP Biosciences Institute and one of the authors of the study
The Enem is applied annually by the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep) and serves for the admission of students to public institutions, through the Unified Selection System (Sisu), or to obtain scholarships in private higher education institutions , through the University for All Program (Prouni).
This year, the exam will be held on November 21st and 28th, amid the dismissal of more than 30 employees of the Ministry of Education.
What impacts student performance
Enem’s grade is composed by the grades of the objective tests and the essay. In the objective test, the researchers identified that 68% of the grade could be explained by socioeconomic factors. According to the analysis, municipalities with the highest percentage of high-income families had a higher mean in the exam.
They inferred that the mother’s educational background and occupation also affected the students’ grades. In this sense, cities where there was a concentration of mothers with fewer years of schooling had worse grades.
The third relevant point for student performance was race: municipalities with a higher percentage of white students performed better. At the other end, those with a concentration of blacks, browns and indigenous people had the worst evaluation.
Variables linked to school infrastructure, such as a computer lab, a Spanish class and a cafeteria, interfered with the grade, but to a lesser degree than the previous ones.
“Through data science, we were able to create a tool that can assess performance variables in Enem, understand what is pushing the grade up or down with a certain level of assertiveness, show where the bottleneck is”, says Rafael Oliveira Melo, graduated from FGV and one of those responsible for the survey.
The idea of the study is that, with more accurate information, the data will serve to assist the Union, States and municipalities in the creation of specific public policies, which act effectively to identify and correct problems that affect the school performance of students in different parts of the school. parents.
He gives the example of the city of Itapipoca, in Ceará, where the average of the objective test was 481.9 in the 2018 Enem, below the average in the country, of 507.7.
For the researchers, performance is associated with variables such as the high proportion of poor, black students and the low educational level of mothers in the city.
According to the study data, writing performance was also affected by factors such as income, race and the mother’s educational level. In addition, the percentage of students with scholarships in private schools affected their performance on the test.
On the other hand, rural schools without internet access and indigenous students have lower grades, which indicates a disadvantage compared to others in the same educational network.
“This shows that there must be an effort by Inep to think of a test that is fairer, linked to the social, political and economic reality of the students, that does not only value white hegemonic culture, but considers oral culture and linguistic variables”, says Anne Freitas.
The study showed the concentration of higher grades in Enem in states in the South and Southeast of the country. According to the researchers, this index may be related to the higher incomes observed in these places.
“The geographic variable is important and reflects the socioeconomic inequalities of different regions of the country”, say the researchers in the article.
The study takes into account a period before the pandemic and, according to the researchers, it is possible that the exams of this and the next years point to an increase in inequalities and a decrease in the average performance of students.
“We know that structural racism and economic and cultural inequalities are barriers for students from basic education to higher education, and our hypothesis is that these data got worse in a context of the Covid-19 pandemic”, comments Anne Freitas.
The researchers assess that the reduction in family income in the last year and the lack of structure for remote learning can affect not only the grade, but also the participation of young people in the exam. And some numbers are already an indication that this is happening.
A survey carried out by the National Youth Council with 33,000 students showed that 43% of young people thought about dropping out of school in 2021 – against 23% last year. Among those enrolled in Enem, 57% thought not to attend the test. In fact, low adherence can be seen in this year’s data.
Enem 2021 registered 4 million subscribers, the lowest number in the last 13 years. The biggest reduction, of 77.4%, was among students with a family income of up to three minimum wages, as shown by a survey carried out by Semesp, an entity that represents private universities.
To better understand what this means, the group from FGV and USP intends to repeat the analysis in a few years, in order to compare the results and measure the impacts of the pandemic. “Research shows that we owe these students a debt, but it is repairable and we can work to reduce it,” says the author.
Reference: CNN Brasil
