By OTAVIANO HELENE*
The cuts made to education by the São Paulo government are a guarantee of future delays and regression for the sector and for the development of the state.
The São Paulo government has made a change to the state constitution that reduces minimum expenditures on maintenance and development of education from 30% to 25% of tax and transfer revenue, a cut of almost 17% in the amounts allocated to the sector. This corresponds to more than R$10 billion each year (a figure that, of course, increases over time, whether due to inflation or economic growth). What does this mean for basic education and universities?
The monthly investment per student in the state basic education network, corresponding to the remuneration of teachers and other workers and all other investment and operating expenses, is less than R$700 per month. If the expenses of the Department of Education not directly aimed at students in the state network were excluded, the amounts would be even lower. If the working and studying conditions in state schools are not even more limited, it is thanks to the efficiency of the public sector: the same investment per student made through private institutions would never achieve the same result.
An appropriate criterion to compare those R$700 per month with the investment in different countries and to get an idea of how far we are from an acceptable situation, is to use the GDP per capita as a reference. This criterion allows values to be put into perspective considering both the economic capacity of countries, whether poor or rich, and local costs. The comparison with GDP per capita indicates the effort that each country dedicates to the schooling of its children and young people today and of its adult population in the future.
Using this criterion as a rule, we see that poor or rich countries that maintain good school systems invest about 25% or more of their income per capita per student. Those less than R$700 per month correspond to about 15% of the income per capita state of São Paulo. In other words, to get closer to a more adequate situation it would be necessary to increase such investments. It is impossible to build a good educational system with such scarce resources; that is why we do not have one.
It has not yet been defined how the reduction will occur, and there are some loose ends that must be completed by budget proposals or complementary legislation. However, if the reduction occurs in all educational segments in the same proportions as their current budgets, the State of São Paulo will end up investing something close to 12% or 13% of its GDP per student each year. per capita. If universities are spared this cut and it falls exclusively on basic education, the investment per student will be reduced to values below 10% of income per capita per year.
If universities see their funding cut by 17%, we will suffer a combination of factors that include salary reductions, a reduction in the number of faculty and technical-administrative staff, a reduction in research, a reduction in the number of students, an overload of faculty members, and a reduction in services provided to society (such as maintenance of hospitals, museums, radio stations, theaters, orchestras, publishers, cinemas, and cultural centers, offering courses and other outreach activities, collaboration in the production of medicines, etc.); 17% of USP corresponds, in approximate numbers, to R$1,3 billion per year, close to 900 faculty members and around 2 non-teaching staff, more than 10 undergraduate and graduate students, and close to 40 hospital beds. Is this what the governor intends to cut?
Regardless of how the cuts are distributed, we will have a process of dispute between the different segments of the educational sector and even between universities.
The justification submitted by the governor to the Legislative Assembly for the cuts is strange. He does not argue anywhere that there is room for reducing investment in education, because, of course, he could not do so. The justification given in the submission of the proposed amendment to the Constitution refers to the use of these resources cut from education in the health sector. To this end, he acknowledges the lack of resources for this sector.
This type of reasoning does not seem to be very sound from a logical point of view: the recognition of a lack of resources for one sector, health, is used as an argument to reduce resources for another sector that is also lacking, education. This strange form of reasoning was accepted by the governor's legislative base in the Legislative Assembly.
A good educational system is necessary for social and cultural development and economic growth. A poor educational system is enough to make such progress unfeasible. What is being done today in the State of São Paulo is a guarantee of future backwardness.
*Otaviano Helene is a senior professor at the USP Physics Institute.
Originally published on Journal of USP.
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