By ANDREA HARADA*

The withdrawal of the teacher's status from the pedagogical mediator occurred due to pressure from capital, the market-peer, and was met by the MEC, the state-peer of the CC-Peers in charge of discussing the review of EaD.

“Take the case of education. We know, with tears in our eyes, tails between our legs and full of shame, that we are ignorant. But you who humiliate and exploit us as much as you can, do you think you can do it any better? We pay an absurd amount – and often don’t get enough sleep – to study at shitty colleges, that’s right, shitty, very lucrative, where we qualify for jobs that are hard, for underemployment and subsistence, or for naked unemployment.”
(Roberto Schwarz, queen lyre, P. 28).

On May 19th, after four postponements, the signing ceremony for Decree 12.456/2025 took place,[I] called by the government as “New Policy for Distance Learning”. All the actors who actively participated in the construction of the new legislation participated in the ceremony: government representatives, businesspeople from the private education sector and UNE – National Union of Students.

At the end of December last year, we published on the website the earth is round, an article in which we questioned what would become of the teacher in the new regulatory framework for Distance Education: a hidden, undefined or non-existent subject? On the eve of the scheduled date for the publication of the new legislation, we saw that the lack of representation of teachers in the advisory council called CC-Pares,[ii] indicated that the government's and MEC's ​​concern with the quality of education and with the reduction in the number of teachers in Distance Education was not confirmed in the constitution of the aforementioned council and we therefore warn that the expression “peers” that designates the aforementioned body also designates the pair that had now been called to debate the direction of higher education in Brazil: namely the State and the market.

In this case, the term market means that all the major representatives of the higher education business sector had seats on the council: ABMES, SEMESP, ABIEE, ABRUC, ANACEU, ABRAFI, ANEC and ANUP. The CC-Pares was recreated with the purpose of formulating the new regulatory framework for Distance Education and deliberately excluded teachers and their representative entities from this debate. Some entities received only a questionnaire in which they were asked to state their position in relation to Distance Education, in order to forge a democratic conduct that was nothing more than a bureaucratic consultation.

The participation of so many representatives from the education business community is directly related to the formation of higher education in Brazil. As we know, higher education is predominantly private, whether in terms of enrollment, number of students or institutions. Added to this is the fact that it is a commercialized and financialized sector controlled by a few large economic groups, the educational oligopolies. These elements help to characterize the interests of the sector in the formulation of public policies for higher education.

As mentioned, the signing ceremony was attended by a significant number of representatives from the education business community, the market-parity of CC-Pares. Before that, these representatives worked directly and intensely to ensure that the legislation under construction would take into account their interests, which, as is also known, do not lie in quality education, but in the potential profits that the new rule could or could not ensure. In this case, it ensured. What's more: it increased.

A few hours after the signing ceremony, different entities in the sector held events and live broadcasts to explain the new regulatory framework, with the participation – somewhat embarrassing due to the evident subordination – of representatives from the MEC, especially Daniel Ximenes and Ulisses Tavares: the Brazilian Association of Higher Education Providers (ABMES), the Union of Private Education Providers of the State of Rio de Janeiro (SEMERJ), the Union of Higher Education Providers of São Paulo (SEMESP), as well as consultancies such as Hoper Educação and the Brazilian Distance Education Association (ABED).

A representative of the private sector expressed himself at the event promoted by SEMERJ: “We are very excited about this decree. I am happy when I see the largest operators of Distance Education saying they are excited and stimulated.”[iii] And later, at the same event, he adds – paraphrasing the CEO of Yduqs: “The state develops and the private sector brings efficiency.” In general, at all these events, representatives of higher education entrepreneurs demonstrated their satisfaction and were categorical in stating that the new Distance Learning policy is very good.

Good for whom? The new policy for Distance Learning

We emphasize from the outset that this is not a new policy for Distance Learning, but a broad reformulation of higher education: it modifies Distance Learning, in-person learning, and legalizes blended learning, previously called modalities, now designated as “offer formats”, with the total course load distributed as follows in each of the formats: Distance Learning composed of 80% remote activities and 20% in-person activities; blended learning would be composed of 50% in-person and 50% remote activities; and in-person learning composed of 30% remote activities and 70% in-person activities. The exception is the undergraduate medical course, whose workload must be 100% in-person.

However, in the composition of the course load in all modalities, a rider called “mediated synchronous activities” was created, which are online activities, that is, in which students and teachers or pedagogical mediators participate at the same time, but not in the same space. These activities are not necessarily classes.

It turns out that in the distribution of the in-person workload of the Distance Learning or Blended Learning formats, the composition is made up of a part that is actually in-person and another part of mediated synchronous activities. Thus, in Distance Learning courses, of the 20% in-person workload, 10% can be in mediated synchronous activities; in blended learning courses, of the 50% in which attendance is required, 20% can be in mediated synchronous activities. In other words: in Distance Learning courses, the in-person workload continues to be 10%, and in blended learning courses, the workload can be 70% remote activities and 30% in-person, or 60% remote and 40% in-person, depending on the course.

It would require a lot of terminological contortionism to consider remote activities, even if mediated, as in-person. But Decree 12.456/2025 brings this conceptual innovation by equating in-person and virtual courses in the workload of blended courses that, with the exception of Medicine, Dentistry, Psychology, Nursing and Law, all others can be offered in this format.

In fact, almost all statements by the “peers” (State and market) involved in formulating the new regulatory framework repeat the well-known vocabulary of modernization, improvement and democratization to wrap the content of the Decree and subsequent Ordinances in a seductive package. But so far we have only seen changes in designation: what used to be a modality is now a format of offering, in addition to a forced equivalence between online and in-person activities.

And there's more: all centers accredited for Distance Learning are automatically accredited for blended learning, as per article 4 of Ordinance No. 381/25.[iv] and will have a period of two years to comply with the structure determinations (Art. 2 of Ordinance No. 381/2025). Institutions already accredited for in-person and distance learning will also be automatically accredited to offer the blended format (Art. 3 of Ordinance 381/25). Registration will be carried out through a single regulatory process (Art. 13, Decree 12.456/25), significantly facilitating such processes for private institutions.

So much so that the new legislation, announced to curb the low quality of distance learning courses, instead of curbing the growth of Distance Learning, has expanded the modality to all higher education. It would be interesting to think whether a course consisting of 70% remote activities and 30% in-person activities would be more like Distance Learning or in-person, and that is the novelty of semi-in-person: it is another name for Distance Learning. By the way, this linguistic subversion goes far, “semi” here does not mean half, but “almost in-person” or “like in-person”.

There is no doubt about the reason why the higher education business sector is celebrating, with a few exceptions that wanted an even more advantageous policy. The restriction on the number of students per teacher or pedagogical mediator, which cannot exceed 70 students, is highlighted as an advance in the quality of interaction between students and teachers, but it applies exclusively to mediated synchronous activities. Would this be “appreciation of teachers” or would it express the announced intention of appreciating higher education teachers?

At this point, the dissemination of the New Distance Learning Policy takes on an air of hypocrisy, precisely because between one topic and another it was stated that part of this legislation aimed at “valuing teachers”.

Let's go back to the article "What will happen to teachers in the new regulatory framework for Distance Education". At that time, my concern was precisely the fact that there was a fuss with the release of data by the mainstream media that showed that in Distance Education there was a ratio of almost 3000 students per teacher.

He then argued that part of the teaching work was performed by a kind of subcategory, the tutor, who does not appear in the INEP census data, and that it was impossible for a teacher to teach thousands of students. He highlighted the composition of the CC-Pares to question how an indispensable member of the construction of knowledge at higher education level had been left out of the formulation of the new legislation. He indicated in this non-participation a biased element of what was to come: would the teacher be treated as a hidden, undefined or non-existent subject?

The predictable answer comes with the publication of Decree 12.456/25, which in its chapter III presents the teaching staff as composed of: course coordinator, teacher and content teacher. The simple separation between teacher and content teacher makes explicit the Fordist practice that characterizes teaching work in Distance Education by separating conception and execution, although the teacher may accumulate both activities. But it goes further, separated from the teaching staff, a professional now called “pedagogical mediator” or the former tutor appears. Changing the name does not change the thing and, in this environment, the type of subject (hidden, undefined or nonexistent) that would characterize the teacher in Distance Education persists due to the evasive definition that the Decree presents.

Article 19 of the Decree also states that "The teaching staff may be assisted by pedagogical mediators, with compatible academic training, who will carry out educational activities of pedagogical mediation in teaching and learning processes. In the Quality References for Undergraduate Courses with Distance Learning Offering, updated after the publication of the decree, it is stated that the pedagogical mediator must preferably be a teacher.

Shortly before the publication of the new regulatory framework, in the presentation of the review of the regulatory framework for Distance Education, on 12/11/2024, the mediator was listed as a member of the teaching staff with the following title: “mediating teacher or online pedagogical mediator” and “mediating teacher or face-to-face pedagogical mediator”[v], so that, excluding the category of teacher, the pedagogical mediator or former tutor remains in the same limbo: he is neither fish nor fowl...he plays a teaching role, but is not a teacher.

But the MEC pair, called upon to formulate the new policy, is quite explicit: “In one of the meetings with SERES[vi], one of the main points was this: the decree would include the term teacher (…), the mediator would come with the category of teacher. We said: look, if you put him as a teacher, he will automatically be included in the rule of class hours, of the six-month salary guarantee and all the labor rules (…) so it will make the model rigid. So today (with the new Decree) this mediator does not exist anywhere, this will be the big discussion in labor negotiations: where will he fit in, who will this figure be? (…) I remember that Daniel himself[vii]when we were discussing it a lot, he said: no, that's a problem that I'm going to throw at you. You're going to decide who's going to be the pedagogical mediator (…)”[viii].

In view of this, it is clear that the withdrawal of the status of teacher from the pedagogical mediator occurred due to pressure from capital, the market-partner, and was met by the MEC, the state-partner of the CC-Pares that was in charge of discussing the review of EaD. It is the director of regulation who – with a regulatory function, obviously – is exempt from defining whether or not a pedagogical mediator is a teacher. The Decree briefly mentions that each curricular unit must have a teacher in charge, without, however, defining their duties, which should be described in a new ordinance to be issued.

So much so that the MEC says: that's not my problem and the market says: he can't be a teacher because it makes it more expensive, increases the cost of labor and consequently puts pressure on capital to the extent that it reduces the profit it obtains from the exploitation of the commodity of education. Or in their vocabulary: if he is a teacher, it "stiffens", because in order to exclude teachers from higher education it is also essential to establish a lexical field that disqualifies them as participants in the old stuff known as classes. In their place, technology, innovation and disruptive forms herald the promising and democratic future that the MEC endorses.

When we mention that the propaganda of the new regulatory framework, with regard to teaching work, borders on hypocrisy, it is because, from the beginning, teachers and their representatives were excluded from the debate process on the new higher education, becoming hostages of other interests that have much more to do with commerce, with a questionable democratization than with higher education.

In Distance Learning, everything is obvious: the centers, the classes recorded and repeated indefinitely, the huge classes, the lack of interaction between teachers and students, the Enade results. The market positions are also clear: if it is to make it cheaper, then it is Distance Learning, because it is the modality that allows for large-scale cost reduction and gains in scale.

In response to low student performance and teacherless education, the government announced a review of Distance Learning, taking the performative approach that has been its trademark. However, there is nothing new in the review: the market continues to define educational policies according to what suits it. The government continues to invest in privatized higher education, increasingly subordinated to the private sector. In this sense, the new Distance Learning policy ends up being presented as a simulacrum of commitment, inclusion, and democratization of access.

On the other hand, the impact of the New Distance Learning Policy has not yet cooled down and interest in public funding for private HEIs is already being expressed here and there. There was no provision for this in Distance Learning, but with the changes achieved in the Decree, businesspeople are already announcing the need for funding to invest in a new FIES format, with the same old purpose of transferring public resources to the private sector.

Adilson de Carvalho, also from the MEC, participated in a private sector event, according to a report in the newspaper The State of S. Paul: “The director of the MEC says that the department is open to discussing with the private sector the possibility of expanding Fies to Distance Learning. The decree came out last week and we have not yet done this study. But we are open.”[ix]

Far from those who celebrate any achievement of the current government without the necessary criticism and also far from the media repercussion that sees the private sector as its finished model of efficiency, we demand that it is necessary to understand how the private education sector operates, what they say and what they intend. Understand how, once again, the MEC acts as an ally of this sector, which has already been largely benefited by subsidy and financing programs.

Hence the question: good for whom? The New Distance Learning Policy – ​​which changes the entire higher education system and maintains the privatization logic of directing enrollments to the private sector – is a good policy, I would even say very good, for capital in education, but it does not substantially change the consolidated project for higher education and for serving those who still seek social, economic and cultural mobility through higher education. On the other hand, there are constant threats of budget cuts and contingencies for public universities, whose scrapping seems to indicate the other side of the coin.

*Andrea Harada She holds a PhD from the Faculty of Education at Unicamp and is president of the Guarulhos Teachers' Union..

Notes

[I] BRAZIL. Decree 12.456 of May 19, 2025. Provides for the provision of distance education by higher education institutions in undergraduate courses and amends Decree No. 9.235 of December 15, 2017, which provides for the exercise of the functions of regulation, supervision and evaluation of higher education institutions and undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the federal education system.

[ii] Advisory Council for the Improvement of Regulation and Supervision Processes in Higher Education (MEC)

[iii] Available in stock using this link

[iv] BRAZIL. Ministry of Education. Ordinance No. 381 of May 20, 2025. Provides transitional rules for the application of Decree No. 12.456 of May 19, 2025. Brasília, 2025.

[v] Available in stock using this link

[vi] SERES is the Secretariat for Regulation and Supervision of Higher Education

[vii] Daniel Ximenes, Director of Higher Education Regulation at Seres-MEC

[viii] Commentary by Rodrigo Capelato, executive director of SEMESP in a presentation available using this link

[ix] Available in stock using this link

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