Studies indicate that, although the educational policies implemented in Brazil since the 1990s share the same discourse of confronting the problem of exclusion to promote a school for everyone, there is a hiatus between intention and reality. This observation points to the importance of studies dedicated to understand the inner world of these policies, so as to identify how they are analyzed by those who live them, those who materialize them in their educative practices. Along these lines, the present text shows results of a research carried out with eight schools of the Rondônia state school system, all located in the same municipality, with the objective of investigating under which conditions the implementation of the nine-year fundamental education occurred. Based on a qualitative approach, the data were produced from the analysis of documents, individual and group interviews, and photographic records. Results indicate that the implementation of the above-mentioned program at the schools studied was hasty, lacking the preparation that would guarantee the necessary structural changes in the schools, the curriculum adaptations and/or discussions/creation of pedagogical teams, teachers and communities. They also reveal that the lack of clarity regarding the pedagogical proposals to be implemented with six-year-olds could have predicted the failure experienced by a large fraction of children in their literacy process.
Nine-year fundamental education; Educational policies; Early childhood education
