The present study describes and analyzes the perceptions of teachers about the practice of assessment by learning cycles, which seeks to give students from the lower social classes an extended "survival" in school. The chosen locus for the research was a primary school from the Belo Horizonte Public School System, which since 1995 has implemented the Escola Plural ("Plural School") political-pedagogical project. From such reform, radical changes were introduced to the pedagogical organization of schools and to the work of teachers with a view to build a more socially inclusive and democratic school. Taking a qualitative approach as the central procedure for this investigation, semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers with the purpose of picturing the pedagogical practices constructed by these agents, as well as apprehending changes in the aspects related to the schooling process of pupils since the adoption of learning cycles and the elimination of mechanisms of school failure. The analysis of the discursive material obtained from the interviews was made through the method of Content Analysis. The conclusion is that within the school studied here the principle of automatic promotion, per se, cannot untie the intricate knots of the school system to overturn the picture of exclusion that still persists. Without reforming the teaching processes, the pedagogical practices and school strategies, to give them less punitive, selective and excluding contours the advances will certainly be limited to a school that excludes less but still excludes.
Automatic promotion; Teachers; School success