Full-Time Education in High School: an experience in Minas Gerais

ABSTRACT

This article sought to analyze the implementation of the Full-Time High School Support Program in Minas Gerais, contained in Law No. 13,415/2017, which enacted the reform of this stage of basic education in Brazil. From this perspective, it focused on an analysis of the documents about fully-time education prepared by the State Department of Education of Minas Gerais (2017 to 2020) and an analysis of the empirical data produced, through interviews with the subjects involved in this process. The data show the difficulties found by the schools to carry out this Program and the strategies created by the subjects involved for the implementation of the proposed activities.

Keywords
Full-time High School; High School Reform (2017); Regulation; Public Action

RESUMO

Este artigo buscou analisar a implementação do Programa de Fomento às Escolas de Ensino Médio em Tempo Integral em Minas Gerais, contido na Lei nº 13.415/2017, que promulgou a reforma dessa etapa da educação básica no Brasil. Nessa perspectiva, enfocou a análise da documentação sobre o tempo integral elaborada pela Secretaria Estadual de Educação de Minas Gerais (2017 a 2020) e a análise dos dados empíricos produzidos, por meio de entrevistas realizadas com os sujeitos envolvidos nesse processo. Os dados mostram as dificuldades encontradas pelas escolas para efetivação desse Programa e as estratégias criadas pelos sujeitos envolvidos para a implantação das atividades propostas.

Palavras-chave
Ensino Médio de Tempo Integral; Reforma do Ensino Mé- dio (2017); Regulação; Ação Pública

Introduction

This article presents the results of a doctoral research that had as its object of study the implementation of the Full Time Secondary Schools Promotion Program (EMTI) in Minas Gerais (MG), regulated by the Ordinance of the Ministry of Education (MEC) n. 1,145/2016. This Program is part of the High School Reform process approved in 2017 during the Michel Temer government (Andrade, 2021).

For this article, a clipping of the documentary and empirical study carried out in the development of the thesis was carried out. The documents analyzed refer mainly to those prepared by the State Department of Education of Minas Gerais (SEE/MG) on full-time courses aimed at high schools, in the period from 2017 to 2020. These documents aimed to implement the EMTI in state high schools, regulating what was provided in the national legislation on this subject. In this sense, we sought to understand how the SEE/MG apprehended the national legislation on EMTI and interpreted it for implementation in its high school educational units.

The empirical research was carried out through semi-structured interviews with SEE/MG managers, school directors, program coordinators, teachers, and high school students. The interview with the managers aimed to find out what mechanisms were used by SEE/MG to formulate the full-time policy, who were the subjects involved in this process and what were the criteria used to choose the schools that started to adhere to the policy of extension of the journey. With teachers, students, coordinators, and management of the schools, we intended to identify the main changes that these actors have noticed in the school after the implementation of the full-time program, the relationships between the subjects involved in the implementation of the program, the working conditions, the training received, the ways of planning and materials used.

For the organization of the data obtained through the semi-structured interviews and the reports and documents analyzed, the N-VIVO7 software was used, by inputting in it the data found in this material.

Fieldwork was carried out in three state school¹: one located in Belo Horizonte (BH); the second in the Metropolitan Region of BH (RMBH); the third in a city in the countryside of the state. For their choice, the following criteria were used: for the schools to be researched in Belo Horizonte and in the RMBH, the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of the region in which the educational units are located was considered; for the school in the countryside of the state, the Human Development Index (HDI) was also taken into account and the condition of being the only school unit offering high school in the city. At the time the research was carried out, the schools that had joined the RMBH program and those in the countryside of the State had medium to medium-low SES, so, based on these cutouts, the selection made included a school that had a medium-high SES (school in BH), another with a medium SES (school in the RMBH) and a third with a low average SES (school in the countryside of the state of MG), in order to guarantee different levels and observe the impact that the SES might bring in the implementation of the program.

The testimonies of the interviewed subjects were used in this article to show how the managers apprehended the national norms and how the actors involved in the EMTI within the selected high schools interpreted the demands of the SEE/MG and experienced them in the school space.

According to Ball, Maguirre and Braun (2016), the school’s social actors or the different subjects that inhabit it use different resources to carry out interpretations of policies, bringing them to their interpretations, experiences, values, and uncertainties. According to these authors, it is about “[…] an initial reading, a making sense of politics – what does this text mean for us? What do we have to do? Do we have to do something?” (Ball; Maguirre; Braun, 2016, p. 68). When decoding the norms, that is, the texts, the school actors compare it with their own principles and conceptions about the purposes of public policies. Therefore, an attempt was made to capture some of these movements in the interviewees’ testimonies.

In the documentary study carried out, both in national documents and in those of the state of Minas Gerais that deal with EMTI, it was found that legislators used the concept of integral education as a synonym for full-time school. That is, more emphasis was placed on extending time to the detriment of comprehensive training, which has been a recurrent practice in the comprehensive education agenda in Brazil (Cavaliere, 2007).

For Cavaliere (2010), integral education is the educational action that involves diverse and comprehensive dimensions of the formation of individuals, to be carried out with the cooperation of all social institutions. From the point of view of those who educate, it indicates the intention to act in different aspects of the human condition - such as the cognitive, emotional and societal, in order to guarantee the development of the subjects in all its dimensions: intellectual, physical, emotional , social and cultural – and to constitute itself as a collective project, shared by children, young people, families, educators, managers and local communities.

As an educational action, the terminology integral education often appears directly related to the full-time school day, aiming to face educational inequality associated with social inequality. In this application, comprehensive education can be understood as expanding educational times and spaces, as well as the school’s social commitments, associated with other social policies and local communities to improve the quality of public education (Cavaliere, 2010).

However, given the situation of poverty and exclusion to which many children and young people in our country are subjected, the terminology comprehensive education is used as an alternative for social protection for the portion of the child and youth population that lives in poor conditions. This perception associates full-time with a way of keeping children and adolescents away from crime, that is, of “removing them from the streets” (Guará, 2009).

Regarding the theoretical path adopted for this research, it should be noted that the decision was made to choose the theory of regulation and public action as a reference, considering that the aim is to understand the process of High School Reform and the implementation of the day extension program, as a regulated public-action, that is, a complex political process, which takes into account the heterogeneity of present interests, the strategies of the actors involved in the processes, the intricacies of public decision-making, the reinterpretations and readjustments at the time of implementation of actions (Van Zanten, 2004).

This article is structured in two parts, preceded by this introduction, and followed by final considerations. The first part is dedicated to the presentation of the Secondary Education Reform process, highlighting the Policy for Fostering Full-Time Schools, which gave rise to EMTI. The second part presents the main points of the regulation of this program for High School in Minas Gerais and the vision of the subjects participating in the research in relation to the implementation of this policy.

The High School Reform in Brazil and the Full-Time High School Support Program

Over the last 25 years, High School in Brazil has undergone frequent reforms proposed by the federal government or on the initiative of the federative states themselves, which were implemented through legal provisions such as constitutional amendments, laws, decrees, provisional measures, resolutions, opinions, programs and projects. From 2016, once again, this stage of basic education was subject to a major reform.

When Michel Temer came to power, after the approval by the Federal Senate of the Impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, in 2016, a classist and authoritarian project was imposed in the country (Pochmann, 2017), based on an ultraliberal program called Uma Ponte para o Futuro (a bridge for the future), launched by the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) in October 2015. For Pochmann (2017), this program had repercussions for the country both internally and externally.

Domestically, this author highlights the policy of economic austerity and exemplifies it with the approval of PEC n° 95/2016, which created a ceiling for public spending, freezing Federal Government expenditures, with figures corrected for inflation, for up to 20 years. Pochmann (2017) also records the intensification of the privatization process, including sectors that had been preserved until then, such as the pre-salt layer, and highlights the retraction of public social policies, which occurred through reforms that remove historically acquired rights, such as labor and social security. In foreign policy, this author mainly highlights the realignment of the country to the global conservative wave.

It was in this regressive context that the Secondary Education Reform reached the National Congress through Provisional Measure (MP) n° 746/2016 and was implemented through Law 13,415/2017. The government’s interlocutors to promote this reform were education entrepreneurs, who had strong interests in the area, and international organizations, that is, there was no dialogue with researchers in the area, social movements in education and school communities.

In the explanatory memorandum that accompanied this MP, the government announced that the proposal to reform secondary education was in line with the recommendations of the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). They were also consistent with the recommendations of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for Secondary Education.

Law No. 13,415 made school time, organization and curriculum content, provision of educational services (partnerships), the teaching profession and the responsibility of the Union and states (Krawczyk; Ferretti, 2017) more flexible.

The curricular reorganization affected the composition of the curriculum, which would gradually contain 1,400 hours/year, that is, 3,200 total hours, of which 1,800 hours should be used for the general education of students, with reference to the Common National Base High School Curriculum (BNCCEM). In the rest of the time, the so-called formative itineraries should be organized: Languages ​​and their Technologies; Mathematics and its Technologies; Natural Sciences and their Technologies; Applied Human and Social Sciences and Technical and Professional Training (Brazil, 2017).

In this format, the relevance of important subjects for the general education of young people, such as Sociology, Philosophy, History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physical Education and Arts, is reduced. That is, disciplines that favor the development of critical-rational thinking and the broad human capabilities necessary for autonomous and citizen behavior (Araújo, 2018).

Regarding training itineraries, these should be implemented in schools according to budget and staff availability and the infrastructure conditions of public networks (Brasil, 2017). That is, the precariousness of public high schools existing in the country was disregarded.

Such a curricular change can become the way for public networks to make the necessary arrangements, considering both human resources and the infrastructure available to school units. For young students, the training possibilities are narrowed, based on their interests and aspirations, and the possibility of choices in relation to the training itineraries so widespread in the advertisements carried out on the Reform of Secondary Education by the federal government is restricted.

It is worth highlighting the formative itinerary of technical-professional education, considering the particularities it presents, such as the possibility of public and private partnership; validation of professional courses held in other spaces; recognition, as tacit knowledge, of professional experiences acquired outside the school environment; hiring of professionals for notorious knowledge to work in professional education.

From this perspective, it is possible to certify experiments carried out in a light way by institutions that do not have the conditions to guarantee an effective technical-professional training of quality and by professionals who do not have the appropriate training in a degree (UFMG, 2016). This provision of professional education in secondary education is defended in documents by UNESCO (2008), World Bank (2007) and OECD (2019) and is justified by the need to prepare youth for the challenges of job flexibility in today’s world. The same argument is made in the documents of the business² community interested in training for work and acting in this sector.

As previously mentioned, the High School Reform implemented a Policy to Promote Full-Time Schools. EMTI initially proposed the progressive expansion of schooling time from four hours to seven hours a day, in 500 schools in Brazil, which would receive specific funding for this purpose. In Brazil, in 2016, there were a total of 20,069 public high schools, therefore, the program proposed and implemented from 2017 would cover only about 2.5% of the total number of ME schools in the country (INEP, 2016).

The criteria for the adhesion of state network schools to EMTI already became a filter for their selection, as they had to contemplate the following aspects: preferably be of propaedeutic High School; not attending other stages of basic education; have adequate infrastructure, such as physical capacity to accommodate at least 400 full-time high school students; prioritize larger schools with greater physical capacity and those located in regions of social vulnerability. In addition to having to meet the criteria listed above, the SEEs had to prepare an Implementation Plan, to be submitted to a Management Committee of the MEC, for approval and sign a Term of Commitment with the Secretariat of Basic Education of the MEC.

In the conception of Silveira and Cruz (2019), the Secondary Education Reform and the EMTI are regulatory educational policies, that is, intervention policies in educational processes that, explicitly or implicitly, are linked to the power project that underlies them, taking into account given the influence of international organizations on regulatory policies in Brazil and the interfaces with other reforms in the economic and social fields that have been intensifying the flexibilization, precariousness and exploitation of the working class in different dimensions.

Also, according to these authors, a policy like this of full-time education proposed for Brazilian youth would be in line with the indications, for peripheral countries, contained in agreements with international organizations and without dialoguing with the experiences of public policies in our country. society. In these agreements, the historical condition of degradation of the working sectors and the weakening of the training space of public schools through partnerships with civil society entities – in many cases, business bodies – are reinforced (Silveira; Cruz, 2019).

It should be noted that many young people of school age in Brazil find themselves in the labor market, forced by precarious family socioeconomic conditions, which has made it impossible for them to attend high school. This situation will be aggravated in a full-time teaching regime. In this sense, the mandatory enrollment in EMTI can contribute even more to school dropout, or even to the exclusion of these subjects from school (Roggero, 2016).

Having presented this summary of the Secondary Education Reform, with the creation of the Policy for Fostering Full-Time Schools, which instituted the EMTI, the following section will present the analysis of how Minas Gerais acted towards the implementation of this program in its schools.

EMTI in Minas Gerais

In Minas Gerais, EMTI was implemented in 2017 during the government of Fernando Damata Pimentel, from the Workers’ Party (PT). For the implementation and development of EMTI in the State, SEE/MG prepared in 2017 and 2018 the program’s guidance document, called Paths for Integral and Integrated Education in Minas Gerais (Minas Gerais, 2018).

The implementation process of this program in Minas Gerais schools, according to the SEE/MG manager interviewed in this research, took place after much study of the national legislation on the program. According to him:

What we did, the first step, was a study of our network. In this study, we already had to indicate the schools; it was all so rushed. We did a survey of all the schools, and we went on and on and we got 50 schools close to the profile defined by the MEC and we sent them. […] It was the MEC that made the final choice, so we sent 50 schools and the MEC approved 44

(Manager SEE/MG).

According to the testimonies of the directors and coordinators of the schools surveyed, either there was no consultation on the part of SEE/MG about their participation in the EMTI Program, or the consultation was given only to the school management, this not being a topic discussed with the school community as one all.

The students at Brigadeiro School confirm that they did not participate in that moment of choice. According to the young people, there was a parent meeting with the school management to present the EMTI project, which would be implemented in this school from April 2017. For the teachers at the Cajuzinho school, it was a surprise that the school joined the program. They needed to adapt the content, the curriculum, the way of working.

As at Cajuzinho School, Quindim School’s management and teachers were taken by surprise and could not imagine that a school located in the interior of the State, in a city of 10,000 inhabitants, could be chosen to be a pilot for a government program. The director believes that the school was chosen because it only serves high school students, which was one of the requirements of national legislation, in addition to the good results of IDEB in recent years.

In 2018, the State of Minas Gerais expanded the offer of Full-Time High School to 36 more schools throughout the state. Thus, full-time education in high school reached the end of 2018 with 80 schools offering EMTI, with a forecast of serving 21,000 students (Minas Gerais, 2019), even though these schools presented precarious conditions to implement EMTI, both in the in terms of physical space and working conditions.

The schools’ lack of adequate infrastructure to receive the program is a point to which all respondents drew attention in the three schools. At the Brigadeiro school, an interviewed teacher states:

It´s mostly boys, it’s a small space. Today they are not here in the afternoon, but the day they stay, the spaces are complex, even if they have a break room. But this room does not suit everyone. You see that sometimes there is not even room for them to sit down: many are standing or sitting on the floor or lying on the floor

(Teacher 1 Brigadeiro School).

The teachers at Quindim School also report that the school’s infrastructure needs to improve a lot so that the program’s activities develop in a more profitable way for them and for the students:

The infrastructure is not an obstacle for it to happen full time, but it has a lot to improve, many basic things that are necessary are missing. The school court, which is still there today, makes many activities difficult

(Teacher 1 Quindim School).

There is a space that is a laboratory for experimental practices, but it needs to be improved a lot, the teachers have been using it. There are two classes a week, use what you have. The computers one leaves a lot to be desired. We arrive, turn on two computers, the internet doesn’t always work. There are 50 minutes of class: until you manage to turn it on, one turns on, the other already drops out, then it never works well. So, it’s very precarious

(Teacher 2 Quindim School).

The organization of the curriculum of the schools selected for EMTI contained in the project “Paths for Integral and Integrated Education in Minas Gerais”, prepared by SEE/MG in 2018, was divided into two parts: a) basic training and b) flexible training. Basic training comprised the themes related to each area of ​​knowledge, indicated in the National Curriculum Guidelines and by the BNCCEM, with their respective components. Flexible training was considered responsible for expanding the range of knowledge of students and materializing curricular integration. It could be composed of the so-called Curricular Integration Fields (CIC), which are made up of disciplines to be taken by students in the three years of EM and Technical and Professional Training (Minas Gerais, 2018).

The manager interviewed in the research states that the curricular matrix for EMTI was elaborated by them and that all schools should follow it. Regarding the flexible part, the same interviewee stated that it could be adapted by each school, that it had autonomy for this adjustment insofar as, in his view, no matter how much there is a common state legislation for all schools, they have characteristics very different and therefore it was not possible to expect something unique from all schools.

For the development and implementation of the program, it was planned to compose a team to follow up and develop actions made up of high school teachers, who work in the BNCCEM components, and teachers who develop actions in the CIC, constituents of the Flexible part of the Curriculum and Technical and Professional Training. There should also be a coordinating teacher for the Program, preferably an effective one, from among the professionals working in the schools, appointed by the school board, and endorsed by the School Board (Minas Gerais, 2018).

The Brigadeiro and Quindim schools have teachers who coordinate the Program; the Cajuzinho School, on the other hand, does not have any teacher in this role, so the coordinator of the morning shift also had to take over the EMTI activities.

The flexible part of the curriculum also provided, for the full-time schedule, up to four vocational technical courses, chosen from the catalog of eleven courses, organized by SEE/MG and also depended on the number of classes formed at the school with full-time students. Thus, the extension of the workday could be carried out with the development, in three years, of a vocational course integrated into High School, with a total of up to 1,200 hours (Minas Gerais, 2018).

The table below systematizes the curriculum design in each of the schools surveyed, when the field work was carried out.

Table 1
EMTI curriculum of the schools surveyed

School Brigadeiro	School Cajuzinho	School Quindim
Start EMTI in 2017	Start EMTI in 2018	Start EMTI in 2017
BNCCEM	BNCCEM	BNCCEM
CIC: Photography, First Aid, Basic IT, Sport, Dance, Research and Intervention.   Technical courses: Marketing, Administration and IT.   Reinforcement ENEM.	CIC: Life project / School of Choice, Graffiti, Dance and Research and Intervention;   Oriented Studies I and II;   Post-medium.	CIC: Life Project/School of Choice and Research and Intervention;   Oriented Studies I and II;   Post-medium;   Protagonist Clubs;   Two electives;   Experimental practices;   Technical course for 2nd and 3rd years

• Source: Own elaboration by the authors (2021).

It is important to draw attention to the offer of vocational technical courses at EMTI, in Minas Gerais, considering that students participating in the program can opt for this type of training. In relation to this, the SEE/MG manager clarifies that the MEC had not, initially, authorized the implementation of technical courses, for the full day, in schools. It took a clash with the ministry for this kind of teaching to be approved, as part of the activities to extend the school day. In his words:

Ah, by the way, as you may have noticed, we also have a full-time professional course. We challenged the MEC, this could not be done. We said: we are going to put three courses here. We put three courses, made the matrix and sent it to the MEC. But they accepted because the proposal was very nice

(Manager of SEE/MG).

In this case, one can point out the contradictions and hybridity of this proposal, because while it incorporates important aspects of a more humanist education – such as the activities provided for in the CIC (Culture, Art and Citizenship and Multiple Languages, Communication and Media) – , proposes others related to the CIC (Research and Technological Innovation) and in the part considered flexible ends up dialoguing very closely with proposals from international organizations. That is, the emphasis on the professionalization of young people during high school, defended both in the guidelines of international organizations and in the proposals of businessmen for education³, was also present in the SEE/MG managers who proposed the EMTI and who were at the forefront of the implementation of the reform in the state in the period 2017 and 2018.

During the field research, it was noticed that part of the students also internalizes the speech made about the offer of technical courses in schools. Regarding the advantages of taking a technical course, students from the Brigadeiro and Quindim schools had a similar view. For them, leaving High School with a technical course certificate is a big gain, as it could count as experience when looking for a job, at the end of Basic Education. They also report that they could pay for college with the work they get from taking a technical course at secondary school.

Cajuzinho School does not offer technical courses for its students, but, according to the interviewed coordinator, the program could have another “face” if it offered some type of technical course:

I think that if there was the option of a technical course, it would be much better for students, this model of just classes, without a specific function, you know? The technical course, at least they were going to leave here with a qualification. I believe it would work better for everyone with the technician, [...], but it doesn’t just depend on us

(Coordinator of Cajuzinho School).

Social inequalities and the need to enter the job market early end up inducing teachers and students themselves to claim professional training as a more immediate solution for low-income youth, restricting the possibility of quality comprehensive training, that is, the right to an emancipatory education.

The choice of which technical courses should be implemented in schools has not been made with the participation of students or teachers in Minas Gerais. At the beginning of each school year, the EMTI coordination of each school meets with the management, and they discuss and decide on this offer. According to the EMTI coordinator at Brigadeiro School, it is necessary to consider the number of enrollments for professional education in the current year and it should be up to the family to decide which course the student will take among those offered by the school.

It is in the 1st year that parents choose which path their child will follow. Without much information, they must choose between the CIC or the technical course. Once this choice is made, students cannot change their option, since they need to complete the workload of technical education subjects, distributed over the three years of High School, to complete the technical course chosen by them.

This is a point that deserves to be highlighted in the analysis, since if the student does not identify with the course he has chosen and changes his mind about what he intends for his future, he will be fated to continue in an area in which he has lost interest, as there is no possibility of exchange. For this reason, students often prefer to leave school rather than continue in that course that no longer makes sense in their life. This fact has led to the emptying of full-time classes. An example of this was one of the students interviewed at Brigadeiro School who said she thought she knew what she wanted for her future. In the student’s words:

I chose the IT technician because it was one of the areas I wanted to pursue, I wanted to study Computer Science. But then I ended up changing my mind. Now I want to take another course, I’m going to study Literature, but I’m going to continue with the technician so I can leave with the certificate

(Student 2, Brigadeiro School).

According to the program coordinator at Brigadeiro School, the situation described in the statement above has happened frequently, adding to this the fact that many students give up full-time work because they need to work. Both the legal documents published by the Federal Government, when instituting the Secondary Education Reform and with it the implementation of EMTI, as well as the recommendations of international organizations for this stage of education were based on the argument of the need to adapt this stage of education to the requirements of the job market. That is, an adequacy defined by the business community. This is what is meant when it is stated that investment in secondary education in developing countries contributes to increased productivity, the basis of sustained economic growth, in addition to favoring the development of human capital, understood as the development of fundamental skills for the job market work.

Different ways of organizing the extended day are foreseen in the EMTI, which can be built in each school, according to local possibilities, but SEE/MG proposed that classes start at 7:30 am and end at 5:30 pm, with an interval of 90 minutes for lunch. Classes/activities should be organized in 50-minute modules and include a total workload of 2,250 or 45 class hours per week. It was also proposed that from 7:30 a.m. to 7:50 a.m. would be the moment of daily reception of students in schools, which would consist of a collective coffee with teachers, students, and administrators.

In 2019, governor elect Romeu Zema, from the New Party, took office in Minas Gerais. From this change of government, EMTI in the State underwent significant changes, as well as the entire implementation team of this program in SEE/MG.

Halfway through, they took away my team that was in charge of [EMTI] management, they simply called the boys there and said: you don’t mess with that anymore, without any justification, without anything. Simply put, you’re out, okay? Bye

(SEE/MG Manager).

The new team responsible for EMTI prepared the Guiding Document for the Pedagogical Project for schools that offer Integral and Integrated Secondary Education – Version 2019, promoting a major impact on the implementation process that was underway in the schools selected for this program.

In this document, it is noted that its objective is to provide a comprehensive education to students through the effective association between basic training and other contents and experiences, guaranteeing them the improvement of learning in all areas of knowledge, as well as different experiences that can give birth and sustain their life projects, the promotion and development of social action skills and the possibility of taking a professional technical course with a view to entering the labor market (Minas Gerais, 2019). The three CIC and the technical courses in the 2017/2018 document were maintained in the curriculum for the year 2019.

As an amendment, the 2019 document created, within the EMTI journey, the possibility for 3rd year students to take a deepening and revision course for the ENEM. This course could only be offered by schools after consultation with students and their expression of interest. The three schools surveyed then began to offer it.

Another change included in the 2019 document is the introduction of the subject Education for Citizenship and Life Project. This proposal aimed, according to SEE/MG, to help students to become responsible, autonomous, solidary people, who know and exercise their rights and duties in dialogue and respect for others, as well as build their life project (Minas Gerais, 2019, p. 15).

What we see in this conception of a life project is very close to the proposition that UNESCO makes for Secondary Education. That is, the idea of ​​the life project contained in the document produced in 2019 by SEE/MG was focused on the individual, with the discourse of providing students with personal well-being and a feeling of self-realization. At the same time, this proposal sought to develop responsible, productive personalities, highlighting a series of skills necessary for life, problem solving, teamwork, creativity, flexibility, mobility, and entrepreneurship (UNESCO, 2008). The emphasis is placed on the individual and not on the collective, each one looking for their own fulfillment to live in today’s world and deal with adversity.

The term protagonism is mentioned in several different parts of this 2019 document, bringing the idea that, through it, students would be able to better develop their skills and abilities, as well as recognize their role as citizens. In this way, for the formulators of this document, the knowledge construction process must become more concrete, effective, and endowed with meanings.

From this perspective, the success or failure of young people is conditioned by themselves. That is, the responsibility for completing this stage of Basic Education or being inserted into the job market is the responsibility of each student, their personal effort and what each one built individually in their life project. This is a question of merit, in line with the documents of the international organizations and the business community already mentioned.

At Cajuzinho School, some students who participate in the program call themselves “young protagonists”. According to the coordinator of that school, they are called like that because they are responsible for encouraging other students to participate in EMTI. Inside and outside the school, they must show the benefits that the program can bring and report their experiences.

To be a “young protagonist” it is necessary to undergo training. It is also necessary to have a specific profile and feel prepared, as reported by the director of Cajuzinho School. In this way, not all students participating in EMTI become protagonists. They must be considered leaders to assume this position.

Students report how this happens in practice:

There’s a training to become a young protagonist. Then we must pass on to the other young people at the school everything we learned there. These things to motivate them to come to full-time, we were kind of responsible for bringing more young people here

(Student 1, Cajuzinho School).

The same thing happens at Quindim School: some students are protagonists and, according to the director, there needs to be a profile of maturity to assume this position. The school’s students also underwent training offered by SEE/MG.

In early 2020, the Government of Minas Gerais expanded EMTI to 210 more schools, totaling 280 school units, and launched a new full-time guidance document entitled Ensino Médio em Tempo Integral. According to SEE/MG, this document should guide practices in the implementation of the program from 2020 onwards (Minas Gerais, 2020).

To meet this increase in the number of schools with EMTI, SEE/MG entered a partnership with a private institution, justifying itself as follows: due to the “[…] breadth, complexity and relevance of the agenda, SEE/MG attracted new partners for the year 2020, with diverse expertise, to add quality to the achievement of the proposal” (Minas Gerais, 2020, p. 6).

The secretariat’s main partner in this process is the Instituto de Co-responsibility for Education (ICE), which presents itself as a non-profit entity, created by a group of businessmen and bankers “[…] motivated to conceive a new model of school and rescue the standard of excellence of the then decadent and secular Ginásio Pernambucano, located in Recife” (Carvalho; Rodrigues, 2019, p. 4).

ICE has a network articulation, with actions on different scales that materialize on the school floor. These relationships, according to Carvalho and Rodrigues (2019), begin with global guidelines for the school in the “peripheral world”, going through transformation actions in State Public Policies (national or subnational) and acting directly in the school, interfering in its daily life. Through this network of action and following the guidelines of global neoliberalism – especially by the World Bank and UNESCO – ICE’s actions are consolidated in the reality of the Brazilian population through public education (Carvalho; Rodrigues, 2019).

ICE’s pedagogical proposal is defined by the School of Choice project, whose centrality is the students’ life project and youth protagonism as its structuring axis. The proposal is anchored in the theoretical assumptions of the four pillars of education for the 21st century (learning to be, living together, doing, and knowing), which appears prominently in the SEE/MG document for the year 2020.

EMTI, then, starts to be based on the educational principles of the school of choice model and operationalized by the curriculum, whose pedagogical practice is guided by three formative axes: excellent academic formation; training for life; and skills training for the 21st century (Minas Gerais, 2020).

As of 2020, all three schools surveyed will have guidance, teaching materials and training courses because of this partnership between SEE/MG and ICE for the development of EMTI. In 2020, the Life Project, which was already contemplated in the 2019 document, gains centrality. State schools that are expected to start offering full-time education from 2020, with the expansion carried out by the state, should place youth protagonism and the elaboration of a life project as the guiding principles of their actions.

About this new curriculum structure, students report:

A while ago there was a computer workshop, robotics, entrepreneurship, dance, music, there were these workshops. However, with the new school project – the one of choice, by ICE, these classes no longer exist. Now it’s the Life Project and Oriented Studies class, which is the period in which you can do things, like, if you have a job to do or if you have a doubt in a subject, then you ask the Teacher of Oriented Studies, he will be answering everything you need, helping you

(Student 2, Cajuzinho School).

According to the 2020 SEE/MG document, for the Life Project, teachers need to tabulate the dreams of all students and share them with the rest of the school team, so that everyone understands what it means to work in a school whose centrality of the project school is the young person and his life project, in addition to being able to inspire the young person (Minas Gerais, 2020).

Another aspect introduced in the curriculum for 2020 are the elective subjects, offered each semester and held weekly in a 2-class hour back-to-back, with offer for all classes on the same day of the week and time. According to SEE/MG, these are subjects chosen by students from a “menu” of topics proposed by teachers (Minas Gerais, 2020).

Quindim School was the only one that already had electives for its students when the fieldwork was carried out, as it was already offering the EMTI curriculum in the 2020 version. is theirs and complements:

On Friday, we must do the elective subjects, which are the ones we like the most, so it gets tiring, but at least it’s not a normal class. I do the guitar one and it’s not separated by series anymore. It’s everyone at school who wanted to play the guitar. Then each one chose the one they wanted, and I play the guitar

(Student 1, Quindim School).

There is also what they call “levelling”, which is an emergency action, positive in the matrix as a curricular component, with a workload of 2-class hour weekly, which aims to promote the students’ unconsolidated basic skills, in Portuguese and mathematics, disciplines that are targeted in systemic assessments. The action must take place in the year students enter EMTI and take place through a diagnostic evaluation.

The EMTI/2020 document also foresees two new curricular components: Oriented Studies I and II. In these components, students learn to study through study techniques and recognition of the importance of creating a routine at school that can contribute to improving learning (Minas Gerais, 2020). In Oriented Studies I, students carry out a weekly assessment, with the aim of identifying the main learning weaknesses and, consequently, carry out Oriented Studies II, in which students will have the opportunity to review the contents that were not previously consolidated. In other words, the so-called oriented studies that take place at EMTI are offering more of the same, that is, increasing the workload of subjects that already exist in the curriculum as tutoring.

As of 2020, teachers working at EMTI began to receive guidance and training, offered by ICE and aimed at supporting daily professional action. Teachers are responsible for monitoring the processes of building knowledge and learning in schools. However, they must use the various recording instruments developed by the ICE, to validate the development and learning process of the class and of each student (Minas Gerais, 2020) qualitatively and quantitatively.

Of the 210 schools that now have EMTI, only 43 continued to offer technical courses. The selection of schools that could offer technical courses was made by SEE/MG, based on the criterion that the offer of this type of course should meet the needs of the different geographic regions in which these schools are located. It should also consider information from the formal labor market in an attempt to capture employment trends at the local level.

The technical courses in these 43 schools must have the following structure: duration of three years, with a total workload of 4,500 hours, which must be distributed between the BNCCEM and the diversified part, that is, the curricular components aimed at developing skills and competences, related to the school path and their interlocutions with the life project of each student. They must also present a 5th Itinerary of basic preparation for work and entrepreneurship, which has as curricular components the development of general skills and competences, to work in the world of work (Minas Gerais, 2020).

As can be seen, the curriculum for professional education is once again reinforcing basic preparation for work and entrepreneurship. From this perspective, professional education has been reduced to an instrumental factor, aimed at meeting the demands of the economy and placing individuals in the labor market. It is a utilitarian view of education that appears not only in the testimony of the manager initially responsible for implementing the reform in MG, but also in some teachers and students interviewed. These subjects end up incorporating the discourse so widespread by education entrepreneurs and international organizations that seek to sell the idea that early professionalization, starting in high school, is the solution to remove young people from poverty and the streets. That is, the State has only the role of ensuring educational policies that give young people the opportunity to acquire skills and competences to compete in the market.

Some educational practices also appear in the SEE/MG document for the year 2020. The first of them is the so-called “[...] initial reception of students, parents and school teams”. This action must be carried out by students from each school trained for this purpose, that is, the young protagonists. As of 2020, the training of these young people is the responsibility of SEE/MG, with the technical cooperation of ICE, which must present the guidelines and guidelines for implementing this educational practice for young people indicated by the schools (Minas Gerais, 2020).

At Quindim School, every day at the beginning of classes there is a moment of welcome for students, in which the director, the program coordinator, the students themselves or the teacher of some subject welcome the young people with a good morning at the school gate. About this moment, the director interviewed reports:

Generally, I do the hosting. Every day there is a welcome here at the gate. […] Welcoming, so, very simple, it’s about welcoming on arrival […]. It’s the daily welcome, it’s a routine: one day the library teacher, another day another class, another group of teachers, the students

(Director of the Quindim School).

The second educational practice is the so-called “protagonism clubs”, also present in the 2020 EMTI guiding document, linked or not to their school life (Minas Gerais, 2020).

At Quindim School young people participate in leading clubs. An interviewed teacher reports how they are organized in this school:

They can only meet, the members of the club, at lunchtime. So, at that time, they can study about the club, they can do a choreography in the case of the dance club, they can make a schedule together with the director, they can rehearse, when they are going to present it to the community, to the parents. So, it is free: it must have a board, a president and it must have a godfather teacher. They choose the godfather, they make the rules and only those who have affinity with that theme enter the club

(Teacher 1, Quindim School).

Protagonism clubs are seen by students as a time to talk, exchange ideas, dialogue about the different themes that these clubs address. In the students’ testimonies, many comments appeared around the little time allocated to this activity:

It’s, like, like, it’s something that makes us more, like, at ease, they’re clubs created by people that are led by us and, like, like, that work really well and break that train ‘school is just for to study’. And it’s not just for studying. You’re not just sitting there on the chair, the teacher is talking and you’re just copying, that’s not the only reason

(Student 2, Quindim School).

I just think, like, the club’s schedule at lunchtime is a bit tight because there are at least 10 minutes for you to get a snack, until you eat, then you must brush your teeth, it gets very busy at lunchtime, especially because we take time to eat, even more so in this heat

(Student 3, Quindim School).

The third educational practice, present in the 2020 document, is the so-called “class leadership”. For SEE/MG, the class leader is the student elected by their peers to represent them. The class leader plays the important role of collaborating with the formation and development of himself and other colleagues, through the experience of leadership, encouraging students to play a leading role in school activities and supporting the construction of solutions to issues involving the school (Minas Gerais, 2020).

The Quindim School already reproduces this educational practice, having a class leader per classroom. The choice of this leader is made by voting of the students of each class. Those interested apply and colleagues vote for the one they prefer. The leader is responsible for taking the demands of the class to the direction and coordination of the program.

Based on the above, what we have in relation to the three schools surveyed are ways and means of implementing EMTI according to and within their possibilities. It is noticed that the Quindim School is the one that most strictly follows the prescriptions that are elaborated by SEE/MG. For this reason, it “gains” more attention, as it reports that the relationship with the SEE/MG team is good and does not criticize the norms coming from the institution, unlike the Brigadeiro and Cajuzinho schools, which seek to organize themselves with what they have and are more critical of how EMTI was implemented.

Final considerations

This study sought to identify, describe, and analyze the processes and developments of the local formulation and implementation of the policy for full-time education in the High School stage in the State of Minas Gerais, proposed by Law n. 13,415 of 2017, which enacted the High School Reform in Brazil.

In this work, this public policy was analyzed based on the approach of politics as public action, which is not limited to the intervention of the State and its administration but takes into account the interaction of a variety of actors in the political process.

Analyzing the policy of extending the journey to High School in the State of Minas Gerais, through this perspective, allowed us to identify the different local actors who intervene in this policy in the researched schools (management, coordination, teachers, students), as well as the participation SEE/MG managers and ICE professionals.

In this diversity of actors, the role of SEE/MG and the ICE consultants who arrive at schools with their packages of materials and with responsibility for training both for teachers and students, including the principles defended by the private sector for secondary education.

The management of SEE/MG and, as of 2020, the ICE has played an important role in decision-making, as the two entities influence most of the deliberations concerning the organization and functioning of schools and are a reference in the process of translation of external norms and production of internal norms. In addition, SEE/MG manages funds from the federal government for this program in MG.

Local actors, those who are in the school, from management to students, have organized themselves with the structure they have, the resources they obtain and the team available or hired specifically to implement this policy. Given the precariousness of spaces, infrastructure and personnel, they have reinvented themselves to translate and respond, within the limits set, to the demands that arise from SEE/MG, from teachers and students.

In this sense, it is understood that, although the schools are subject to the external control of SEE/MG, the subjects present in the schools also have the potential to make joint decisions that defend their interests, even if it is in more specific aspects, which occur on the day the day at work, as seen in the testimonials of coordinators, teachers and students shown in this article. That is, there is always a local reading and interpretation of norms and rules that are also posed by the need for improvisation, adapting what was foreseen in the curriculum for EMTI to the working conditions and infrastructure existing in schools.

Finally, it should be noted that the analysis carried out in the thesis that gave rise to this article took place at the very beginning of the process of regulation by the state of Minas Gerais of the Reform of Secondary Education and the implementation of political-pedagogical proposals for EMTI. In this sense, it can be highlighted the pioneering spirit of this study, started in 2017, when Law n. 13,415 was enacted. It is also important to point out the difficulty of analyzing a process that has just begun in high schools, selected throughout Brazil, and that in the three years of implementation in Minas Gerais, had three distinct pedagogical proposals prepared by SEE/MG to implementation of EMTI.

Notes

• 1
  These schools are named, in this article, as Brigadeiro School (School in Belo Horizonte), Cajuzinho School (School in RMBH) and Quindim School (School in the interior of MG). The research at Brigadeiro School was carried out between May and July 2019; the Cajuzinho School, between October and December 2019; and, finally, Quindim School received the researcher in March 2020.
• 2
  For more information, you can access the platform of the project Todos Pela Educação (Educação..., 2022)
• 3
  Among the main private groups involved in the High School Reform are Todos pela Educação (TPE), Instituto Unibanco, Instituto de Co-responsibility for Education (ICE).

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Edited by

Editor in charge: Fabiana de Amorim Marcello

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  08 May 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  29 Nov 2021
• Accepted
  28 Nov 2022