Brazil
Brazilian Journal of Biology
Table of contents previous current next
Table of contents
Notes and Comments • Braz. J. Biol. 86 • 2026 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1519-6984.312013 linkcopy

Open-access Public education in Brazil is on a dangerous path: causes and consequences

Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world; income inequality changed from 0.58 (2002) to 0.51 (2025)- Gini coefficient [close to zero indicates perfect equality (people in a given location earn the same income), while close to 1 indicates maximum inequality (a single person holds all the income in a location). Values< 0.25 indicate the most egalitarian countries, and > 0.50 indicate highly unequal countries], and inequality must be urgently reduced for the proper development of the country (Hoffmann et al., 2003; Araujo and Morais, 2014; Karam and Ryerson, 2023; IPEA, 2025). Over the last few decades, Brazil has advanced in reducing its Centennial social inequality (Gomez, 2012)– which started during its period of slavery-, but unfortunately at a slower-than-desired pace. Among the possible ways to reduce inequality, one of the most effective is providing high-quality education, from fundamental cycles to higher education (Libâneo, 2016; UNICEF, 2016; Brown and James, 2020; Rahman, 2024; Guduza and Tshelane, 2026). To meet demand and reduce social inequality, Brazil needs to develop qualified professionals (Prata-Linhares et al., 2017; Perondi et al., 2025; Vancini et al., 2026), and this can only be achieved through high-quality education (Brown and James, 2020; Rahman, 2024; Guduza and Tshelane, 2026). However, achieving this goal can be a hard task for a country the size of Brazil, which is the largest country in Latin America and has a deficit of teachers in the fundamental education cycles, mainly in the public school network, which accounts for 78.5% of all schools in Brazil (INEP, 2016).

Low wages, the emotional toll of the profession, violence, and the lack of opportunities for career development, among other factors (e.g., demographics), have discouraged Brazilians from working in basic education (Barreto, 2015; Garofalo, 2026). The average monthly salary of a teacher was U$617 in 2010, U$703 in 2017, and U$996 in 2026 (EPEA, 2017; Educa Mais Brasil, 2026), and, among countries worldwide, Brazil invests the least in teachers and educators (Our World in Data, 2014; INEP, 2024). This scenario has resulted in low interest from young people in pursuing higher education in basic education knowledge, such as biology, mathematics, physics, and Portuguese, among others, fearing that they would most likely have no other choice than to get an underpaid job in basic education (Garofalo, 2026). As a result, there has been a gradual closure of these courses due to lower demand by students (e.g., biology -11%; and physics -2.9%), which has generated fears of a "training blackout" on education specialists. 58% of students in teacher training programs do not complete their degrees, with the problem being more pronounced in STEM fields: only 30% complete degrees in mathematics or science, and 24% in physics. This has already negatively impacted schools and student learning (Garofalo, 2026). The current shortage of qualified teachers for the final years of lower secondary education stands at 51.4% in arts, 54.5% in literature, 57% in mathematics, and 68% in science and biology (Garofalo, 2026). Brazil will need thousands of new professionals to meet the goals of the National Education Plan (O Globo, 2014). Brazil could face a shortage of 235,000 basic education teachers by 2040 due to the retirement of current professionals, early departure from the profession, and low enrollment rates in teacher training programs (Garofalo, 2026). In light of the aforementioned issues, the Federal Government is attempting to address the demand for teachers through the Basic Education Teaching initiative (“Mais Professores para o Brasil”), formalized by Law No. 15.344. This law provides for incentives for teacher training (e.g., the “Pé-de-Meia Licenciaturas” program, which offers direct financial transfers to teacher-training students to help reduce dropout rates), and mechanisms to encourage career retention. However, these initiatives are insufficient to counter the growing teacher shortage, given that training these professionals requires at least four years (Garofalo, 2026). To this end, it is necessary to enhance the social standing of the profession, improve working conditions, and restore salary levels. Education must return to the center of public debate (Garofalo, 2026).

Therefore, this crisis will have negative impacts far beyond the fundamental cycles of education, reverberating harmfully through all education levels and into other activities in the country, including the full development of science, technology, and even global change issues. Lack of initiative and knowledge (e.g., biological literacy, environmental education, and biodiversity conservation) is part of the climate change debate, with 40% of adults worldwide ignoring the reality of this change, and an important component of the response to both problems is broader access to quality education (Calderón, 2016; Demolin-Leite, 2025).

However, a solution found due to the lack of teachers in public schools is to merge these into a single course - biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics into "Natural Sciences and Mathematics" for fundamental education cycles in the public school network (e.g., UFMG, 2024). This may further aggravate the low quality in the public-school network since these teachers will not have the needed in-depth knowledge in the traditional courses (e.g., Biology). Therefore, those who depend on public schools will once again only get the minimum knowledge required, with unforeseen and degrading results for society, with reverberations into social justice and once again amplifying the gap between the poor and the rich.

We argue that this scenario is a legacy of the history of slavery in Brazil. Currently, the public elementary school network in Brazil is generally of lower quality compared to private sector schools, and its students are almost entirely represented by the low-income citizens that consist, for the most part, of black, brown, and natives (slave descendants and indigenous) people (> ¾ of the population), which represent >57% of the students in public schools (OECD, 2015; EBC, 2016; Libâneo, 2016; Constantino, 2018; Palhares and Toledo, 2016). Because they do not have access to private schools, which represent, in general, our current educational excellence, these citizens can be bound to unemployment, informal employment, employment in low-wage services (IBGE, 2017) or, in some cases, slave labor (e.g., clandestine charcoal kilns). Ironically, the best higher education in Brazil is provided by the public universities (OECD, 2015; Qs Top Universities, 2016), which are now under severe threat by current government policies (e.g., Brustolin, 2020). However, in university admission exams, students coming from public schools face greater difficulty competing for a spot against those who studied in private schools (OECD, 2015). As a result, low-income students are more likely to end up enrolling in lower-quality courses at private colleges (see Annual ranking of undergraduate programs in Brazil, e.g., “Ranking Universitário Folha, 2025). Although Brazil has created university quotas aiming at mitigating this issue (i.e., for black, brown, and indigenous peoples and public-school alumni), the mechanism is a palliative solution that does not attack the root of the problem, which is the lack of investments and the misspending of resources at all levels of Brazilian public education. Only 5% of lower-income youths can receive higher education, and only 13.2% of university students are black and brown (EPEA, 2017).

Moreover, citizens belonging to the lower-income classes of Brazilian society usually opt to attend night or evening courses either because of the lower candidate-to-vacancy ratio or because they have to work during the day and cannot dedicate themselves exclusively to academic training (Terribili Filho and Nery, 2009; Vargas and Paula, 2013). Thus, even though they can have a university education, after graduation they face greater difficulties in achieving socioeconomic improvement. On the other hand, people from the Brazilian middle and upper classes (mostly of European origin) have greater chances to enter higher-rank courses such as engineering, law, or medicine, and thus have careers that lead to higher economic and social rewards (Ristoff, 2014). For example, in 2023, 68.6% of medical students were white, whereas 55.5% of the Brazilian population is Black. Furthermore, in 2022, 68.1% of medical students came from private schools (Wolff, 2025).

In this vicious cycle, the rich get richer, and the poor remain poor. Brazilian public policies are, in general, veiled, ruthless, and prejudiced, with a populist facade of doing good to low-income citizens. However, by not attacking the root of the problems, i.e., creating top-quality public basic education, this vicious cycle is not broken, and these people are practically perpetually doomed to work in ill-qualified jobs, subordinated to the Brazilian middle- and upper-class bosses. That is, Brazilian society has not yet definitively broken the fetters of slavery in the country (e.g., contemporary slave labor, Sakamoto, 2020); it has only modernized it, maintaining the structural racism in Brazil (trapped in a cycle of poverty) (Martins, 2026). The best way out is the development and application of a long-term national project of high-quality basic and higher education, reviewed regularly (e.g., every 10 years), regardless of party or ideologies. However, the concentration of money and/or political power in Brazil is concentrated in some Brazilian families. Many of these traditional families occupy positions in the National Congress, through representations (e.g., agribusiness) and/or through family succession (grandfather, father, grandson, ...) in Brazilian politics. It seems there is no interest in investing in basic education, as the Brazilian people should not be politically lucid and questioning. Thus, due to the neglect of basic education, Brazil has three million people aged four to 17 out of school, more than 17 million illiterates, 38.7% of teachers are not trained in their subject, 12.7% of the teaching positions are occupied by professional who do not have higher education, and 65% of public and private education institutions do not have libraries (EPEA, 2017). Although the challenges are as big as the size of Brazil, the Brazilian people need to change the path their education (from basic to university levels).

Data Availability Statement

Research data is only available upon request.

References

*

e-mail: germano.demolin@gmail.com; gw.fernandes@gmail.com

Editor:

José Galizia Tundisi

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    19 Oct 2026
  • Date of issue
    2026

History

  • Received
    15 Aug 2026
  • Accepted
    17 Sept 2026
Creative Common - by 4.0
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
location_on
Instituto Internacional de Ecologia R. Bento Carlos, 750, 13560-660 São Carlos SP - Brasil, Tel. e Fax: (55 16) 3362-5400 - São Carlos - SP - Brazil
E-mail: bjb@bjb.com.br
rss_feed Stay informed of issues for this journal through your RSS reader
Report error