STUDENT ASSISTANCE POLICIES AND NON-TEACHING EDUCATORS AT THE FEDERAL INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGYPOLÍTICAS

: This article aims to analyze the Student Assistance Policies (Paes) and the professionals involved in their implementation at the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology (IF) from an educational perspective. To this end, the triangulation of a quantitative-qualitative approach was used to analyze the data obtained through documentary research. Information was obtained about the professionals and PAES of 31 institutes, in which the prediction of support services is under a universal or exclusively selective perspective. There are 2,782 assistants involved in Student Assistance (AE) to serve 473,897 students in the IF. There are a greater number, respectively, of student assistants, social workers, psychologists


INTRODUCTION
The Federal Institutes of Education, Science, and Technology make up the Federal Network of Professional, Scientific, and Technological Education and have the same purposes, characteristics, and objectives according to Law number 11,982 of 2008(BRASIL, 2008a. In these institutions, Student Assistance (AE) actions are developed, aiming to contribute to the access, permanence, and success of their students.
The National Student Assistance Program (Pnaes-Programa Nacional de Assistência Estudantil), established by Decree nº 7234/2010, establishes the actions that can be developed, such as food, transportation, student housing, daycare, sports, culture, digital inclusion, health care, support pedagogy, access, participation and learning of students with disabilities, global developmental disorders, high abilities and giftedness (BRASIL, 2010).
The actions that the decree deals with can be carried out through financial aid programs or scholarships, of a select nature, since they intend to serve a group of students with a certain economic profile (primarily from public schools and with a per capita income of up to a minimum wage and a half), although other criteria within the socioeconomic profile are considered by most institutes.
The technical teams responsible for the implementation of Student Assistance Policies (Paes-Políticas de Assistência Estudantil) in the institutes are, in general, composed of social workers, psychologists, pedagogues, nurses, nutritionists, among other professionals who are related to the service to students following the policy of each institution (SOARES; AMARAL, 2022).
Expanding the educational potential of student assistance, Dutra and Santos (2017) postulate the universalist aspect, in which it provides the service to all students, regardless of the economic situation, and financial transfer, intended to act on various issues that may interfere with the student performance and, consequently, in their citizen education process, which is in line with the training project for the world of work, considering the assumptions of an omnilateral education proposed for the Federal Network.
Taking into account that studies on AE predominantly focus on financial aid, therefore, restricted to the selectist character of student assistance and, given the potential contribution to the educational process from the universalist perspective in federal institutes, this study aims to analyze the Student Assistance Policies and the professional categories involved in their execution in the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology from an educational perspective.

METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES
This is an exploratory study with a quantitative-qualitative approach because qualitative research focuses on aspects of reality that cannot be quantified. In it, the scientist is, at the same time, the subject and object of his research, focusing on understanding and explaining the dynamics of social relations. On the other hand, quantitative research uses mathematical language to present the causes of a phenomenon and the relationships between variables. The joint use of both allows for gathering more information than could be obtained in isolation (FONSECA, 2002).
Through the documental research procedure, to obtain the data, we sought information about positions and the number of assistants involved with student assistance in federal institutes, except for Ifac, since the information was already available. To this end, we use the Integrated Platform for Ombudsman and Access to Information of the Comptroller General of the Union (https://falabr.cgu.gov.br), which obliges public institutions to provide citizens with public information under the terms of the Law. number 12,527 of 2011.
Requests for information were made from September 10 to October 19, 2020, in which we received a response from 30 institutes, totaling information from student assistance professionals from 31 institutions among the 38 existing in the Federal Network.
The number of students enrolled in each of the 31 federal institutes in our sample was identified in the Nilo Peçanha Platform 2020, the base year of 2019 (http://plataformanilopecanha.mec.gov.br/2020.html), to support the analysis of the relationship AE professionals and students. We exclude Initial and Continuing Education courses due to their short duration and students are not fully covered by Student Assistance Policies. The regulations that regulate Student Assistance at an institutional level were searched on the IF portals and the Google search site. However, when there was no possibility of locating them on the electronic sites, they were requested, through an email group, the servicossocialifectbrasil@googlegroups.com, which is composed of most social workers from universities and federal institutes, and requested via a WhatsApp group, which includes the managers of this policy in the institutions. We found 30 resolutions that deal with the Student Assistance Policy (Paes), except the Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Norte whose regulations focus exclusively on aid.
To carry out an exploratory analysis of the national, regional, and institutional scenario, we distributed the AE professionals occupying higher-level positions (social worker, nutritionist, pedagogue, psychologist, and technician in educational matters) by students, using the following equation: RPA= (N/A)*1000 , where: RPA professional ratio of student assistance per student; N total number of assistants/professionals; A total number of students; 1000 benchmark for comparability, that is, the RPA value for every thousand students.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In the surveys on the regulations that stipulated the positions/professions that should/could make up the technical team to assist students, we identified the National Student Assistance Plan proposed by the board of the National Association of Directors of Federal Institutions of Higher Education (Andifes-Associação Nacional dos Dirigentes das Instituições Federais de Ensino Superior) in 2007/2008, which mentions the need for a public tender for technical-administrative employees: social workers, psychologists, nutritionists, among others, taking into account the specificities of each region and institution (ANDIFES, 2007).
In addition to these data, Piana (2009), based on Vieira (1977, states that social work in education emerged in the United States in 1906 with the designation, by the Social Centers, of visitors to verify the reasons why families did not send their children to school, the reasons for dropping out of school or the children's lack of achievement, as well as their adaptation to school. In several countries, there was also care for children, many victims of abuse by parents or guardians, who did not receive the necessary guidance for their development. This work, entitled School Social Service, comprised a multidisciplinary team together with psychologists and teachers to assist students with learning problems, which marks that education was already a field of action for psychologists as well (PIANA, 2009).
The author states that, in Brazil, there are historical reports that the beginning of the School Social Service took place in 1946, in the states of Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Sul. The activities were aimed at identifying social problems that reflected in the student's performance; intervening in school situations considered defects or social abnormality; and promoting actions that would provide students with adaptation to their environment and the social balance of the school community (PIANA, 2009;YANNOULAS;GIROLAMI, 2017).
In the subsidies for the performance of social workers in education, the inclusion of systematic actions for the debate on Social Work in Education by the Federal Council of Social Work/Regional Council of Social Work, Cfess/Cress(Conselho Federal do Serviço Social/Conselho Regional do Serviço Social), respectively, dates from the 2000s (CFESS, 2012).
These data take us back to previous discussions with Andifes in the social worker and the psychologist in the school context. As for the other professionals, except for the pedagogue, which is a position inherent to education, we did not identify the origin of the work in this environment. However, they are commonly considered in healthcare teams.
In the survey of these professionals in the context of professional education, we found that in 31 of the 38 federal institutes there is no uniformity in the positions that make up student assistance. Some institutes have all the areas listed, while others do not. There are specific positions that are not commonly part of the technical team for student assistance, but which, according to the information provided, are part of the teams of some IFs. They are occupational safety technicians, oral health technicians, occupational safety engineers, laundry machine operators, watchers, administrators, cleaning assistants, cooks, bakers, kitchen assistants, and teachers, among others who are not part of the analysis at present.
We also observed that the nomenclature of the student service sector is quite diverse. The following stand out: Student Assistance; Assistance to Student; Integrated Educational Support and Monitoring Service; Nucleus of Educational Administrative Management and Assistance to the Student, among which the first expression predominates.
In addition, most campuses do not have assistants in all the positions proposed by Andifes (2007), showing that in some units, students do not have assistance from a specific professional, they are assisted in nearby units or referred to assistance outside the institutional spaces.
Considering the professionals indicated by Andifes (2007), there is a predominance of social service professionals, followed by psychology and pedagogy working in the AE, but the position with the largest number of assistants is that of student assistant, which is potentially an underestimated number since this server can often work linked to another sector (Chart 1).
Chart 1 -Assistants working in the Student Assistance Policy at the Federal Institutes of Education, Science, and Technology. Brazil, 2020. As attributions of some of the professionals listed that demarcate the contribution to the universal aspect of AE, it is foreseen for the social worker to act in the expansion of the conditions of access and permanence of the population in the different levels and modalities of education. However, it is not limited to students or individual approaches, as it involves actions with the entire academic community (families, teachers, other education workers, and managers), professionals, and networks that make up other social policies, not only individual but also collective (CFESS, 2012).
The psychologist carries out research, diagnosis, and psycho-pedagogical intervention, individually or in groups, collaborates for the understanding and the change in the behavior of educators and students, in the teaching-learning process, in interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, always referring to the political, economic, social and cultural, and participates in the elaboration of plans and policies related to education, to promote the quality and democratization of education (CFP, 1992).
The nutritionist is predominantly linked to the management and execution of the National School Feeding Program (Pnae-Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar). CFN Resolution nº 465 highlights some of the attributions of this professional: the proposition and implementation of ongoing food and nutrition education actions for the school community, including promoting ecological and environmental awareness and the participation of multidisciplinary teams aimed at any actions related to food school. The aforementioned regulation also provides for the minimum number of professionals depending on the number of students per executing entity, for example, for each group of 2501 to 5000 students, 1 nutritionist technician and 3 nutritionists are required to compose the technical staff, with a workload of 30 hours. (CFN, 2010).
The attributions of the Technician in Educational Matters are still surrounded by discussions and, sometimes, these professionals are diverted from their higher-level functions and act more in administrative demands. However, their role can be equated with those of pedagogues, especially if considering the letter nº 015/2005 of the Ministry of Education which, despite having been rendered ineffective in 2017, presents the attributions described in the tender notices. Among them, we highlight the following: planning, supervising, analyzing, and reformulating the teaching-learning process, and creating or modifying educational processes in conjunction with other elements of the educational system to provide comprehensive education for students (LINKOWSKI, 2019).
In addition to the specific attributions that these professionals can develop, Peduzzi et al. (2013, p. 979) emphasize that "the articulation of actions and the collaboration of professionals from different areas requires the maintenance of the specificities of each area". In other words, the team must be composed of all the professionals provided for, to have effective work, given the need to consider the psychological, social, and pedagogical dimensions of the students (TAUFICK, 2014).
This interdisciplinary work is based on the dialectical character of social reality that is, at the same time, unique and diverse and forces us to distinguish the limits of the subjects who investigate the limits of the researched object. Delimiting an object for investigation is not fragmenting it, or limiting it, that is, even if there is a need to delimit a particular problem, it does not mean abandoning the multiple determinations that constitute it, remaining the importance of multidisciplinary work (FRIGOTTO, 2008).
In the federal institutes together, for every thousand students there are three student assistance professionals. In the joint analysis of professionals by IF, we observed the best results in the professional/student relationship in IFMS (7.31), IFSC (6.21), and Ifac (5.87). While the worst results in this relationship are the IFSul (0.33), the IFGoiano (1.43), and the Ifap (1.58).
In the global analysis by professional category, there are about 1 social worker, 0.68 psychologists, and 0.58 pedagogues for every thousand students. When the analysis focus on information from the institutes by region, we have the highest number of professionals in the South (3.48) and Northeast (3.16), while the Midwest has the lowest ratio (2.78).
The best relationships by professional category in the institutes were observed in Ifac (2.11) for social workers, in Iffar (1.11) for nutritionists, in IFMS (2.27), followed by IFSC (2.15) for pedagogues, the IFRR (1.31) for a psychologist and the IFMS (2.27) for a technician in educational matters (Table 1). The cultural, social, and economic diversity of the country is revealed in the distribution of professionals working in student assistance by groups of one thousand students. This scenario, as far as we know not been evaluated, leads us to some questions directly related to the performance of EA: how to develop an efficient work in the face of such high demand? How are students who need specific assistance in units/IF where there are no certain professionals?
Such questions gain greater importance when considering the performance of student assistance in a universal perspective, which, regardless of economic issues, becomes an even greater challenge and requires the deployment of teams that face the increasingly complex demands that have repercussions on educational processes as a result of the relations of society that Bauman (2001) called liquid modernity.
In the context of increasing psychological and emotional disorders, such as anxiety, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, which in addition to expanding these disorders, also increased the demand for work of professionals. However, even they have suffered from these problems due to the increased demands of the academic community, which makes the performance of these universal actions even more challenging (BARROS;. For Dias (2020), in the 21st century, individuals are expected to overcome themselves, perform and innovate, making them always want to produce more and better. The pandemic seems to be accelerating all that. For the author, "we can understand the virus as a mirror of the society described by Han (2017), as the society of tiredness" (p. 565).
In addition to these emotional issues, it is important to place others that also involve the teaching-learning process in a perspective of totality. Among them, we find the high rate of unemployment and/or underemployment, ethnic, age, social, economic, political, and cultural diversities that mark the existence of the individual, which if not properly addressed can affect school performance (REIS, 2018). A recent study published by Andifes (2021), carried out with students from universities in Brazil, lists as difficulties that impact academic performance: sexual, physical, and psychological violence, maternity or paternity, conflicts of values, discrimination and prejudice, health problems, learning difficulties, family relationships, financial difficulties, emotional problems, lack of discipline, excessive student workload, adaptation to new situations, among others, with the last five being the most representative. This entity states that the biggest challenges of student assistance to increase the academic performance of students (in that order) are related to the "expansion of direct transfers (scholarships), the coverage of mental health actions and the pedagogical follow-up and reception actions" (p. 33).
As we have already pointed out in a previous study, the performance of student assistance teams "involves material and symbolic factors that may correspond to the student's interests and desires, to relationships established in the school environment, to personal and/or family, and socioeconomic and cultural situations" (SOARES; AMARAL, 2022).
Within the teaching units of federal institutes, in the day-to-day professional and technological education, characterized by a demanding routine, especially for adolescents of integrated technical education, the National Student Assistance Program and its local correspondents need to be implemented by the technical student assistance teams. The success of this work represents the achievement of the central objectives, which are access, permanence, and student success.
On the other hand, structuring factors, such as the composition of teams, can limit or even make the achievement of such objectives unfeasible. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the educational, budget, and people management policy, as well as the recognition of the importance of this agenda in the discussions of management at the macro level.
There is a project in progress in the Chamber of Deputies, PL nº 3145-A of 2008, which provides for the hiring of social workers and amends law nº 8662/93, which provides for the profession of social worker, with a proposal to that "educational establishments must hire and maintain at least one social worker for each group of 800 students, and those who exceed this limit will obey the proportionality of one more, for each group of 800 students or fraction" (BRASIL, 2008b, p. 9).
Despite being rejected by separate votes in the Social Security and Family Commission, the project was unarchived and is still in progress. If approved, it could represent an achievement for this category and set precedents for the struggle of other professions.
As already discussed, although there is no national regulation on the composition of multidisciplinary student assistance teams, 26 of the 31 Student Assistance Policies (Paes) were analyzed to provide the technical framework necessary for their implementation. It is important to highlight that this technical team must usually compose each unit, given the unfeasibility of distance service and the absence of links between these professionals and the students.

Student Assistance Policies of the Federal Institutes of Education, Science, and Technology
The analysis of the regulations that deal with Student Assistance in the IF allowed us to identify that, in general, most resolutions have some aspect that identifies it as a universal service, whether in the objectives, principles, guidelines, programs, or functions of the teams. In our mapping, we focused on the explicit prediction of universal care from the analysis of specific programs or actions. With this criterion, the policies of only six institutes do not fit into the provision of universal care (Chart 2). In the process of building the Student Assistance Policy in Brazil, the discussions were based on different aspects, depending on the place/position from which it was discussed, which favored the proposition of different conceptions, with a dispute of perspectives around what would be considered an ideal AE (DUTRA; SANTOS, 2017). For the authors, [...] an AE policy should not be limited to the design and implementation of mechanisms aimed only at the low-income population, but should also be concerned with principles of universal care. However, in the current scenario, it has not been possible to meet the demand universally, not even for those said to be in a situation of socioeconomic vulnerability (DUTRA; SANTOS, 2017, p. 165-166).

Chart 2 -Universal Service in Student Assistance Regulations at Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology
The statement shows the difficulties in implementing student assistance from a universal perspective given the high demand of the academic community for services (among them scholarships and grants) and the small number of professionals to attend. Prada and Surdine (2018) state that despite the importance of regulating the programs, the prioritization of selective programs is observed to the detriment of universal ones, since there is a lack of material conditions for their implementation in institutions.
For the authors, "how Pnaes is regulated promotes a dispute over the number of resources destined for universal and selective programs, and what prevails is the focus, selectivity, and residuality" (PRADA; SURDINE, 2018, p. 285), even selective programs do not assist all students, a priority public of Pnaes, even less the programs considered universal can meet and guarantee the participation of all students.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
The student assistance policy was born with a focus to meet mainly the demands of students with financial difficulties to remain in the course. On the other hand, the analyzed professions start in education with universal goals related to personal, family, social, and health demands, among others. Are these factors contributing to the dispute over AE conceptions? Perhaps the intersection of these demands is the challenge, mainly because there are few professionals and low financial and political incentives to meet all of them, especially in the context of budget reductions and restrictions of rights experienced in the country in recent years.
There are many difficulties in implementing the Student Assistance Program from a universal perspective. There are demands from the academic community that requires preventive and punctual actions with qualified technical staff and in sufficient quantity so that this service does not occur to the detriment of the physical and psychological health of professionals.
It is important to point out that even though these professionals have attributions of paramount importance in the formal educational process from a perspective of citizen training, which can contribute to the referral and minimization of economic, personal, family, social and pedagogical issues, it should not be attributed only to them the responsibility to guarantee the permanence and good performance of the students, considering that these issues depend on a series of factors that include the student, the family, the teachers, the curriculum, institutional management, other members of the school and other external factors to the institution.
Also, acting in the universal perspective legitimizes the Student Assistance professional's educational identity and needs to be incorporated by the professional in such a way that it is equally perceived by the academic community (students and assistants). Only in this way will each professional, whether psychologist, social worker, pedagogue, technician in educational matters, or nutritionist, stop being a technician in their specific professions and will start to behave as effective educators, an identity mistakenly associated exclusively with teachers.
The translation of this article into English was funded by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior -CAPES-Brasil.