This paper presents some of the NGOs’ main meanings in Brazil that enable them to face the challenge of having the right to education. . This challenge particularly includes public schooling and the definition of public and private sector. In both aspects the following perspectives adopted by the NGOs are described: the palliative perspective, the innovative one, the changing as well as the political pressure perspective. The article concludes that the NGOs’ work has been following different directions, disjointedly, in what concerns the conditions for accomplishing education as a right: strengthening both the State and the civil society, the interlocution between these two poles and the reciprocal influence between education and political system.
NGO; right to education; educational policy