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New Federal Plan for High Schools to Focus on Specialism

09/23/2016 - 11h47

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NATÁLIA CANCIAN
MARINA DIAS
FROM BRASÍLIA

PAULO SALDAÑA
FROM SÃO PAULO

High school is the elephant in the room for Brazil's education system. Progress in Brazil's high schools is slow and stagnating, with high rates of drop-outs among students and increasingly fewer success stories.

Now, the Brazilian education system is trying to tackle this shortcoming, with a new federal plan focused on specialism, which offers students more flexibility in the subjects they chose to study.

Currently all high school pupils take 13 disciplines over the course of three years. With the new scheme, some of the syllabus (roughly one year of the three year programme) will be taught to all.

The rest will be purely option based, split into five categories: languages, mathematics, human sciences, natural sciences and professional apprenticeships. Each pupil will have the option of which of the five strands to take.

While the full range of choices will vary from school to school, the new scheme stipulates that at least two of the five should be offered in each facility.

This latest education bill, which has been proposed in the form of a provisory measure to Congress by Michel Temer (PMDB), no longer makes the arts and physical education obligatory. These two disciplines are only compulsory at infant and primary school.

The decision of Temer's government to drop physical education from the list of compulsory subjects for teenagers was made just one month after the Olympics finished in Rio.

The proposal will apply to both private and public sector educational facilities.

Translated by GILLIAN SOPHIE HARRIS

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