A new study indicates that Brazil's official data on students with disabilities is underestimated. Instead of 3.7% of basic education students, as recorded by the most recent School Census, it would be 12.8%, according to the survey.

Since the total number of Brazilian students in basic education is around 47.3 million, this would mean more than 6 million have some type of disability or learning disorder, not close to 1.8 million as shown in the official data. As a result, nearly 4.3 million children and young people are not accounted for in public policies related to special and inclusive education, which should involve, for example, the training of educators, the hiring of specialized professionals to assist students, and the adaptation of school infrastructure.

The study was conducted by Equidade.info, an initiative linked to Stanford University's School of Education in the United States, with support from the Stanford Lemann Center, which develops public policy research for Brazilian education, and the Itaú Foundation.

The supervision is by two education researchers and professors from Stanford, Brazilian Guilherme Lichand and American Elizabeth Kozleski. The percentage of Brazilian students with disabilities or learning disorders identified by the research, 12.8%, is similar to that of the United States (12%) and is closer to the international average, according to Lichand. For him, this also makes the research percentage more plausible than the official one.