Presidential candidate and former governor Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB) pinned the state's loss of leadership in Ideb on the methodology used by the Ministry of Education in the assessment.

São Paulo's school system dropped in the rankings of all parts of K-12 education: elementary, middle and high school. The latter's fall was more significant of the three.

"The Ministry's guidelines said that vocational schools could possibly be counted [in the index]. But then Inep [the agency responsible for the assessment] took that part," he said on Tuesday (4th).

"High school graduates from [vocational school] Paula Souza need to take an entrance exam, they are the best students," the candidate said.

But according to Ministry officials, vocational schools were never counted in Ideb's history.

The department also informed that vocational schools take part in the assessment, but their results are only counted in the overall schools' ranking. Thus, the results from vocational students were not included in this year's Ideb in order to keep previous indexes comparable.

Alckmin, who was São Paulo governor for four mandates and renounced in April to run for president, didn't answer when asked why São Paulo had worse results than other states, despite the criteria being the same all over the country.

_{Translated by NATASHA MADOV}

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