Desigualdades de infraestrutura nas escolas de ensino fundamental de Minas Gerais: distribuição territorial e organização federativa

Abstract

This thesis deals with the relationship of arrangements for the care of elementary school between the state and its municipalities and the inequalities of the offer of this stage of basic education. The object of research is the infrastructure present in public elementary schools in Minas Gerais. This stage of teaching was chosen because it is a shared responsibility between states and municipalities. The federative institutional organization of the public offering of elementary school operated by federal regulations was considered as an explanatory variable. The categories of analysis established were the historical legacy and the normative operationality of the educational offer in the state (institutional factors), the contextual scenario (structural factor) and programs and agreements developed among subnational entities to guarantee the right to education and/or reduce educational inequalities (political action factor). For each of these factors, a chapter was elaborated, and the institutional factor unfolded into two: a chapter on the evolution of primary education in Minas Gerais throughout the 20th century; and another on the constitution of legislation that regulates the conditions under which education should be offered in the post-1988 period. We sought to analyze the extent to which the attributes selected from these factors have repercussions on the inequalities of supply conditions, measured by the characteristics of the infrastructure of elementary schools in the state and municipal public schools of the state (dependent variable). If in the First Republic, the conduct of the expansion of schooling in Minas Gerais by the state government prioritized the central regions of the territory, with the establishment of a school model with higher standard, being in charge of municipalities – usually with lower institutional and financial capacities – the service in small cities and rural areas; from the Vargas Era to the Military Dictatorship, in view of the economic and political demands, the orientation became that the new school constructions were simple and/or that they used any kind of space so that the expansion could be made in the most economical way possible. The magna carta of 1988 and the infraconstitutional legislation that followed it defined under what conditions education should be offered, in the form of minimum variety and quantity, per student, of indispensable insums for the development of teaching-learning processes. However, the economic differences between municipalities and their financing capacities of education had an impact on the unequal fulfillment of these requirements. Thus, both national policies (such as funding funds) and agreements and agreements between the state and its municipalities affect the conditions of school education provision. It was evidenced that the historical, normative, structural and political action factors have repercussions on the institutional organization of the federative educational system, but the absence of forms of cooperation and collaboration predominates in the state of Minas Gerais, which reinforces inequalities in the conditions of supply among subnational entities. Although these inequalities are related to economic disparities between the regions of the state, these are not the only explanatory elements. Rather, the inequalities of the infrastructure of schools are reinforced by the association of attributes such as population size, urbanization rate, percentage of municipalization, protected institutional care capacity and terms of partnership between the state and municipal public authorities.