Federalismo e políticas de educação básica: uma análise das desigualdades territoriais na Argentina e noBrasil na nova ordem constitucional

Abstract

The present master dissertation aims to contribute to the academic debate on territorial inequalities in federal countries. The main objective is to introduce the current situation of territorial differences in educational indicators of primary and secondary public education levels between the states in Brazil and provinces in Argentina, and to seek establishingassociations between these differences and the characteristics of the fiscal federalism and jurisdictional dimension in the two federations in the period of the new constitutional order. Firstly, we intend to verify the trajectory of the inequalities and in what territories of Brazil and Argentina they have diminished, and how much. Secondly, we seek to do a preliminary analysis about possible effects of the jurisdictional and fiscal dimensions of the decentralization in the decline or increase of inequalities between the subnational levels of the two federations. The main point is that more centralized federative structures, both in jurisdictional and financial terms, tend to reduce the territorial inequalities. In order to achieve this, a descriptive analysis of the following indicators has been done: illiteracy rate, percentage of the population with years of study, percentage of enrollments in the publicsector, gross and net schooling rates, dropout rate (school abandonment rate), age-grade distortion rate, the Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (IDEB) for Brazil and the Operativo Nacional de Evaluación (ONE) for Argentina. The results show that Brazil and Argentina obtained advances in the educational indicators, contrasting the offer and the access to school. However, the two countries still have big challenges, such as improving the quality of education and student achievement, mainly in secondary education. Moreover, the territorial inequalities have declined in both countries, but it is more significant in Brazil, mainly in school achievement indicators. The third conclusion of the study is that the more jurisdictional centralization in Brazil may have contributed to the falling of the inequality in the country. In Argentina the scenario is different, and in spite of being a federation characterized by fiscal centralization, this may not necessarily have an effect in favor of the reducing the territorial inequality in the country.