Escolas públicas de excelência e a formação de elites meritocráticas: uma análise de políticas de educação média no Brasil, Chile e Peru

Abstract

Educational policies focused on high performance have been adopted in several Latin American countries. This research aims to understand how the principles of excellence and meritocracy materialize in the educational project of three high school programs that aim to offer youngsters from low socio-economic backgrounds the opportunity to study in high quality institutions, enabling them to develop their skills and talents. The programs researched are the Escolas de Referência em Ensino Médio (Pernambuco, Brazil), the Liceos Bicentenario de Excelencia (Chile) and the Colegios de Alto Rendimiento (Peru). Based on the policy cycle approach proposed by Stephen Ball and collaborators, the political context, and the influences (internal and external) that guided the creation of the policies, the discourses on which they are based and the way in which the curricular, pedagogical and management aspects act in the formation of young people with the characteristics outlined in the programs' guidelines are analyzed from a comparative perspective. The methodological procedures involved a bibliographical survey, document analysis and focus groups with students from six schools (two in each country). The analysis of the policies points to a hybridism between excellence expressed in the ethical and critical dimensions, inherited from the republican tradition, and excellence translated into indicators, the product of submission to the principles of the market. It was observed that the pursuit of high academic performance requires intense mobilization of control, pedagogical management, and evaluation processes on the part of the program coordinators. After listening to the youngsters, it was concluded that the shaping of the "student of excellence" profile manifests itself differently in each context surveyed and involves a combination of academic performance (expressed in assessment results) and broader socialization processes, developed in both curricular and extracurricular projects. Other institutional strategies that seem to contribute to forming "students of excellence" are the pedagogical practices of leveling and reinforcement, adopted in the three contexts researched, and the rewarding of students for performance, practiced in the Chilean and Brazilian programs. In general, the students evaluate their schools positively and show a strong adherence to meritocratic values, from a perspective that exalts effort and discipline rather than talent. The regulatory processes of the researched programs indicate changes towards the democratization of access, such as an increase in the number of schools (Brazil and Chile) and changes in the admission processes (Chile and Peru). While the Peruvian program maintains its initial purpose of selectivity and high performance, in the Chilean and Brazilian contexts the expansion of the model has diluted the characteristics of differentiation, which are fundamental in a project aimed at excellence. To compensate, even partially, for the loss of performance imposed by massification, pedagogical and administrative monitoring strategies were created or improved. However, the expansion process strengthened differentiation between schools within the same program, creating or consolidating niches of excellence.