ABSTRACT
The status of education in Brazil is not significantly different from that of other developing countries of similar average income. Three and a half million children from seven to fourteen years of age still do not have access to fundamental education (IBGE 1991). Only 40 per cent of the part of this age group that are enrolled finish the four initial grades, and less than 25 per cent do it without one or more failures. As a consequence, the average schooling of the population is low, leading to difficulties in social and economic performance. The statistics show that of the 17.7 million formal illiterates older than 15, only 4.1 million have a proper job (Ministerio do Trabalho 1992). And even among the employed, the lack of schooling is a matter of concern: 18 million have scarcely four years of schooling. In the richer state of São Paulo, 31 per cent of the formally employed had completed the eight years of fundamental education in 1992; only 14 per cent had managed to finish secondary education. Data for the industrial sector are only slightly better: in 1992 38 per cent of the industrial workers of the state of São Paulo had left school in the course of their secondary education.
