The illiteracy rate in Brazil dropped by 0.5 percentage points between 2019 and 2022. This is what shows the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Continuous PNAD), released this Wednesday (7) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). According to the survey, 5.6% of the country’s population aged 15 or over could not read or write in 2022. That’s 9.6 million people. The publication also gathers data involving other indicators such as education level, school attendance and school dropout. Attention is drawn to the asymmetries observed in the regional and racial areas. The Continuous Pnad began to be carried out in 2012 with a new methodology to simultaneously replace the National Household Sample Survey (Pnad) and the Monthly Employment Survey (PME). Through it, monthly and quarterly reports are prepared with situational information related to the workforce. In search of a better understanding and characterization of the labor market, some data on gender, age and color or race of the residents are collected, which also subsidize publications aimed at understanding the social and demographic aspects of the country. In addition, structural information is disclosed annually involving other topics, such as education and migration. There are also thematic supplements that present, with specific periodicity, data involving subjects such as information technology and tourism, among others. The annual module focused on education was introduced in 2016. To gather information, Pnad Contínua expands the questionnaire in the second half of each year. The result presents a portrait of the country’s educational panorama and allows comparisons with previous years. However, the IBGE chose not to include data for 2020 and 2021 in the historical series. This is because, in these two years, the form of data collection was changed due to the covid-19 pandemic: interviews were conducted exclusively by telephone. , leading to a considerable reduction in the rate of use of the sample. The new edition updates the historical series with data from 2022. The survey records a decline in illiteracy in the country since the beginning of the survey in 2016, when 6.7% of the population did not know how to read and write. The new rate of 5.6% reflects the decline in all age groups. However, among the elderly, the proportion of illiterates is more significant. In the population aged 60 or over, 16% could not read and write in 2022. “These results indicate that the younger generations are having greater access to education and being literate even as children”, reveals the survey. When the gender variable is included, it is observed that illiteracy among the elderly affects more women than men. However, considering the population aged 15 or over, the scenario is reversed: 5.9% of men and 5.4% of women cannot read and write. Although the drop in rates has been registered in all regions, the discrepancies are still notorious. The Northeast is home to 55.3% of all Brazilians aged 15 or over who cannot read and write. Illiteracy in the region reaches 11.7% of the population. In the North, they are 6.4%. The other regions – Midwest (4%), South (3%) and Southeast (2.9%) – have rates below the national average. The IBGE draws attention to the challenges facing the country and each region, with a view to complying with the National Education Plan (PNE), established by Federal Law 13,005/2014. According to the stipulated targets, the rates among people aged 15 or over should have dropped to 6.5% in 2015, which was only achieved by Brazil in 2017. Furthermore, the eradication of illiteracy is aimed for 2024. Significant asymmetries also call for attention in the selection by color or race. Among the white population, the rate in the age group of 15 years or more is 3.3% and jumps to 9.5% considering 60 years or more. Among blacks and browns, 8.2% of people aged 15 or over do not know how to read and write, a rate that rises to 27.2% among the elderly. Access to education Pnad Contínua also gathers figures that outline an overview related to asymmetries in access to education. In Brazil, the proportion of people aged 25 or over who completed high school continued to grow and reached 53.2% last year. The percentage of the population with complete higher education jumped from 17.5% in 2019 to 19.2% in 2022. However, different realities can be noticed again in the breakdown by color or race: while 60.7% of whites with at least 25 years had completed high school, among blacks and browns this rate was 47%. “There is a difference of 13.7 percentage points between the two groups analyzed. From 2016 to 2022, this difference dropped slightly – it was 16.6 percentage points in 2016 – but remained at a high level, indicating that educational opportunities were different for these groups”, says the IBGE. The survey also shows that blacks and browns aged 25 years or more study, on average, 1.7 years less than white people. Numbers related to higher education reiterate the asymmetries. In the age group between 18 and 24 years old, 29.2% of the white population were studying at universities last year. Among black and brown people, this rate was 15.3%. The research also shows a small drop in the percentage of children aged 4 to 5 years attending school: it went from 92.7% in 2019 to 91.5% in 2022. Between 6 and 14 years old, there was a slight increase, reaching 99.4 %. The universalization of education in this age group had practically been achieved since 2016, when 99.2% of children attended school.
Agência Brasil
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