Registration for the National High School Examination (Enem), the main gateway to higher education in Brazil, ends this Friday (16). And, although the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep) has not yet given details on the number of people who signed up for this year’s tests, the trend in recent years has been towards a reduction. The total number of people registered for Enem has been falling since 2017, but the decline has intensified in recent years. The registration record was in 2014, when more than 8.7 million people applied to take the tests. In 2017, over 6.1 million people signed up. But in 2022 that number dropped to almost half, with just over 3.3 million candidates. Aggravated by the pandemic of the new coronavirus, the year 2021 was the one that showed the lowest interest in Enem since 2005, with only 3.1 million subscribers. The total was lower until 2009, when the exam began to allow entry to most faculties. Before that, the Enem was only done to test the knowledge of high school graduates. Withdrawal Several factors can explain what has kept young people and adults away from Enem. But this is certainly not due to a subjective factor, said Ana Karina Brenner, a professor at the Faculty of Education and the Graduate Program in Education at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj). “It is a multifactorial and structural issue. It has been falling since 2015, but has declined more sharply since 2017, when Enem ceased to have the dual function it had: as an evaluator who scored points for admission to higher education and also as a certifier of high school completion. There were a lot of people who signed up to take the Enem not because they were competing for a place in higher education, but because they were trying to get certified for high school, which was an important diploma to open doors to the job market”, explained Ana Karina, in an interview with Agência Brasil. But, in addition to the loss of its function as a high school certifier, other factors help to explain the increase in youth and adults’ lack of interest in Enem. And one of these factors is the difficulty these young people have in completing high school. “To take the Enem, you need to have completed high school. The data from Pnad [Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílio] show that we still have a serious problem in the production of high school completion”, she said. Renda added that another problem presented in recent years is that many young people finish high school, but do not immediately take the Enem: they leave it for some time later. “Some find it very difficult to make the immediate transition from high school to university. So, leave the Enem for later. They do not feel prepared to face the Enem when they finish high school. And they think they will need more time with complementary training and additional study, until they are able to face this test”, she highlighted. This postponement of the Enem is also related to another serious problem: many young people have to abandon their studies to obtain immediate income for survival. “There are issues of quality in secondary education, there is an end to the double function of Enem in no longer being a certifier, but there is also a lack of support for youth trajectories in the production of academic success and of being able to transition to adult life, achieving support yourself and study at the same time. The dimension of studying and working simultaneously is very present for young people”, explained Ana Karina. “Work is both a producer of income to survive and also has a formative dimension. So, work is desired by many young people and, an important problem is that, for many, work prevents studying. So, the need to work to help support the family often ends up preventing them from continuing their studies. And there is a lack of policies to support these trajectories that allow it to [jovem] study without being fully disputed by the world of work, which ends up delaying or preventing him from reaching higher education”, she concluded. This problem has mainly affected the most vulnerable population, highlighted Friar David Santos, executive director of Educafro Brasil, also in an interview with Agência Brasil. “Several factors explain the drop in Enem registrations. But the factor that worries me the most is that all the young people who were motivated to enter universities through quotas for blacks, poor whites, indigenous peoples and quilombolas, enter with great enthusiasm. It turns out that the government, which had promised to launch housing and food allowance programs for all [estudantes] poor people earning up to one and a half minimum wage per capita income, did not comply”, he observed. “In my wanderings through universities in Brazil, I discovered something astounding: of every 100 young Afro-Brazilians who entered universities by 2019, 30 had dropped out. [os estudos] due to lack of housing and food allowances. With the pandemic, our estimate today is even higher, that more than 60 of them have already dropped out of university”, lamented the frei. “The young man who leaves home happy to win and comes back devastated, [ele] generates in all its cycle of total conviviality [descrédito]. That’s why we’re calling on the federal government to ensure that every young person [vulnerável] who enters a federal university with a housing allowance and a food allowance to be able to keep studying and improve Brazil. Brazil will not be better if there are no young people graduating”, he said. Pandemic All these structural problems were further aggravated by a pandemic of the new coronavirus. “The pandemic has deepened the difficulty of completing high school with the time of enrollment in the Enem and deepened the difficulties of training”, stressed Ana Karina. “There is another important fact to be observed, which is the fact that the MEC [Ministério da Educação] having instituted a punishment in the pandemic years for those who missed the test. Those who missed the Enem the following year would not be entitled to exemption from the registration fee. Even if this punishment no longer exists, it may still be present in the imagination of young people that they are not entitled to exemption for having failed and would need to pay for the exam, even without having money to pay”, she argued. To all this, highlighted Ana Karina, there is still an economic crisis and a reform of secondary education that was “nefarious. The world of greater uncertainty also makes it difficult for young people to think about the future and imagine the possibilities of their choices. With the economic crisis, this is even more difficult. ‘What am I going to study that will give me possibilities to actually have a job that supports me?’, she asked. Hope For the educator, changes are necessary for young people to become interested in the Enem again. “We need to offer hope to young people. There is a lot of structure in the impossibility of enrolling in Enem. It’s not subjective. It is very difficult to face this test of life, ”she assured. “The Educafro [Educação e Cidadania de Afrodescendentes e Carentes] runs a tremendous campaign to motivate youth to enroll in Enem. But the rate of return is very small because they do not believe that the Enem will be the gateway to success, as is the image sold to the middle class. For the middle class, the Enem is perfect: it really is the gateway to success and gives access to a free university. For the poor it is not being. I am negotiating with the ministry [da Educação], for example, so that this year will be the last time that the Enem fee exemption period is different from the period for those who can pay. The MEC plays the exemption period much earlier. And the press does almost zero advertising about this period of exemption”, complained Friar David. For both, young people need hope for change, hope for the construction of a better future, to regain interest in Enem and higher education. “Young people need to have new hopes about positive possibilities for the future. State schools need to help young people get to the Enem, find the Enem and make the link between completing high school and enrolling in the Enem and providing support for facing this test. We have in Brazil a dynamic of little public policy support for young people and their families and, therefore, the cost of facing life’s challenges is very high for families. Families are very much alone in guaranteeing the possibilities of reaching new stages of life and facing the risks and costs of these new stages of life”, concluded Ana Karina.
Agência Brasil
Folha Nobre - Desde 2013 - ©