A condicionalidade escolar do Programa Bolsa Família na Região Metropolitana de Natal

Abstract

In 2003, the Bolsa Família Program - PBF came into effect in Brazil as of the end of this program, families in poverty and extreme poverty were able to count on financial resources monthly. To receive the money, the family has to comply with conditions in the areas of social assistance, health and education. School conditionality consists of the requirement to enroll children in school and ensure that they are always present, that is, they cannot be absent. This school conditionality collaborates with other initiatives that aim to combat school exclusion of the population in a situation of poverty. The school as a social institution can be analyzed sociologically on the one hand as a reproducer of social inequalities and on the other as a creative and innovative being able to collaborate for social equalization. Formal education is a process that develops systematically from the initial stage of early childhood education, primary, secondary and higher education, over several years. Particularly the school trajectory of the students served by the PBF was analyzed in this thesis research based on the following question: How the school's conditionality as a rule of permanence in the program can contribute to the education of the children of the most impoverished population in the municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of Natal ? Having the following hypothesis: The conditionality of education in the Bolsa Família Program can contribute to the development of a school ethos among students from the Metropolitan Region of Natal who are beneficiaries of the program throughout their trajectory in basic education. Methodologically, schools with more than 50% of students served by the PBF were analyzed for compliance with the program's school conditionality between the years 2008 and 2016, that is, throughout a 9-year period of elementary school. The results showed that during this period, in the schools analyzed, more than 90% of the students fulfilled the requirement not to miss classes, in addition, they registered an average dropout and failure rate, during that same period below 5%. The research also demonstrated that the PBF's school conditionality collaborated in the development of the school ethos, that is, by promoting good will towards the school, collaborating as a positive factor in the school inclusion process of the population in a situation of urban poverty. However, the school is not an isolated institution, on the contrary, it is related to social hierarchies and in the case of this thesis research, the urban segregation that comes from these hierarchies, interferes in the process of distributing the available school opportunity structures. The quality of the schools that serve PBF students, differs according to the regions of the metropolis, having on the one hand institutions with school supplementation programs that guarantee the permanence of students full time with school reinforcement, music classes, arts and education physics, school transport, library structures, computer room, reading room, etc., while in other schools there are only classrooms and nothing else. In this sense, schools do not have the same conditions to serve a public in a situation of extreme urban poverty.