DEVELOPMENT-EDUCATION: Africa to Try out Brazilian Plan

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 11 2001 (IPS) - The educational subsidy programme known as “bolsa-escola,” applied with great success in Brazil, will be put to the test in Mozambique and potentially expanded to all “least developed countries” (LDCs) in Africa.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are to present the initiative before the third UN Conference on Least Developed Countries, May 14-20, in Brussels.

The “bolsa-escola,” as it was originally named in Portuguese, consists of a scholarship that ensures poor families receive a minimum income – similar to a family subsidy – but conditioned on the school attendance of their children.

The first experience involving this stipend was in the federal district of Brasilia in 1994, under Governor Cristovam Buarque.

The initiative provided immediate and encouraging results, and was expanded in 1998 to 26,000 Brazilian families.

Teachers and school officials alike have indicated that the programme reinforces their work as educators and results in notable improvements in student performance.

Bolsa-escola also mitigates poverty among women, reduces school desertion rates and provides an alternative to child labour.

Given this positive record, authorities at UNCTAD and the ILO are enthusiastic about trying the approach in Africa, where most of the world’s 49 LDCs are found.

Rubens Ricupero, UNCTAD chief, and Juan Somavía, director general of the ILO, will present the initiative to delegates from the world’s wealthy nations and from international credit institutions next week in Belgium.

Guy Standing, an ILO official, announced that the plan includes the possibility for the LDCs’ creditors to forgive a portion of their debts on the condition that the benefiting country use the freed-up funds to pay for bolsa-escola programmes.

Lena Lavinas, a Brazilian economist who serves as an ILO consultant, said this proposal will also be presented to the 34 LDCs in Africa. The other countries in this category are distributed among Asia (nine), Pacific (five) and the Caribbean, with one.

UN sources indicated that an agreement already exists for applying a pilot programme of this sort in Mozambique.

After the Brasilia experience, where the project was interrupted in 1998 by the government that succeeded Buarque’s, the initiative was successfully expanded throughout most of the country.

Currently, bolsa-escola programmes exist in 1,100 Brazilian municipalities, benefiting some 100,000 poor families. Approximately 50 million Brazilians, more than a third of the population, live in poverty.

The ILO points out that this educational-development policy has contributed to a significant reduction of poverty in Brazil, as the portion of families living below the poverty line dropped from 78 percent to 38 percent.

Among the women who receive this subsidy, their participation in the labour force grew to 48 percent, compared to 40 percent among women who do not receive the stipend.

School attendance rates skyrocketed from 25 percent to nearly 100 percent, and school performance markedly improved among students from recipient families, said the ILO, pointing out that the scheme also helped strengthen the integration of social policies in general.