Support to Upper Secondary Reform in Brazil Operation

The development objective of the Support to the Upper Secondary Education Reform Operation Project for Brazil is to strengthen the capacity of the state secretariats of education to implement the upper secondary reform, prioritizing vulnerable schools, and to increase the index of basic education development in targeted fulltime upper secondary schools in Brazil’s territory. This operation is consistent with the emerging priorities of the new Brazil country partnership framework (CPF) for the Federative Republic of Brazil in which the education sector is explicitly mentioned as a key area of intervention within the first focus area - fiscal consolidation and government effectiveness. The program complies with the criteria for prioritizing the World Bank engagement by combining government demand with the World Bank’s comparative advantage. The design and implementation of the upper secondary education reform require a focus on institutions and capacity building, as well as incentives for achieving results. The program has three key indicators: (a) number of states where at least 40 percent of schools have implemented the new curricula; (b) number of states where at least 50 percent of vulnerable schools have implemented the new curricula; and (c) percentage change in the basic education development index (IDEB) in targeted full-time school (FTS).