BACK	EDUCATION-BRAZIL: State, Private Cooperation Boosts Schooling

The government is doing its share to help as President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has just signed a minimum income law that guarantees financial assistance to poor families on the condition that their children, under the age of 14, remain in school.

According to the new legislation, the central government will contribute up to 50 percent of the necessary resources to the municipalities that implement the program. Families whose incomes are below 55 dollars per month will be eligible as long as they establish proof that their children regularly attend school.

The program is already in place in some of the regions where child labor is concentrated. The government of Brasilia pioneered the program, currently offering scholarshipS to more than 43,000 students.

The bill originally sought to combat the extreme poverty that exists in pockets throughout the country, including large urban areas, but it was modified in parliamentary debates in terms of being attached to schooling.

According to official statistics, there are 2.7 million children not attending school in Brazil which is equivalent to nine percent of the population aged 7-14 - the mandatory schooling age. The scholarships are intended to decrease these numbers.

Nevertheless, the ''all children in school'' campaign cannot succeed without a general effort from all sectors of society. The government has challenged Brazilian society to reach this objective over the next few years.

The Brazilian education tragedy has other alarming statistics. Only 4.5 percent of students complete their primary education in the required eight years while 40 percent are failed in their first year. The 30 percent who manage to complete this phase do so in an average of 11.2 years.

The prevalence of having to repeat grades and the high drop-out rate make Brazilian education one of the worst in Latin America. Evwen poorer countries, like Peru and Ecuador, have better results.

The private sector appears convinced of the need to improve education, particularly in light of the technological exigencies brought on by economic globalization and initiatives are growing in this sector. In Minas Gerais, the state with the most promising improvements in educational matters in the last few years, industrial businesses are ''adopting'' schools and helping them overcome their insufficiencies.

Since 1992, the Latas de Aluminio company (Latasa), for example, has allocated over 2,000 dollars per month to help a school in Pouso Alegre, a poor neighborhood in the southern part of the state. This contribution helped improve school meals, subsidize transportation for students who live far away, and train teachers and in four years, the rate of failure at the school dropped from 58 to 14 percent.

Each year, the Industrial Federation of Minas Gerais awards prizes to the member companies who are most successful in helping schools. This year, 65 companies competed for this honor and Latasa filled second place. First prize went to Aceros Especiales Itabira, a steel company that ''associated'' itself with 21 schools in Timteo, the municipality where it plans to locate. In two of these schools, truancy was completely eliminated.

The goal announced by the president of the Federation, Stefan Salej, is for all 10,000 schools in Minas Gerais to acquire a ''partner'' from the private sector over the next few years. ''This is feasible,'' he maintained, because there are 70,000 private companies in the state.

The central government is also launching a campaign against illiteracy, which affects some 20 million Brazilians - 15.6 percent of the population of primary, secondary, and tertiary schooling age.

The Community Solidarity Program headed by Ruth Cardoso, Brazil's first lady, intends to teach youth between the ages of 15 and 19 to read and write in municipalities where the illiteracy rate is over 50 percent.

The ''Literacy with Solidarity'' Program began in the first half of this year, with 9,000 students in 38 municipalities. Companies ''adopted'' municipalities and universities provided training for the teachers.

In the second half of this year, the goal expanded to 40,000 students in 120 localities and for next year, the hopes have been set on integrating 50,000 students in 200 municipalities, with the assistance of 105 universities and 37 companies. The program is now targeting places with adolescent illiteracy rates above 42 percent.

The goal is to teach 500,000 youth to read and write over the next 18 months, affirmed Ruth Cardoso, saying that this would ''change the face of the country,'' since it represents one third of the 1.5 million illiterate people between the ages of 15 and 19. (FIN/IPS/mo/dg/pr-ed/mg/97)