8.1 Learning poverty in Brazilian municipalities, 2017

similar levels of income. In part, this is because the Brazilian public sector is larger than the government of many of its peers. In terms of trends, between 2002 and 2015, Brazil’s education expenditure rose from 3.8 percent to 6.2 percent of gdp, the highest increase in public education spending among its comparator countries during that period.

Education outcomes and challenges

despite a significant increase in education investments, Brazil faces a learning crisis and receives little value for its expenditures, which hinders labor productivity (World Bank 2017). Brazil has a high level of learning poverty, with 48 percent of 10-year-old Brazilian children unable to read or understand a simple text, and most of them live in the north and northeast regions (see map 8.1). as measured by Brazilian students’ results on the programme for International student assessment (pIsa), a worldwide standardized student assessment of the performance of 15-year-old students in mathematics, science, and reading, the quality of education improved between 2000 and 2018, but most of the improvement took place before 2009 (see figure 8.7).

MAP 8.1

Learning poverty in Brazilian municipalities, 2017

Source: World Bank calculations using data from the 2017 5th grade learning assessment for the Basic Education Evaluation System (SAEB) conducted by the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research (INEP). Note: Legend indicates the percentage of learning poverty (share of students at age 10 that cannot read and understand a simple text).