Nearly half of the 3rd-grade students are learning below expectations.
Performance in reading and arithmetic was below the level considered adequate for the first three years of study.
Agência Brasil – More than 40% of students who completed the 3rd grade of elementary school do not have the expected reading skills for this stage. This means they do not master activities such as locating information in a text or understanding the theme of a narrative. This is according to the results of an assessment applied in the first semester of this year to 6 students from municipal, state, and private schools in all the country's capitals. The objective was to measure the children's learning level at the beginning of their school life, after the first three years of study.
The ABC Test is a partnership between the Todos Pela Educação movement, the Paulo Montenegro/Ibope Institute, the Cesgranrio Foundation, and the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research (Inep). The assessment used the same performance scale adopted by the Basic Education Assessment System (Saeb), an exam applied by the Ministry of Education (MEC) to students in the 5th and 9th grades of elementary school. According to this model, a student's learning is considered adequate when they reach 175 points. The average reading performance of students participating in the ABC Test was 185,5 points – but there is significant variation in scores between public and private schools and between students from the North and Northeast regions compared to the rest of the country.
While students from the South, Southeast, and Midwest regions performed above the national average – reaching 197 points in the South – those from the North and Northeast achieved 172 and 167 points, respectively. Results also varied between public and private schools: the average for students in the public school system was 175,8 points, compared to 216,7 for those in the private system.
The students who participated in the test also wrote an essay to assess skills such as cohesion, coherence, and the text's relevance to the proposed theme, in addition to adherence to spelling and punctuation rules. The expected performance, on a scale of 0 to 100, was at least 75 points. However, the national average was 68,1, with the scores of students from public schools being six points lower than this average and those of students from private schools being 18 points higher.
The participants' knowledge of mathematics was also assessed, with a national average of 171,1 points – below the level determined as adequate learning. Students would need to reach 175 to be considered capable of solving problems involving bills and coins, as well as mastering addition and subtraction. Only 42% of those assessed reached this level.
Students' numerical skills were also superior in the private school system, which averaged 211,2 points compared to 158 in the public system. Students from the North and Northeast regions also had lower results – 152,6 and 158.2 points respectively – compared to participants from the South (185 points), Southeast (179 points), and Midwest (176 points).