Priorities in public education in Salvador

For the first time in Salvador's public education system, we have such a challenging goal: to ensure that students graduate from the first grade knowing how to read and write.

In truth, this would be the basic premise of education in our city, but it wasn't for all this time, and after the vote in Congress on the Literacy at the Right Age Plan, in which the deputies rejected inserting an amendment that reduces the literacy time from 8 to 6 years of age, our goal has taken on even more responsibility.

We understand that the social distance between classes is reduced when the educational gap is also smaller. That's what we believe. For a proficient education, we need to take advantage of what is working well and replace the diagnosed shortcomings with measures that have already been successfully tested.

The assessments carried out by Ideb in municipal schools have recorded numbers that sadden us. But we cannot back down, we need to react and work for better results, and the leap in education that we want is to reverse the last position in Ideb in the initial years among the capitals and the penultimate position in the final years. In Elementary School I, the index is 4,0; we have started working with the fixed goal of raising it to 5,8 in 2017; the mission is audacious, but a good dose of boldness is needed to take flight and achieve our goals.

How do we intend to get there? By investing in a Structured Education System focused on literacy in Portuguese, Mathematics, and Science for students and teachers, including teacher training and a monitoring system with bimonthly tests for Elementary School I, including students diagnosed as illiterate in small literacy and remedial classes, creating investments for training and management support for schools, and expanding early childhood education services.

Another strategy implemented is the operation of full-time schools. Following the recent openings, we maintain a total of 9 units that offer sports, cultural, and academic support activities outside of regular school hours.

We hope that opportunities for our young people will truly materialize, that their prospects will be broadened, and that the job market will seem more tangible.