Lula: 'It is necessary to make up for the educational setbacks children experienced during the pandemic'

247 - Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday (26) that “a huge effort” will be needed to recover the educational setback for the poorest students who were harmed by the lack of infrastructure to access virtual classes during the pandemic.

“We will have to make a huge effort, call on educators, organize a collective effort, use whatever tools we have so that we can recover from this failure and bring the children up to the same educational standard. We have to guarantee that they have the same quality of education, that they learn the same things, that is one of my concerns,” said Lula in an interview with CBN Vale do Paraíba. The former president also recalled that, without access to the internet and computers, children in the Brazilian periphery were harmed for a period of almost a year and a half without adequate classes.

Lula also highlighted that during the PT governments, public investment in education increased from 4,7% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2002 to 6% of GDP in 2014. In the same year, then-President Dilma Rousseff approved the National Education Plan, which provided for a progressive increase in budget resources for education, until reaching 10% in 2024.

In the interview, he also defended including the poor in the budget and the rich in income tax, as a measure to stimulate consumption, job creation, and growth. “If we put the poor in the budget and the rich in income tax, if we have a social inclusion policy that ensures the poor have money to go to the market, to buy shorts, a dress, shoes, a notebook, the economy will grow on its own. There's no other magic. There's no such thing as an emergency plan to generate employment,” he stated. 

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