The Gender and Race Equity in Education Panel takes place today, April 1, from 3pm to 4:30pm, in São Paulo, and is part of the program of the 9th GIFE Congress, an important space for debate on private social investment in Brazil.
Ricardo Henriques, executive superintendent of the Unibanco Institute, will open the panel, followed by a debate with Amalia Fischer, general coordinator of the ELAS Fund, Bernardete Gatti, from the Carlos Chagas Foundation, Hélio Santos, from the Baobá Fund, and Valter Silvério, from the Federal University of São Carlos.
The panel will discuss issues of equity in reducing educational inequalities and how the partnership between private social investment, academia and independent funds can contribute to meeting the challenge of gender and racial equity in education.
To give you an idea of the racial inequalities in education, according to Saeb data, in 2013, the average proficiency in Portuguese of white students was 269 and that of black students was 254 points. The average considered adequate by the All for Education movement is 300 points. The disparities revealed by the school indicators of young black men and women are directly linked to prejudice and discrimination, both inside and outside school.
As far as gender inequality is concerned, although girls drop out of school less and have better averages in Portuguese, they still perform less well than boys in mathematics at the end of secondary school. In the 5th year of elementary school, however, this gap is much smaller; the gap between boys and girls is 1.8 percentage points, while in the 3rd year of secondary school, it increases to 5.2 points, according to a study by the Todos pela Educação (All for Education) Movement.
"In order to achieve better educational results, it is necessary to identify situations of inequality that affect certain groups of students and implement actions to tackle them, creating conditions of equity. And this is only possible by recognizing differences and valuing diversity. Diversity has the power to transform," says Ricardo Henriques, superintendent of the Unibanco Institute, a partner of the ELAS Fund in Elas nas Exatas.
