A qualidade dos gastos públicos em educação sob a perspectiva da obrigação constitucional

Abstract

As a way of providing the scope of the social right to education, the Federal Constitution of 1988 establishes the minimum investment of resources in the maintenance and development of education annually, in addition to principles regarding its quality standard. However, in the assessment of national and international organizations, Brazilian education falls short of the desired levels. Is the application of minimum resources in education determined by the federal constitution enough to guarantee a quality education or is it a mere normative compliance? This research proposes a quantitative analysis of the association between the quality of public spending and the mandatory fulfillment of the constitutional minimum applied in education. For this purpose, it was verified whether the States and the Federal District complied with the constitutional index in education in the years 2015 to 2019, as well as analyzed the quality indicators of education in the period in question. Based on this, a comparative analysis of the Public Expenditure Quality Index between the entities was carried out and, finally, the correlation between this index and the expenditure per student, as a way of identifying the most efficient States. In a qualitative way, a documentary research is carried out through the reports of external, internal and social control in order to identify relevant recommendations of the control bodies related to education in the State of Rio de Janeiro. In view of this, it was possible to conclude that the increase in public resources allocated to education does not necessarily mean an increase in its quality, in other words, the quality of public spending on education and, consequently, the quality of public education does not necessarily depend on the volume of resources applied in this area.