Ensino médio em tempo integral e o aluno trabalhador em Dourados/MS: as visões de educadores sobre a permanência e a desigualdade.

Abstract

This work presents an analysis of the curriculum policy for the expansion of full-time secondary education and its direct implications for the provision of and access to night school. The study assumes that prioritizing the full-time model, accompanied by the consequent reduction or elimination of the night shift, creates an insurmountable social and logistical obstacle for working and low-income students, who depend on the flexibility of the night shift to reconcile the right to education with the need for subsistence. The overall objective of the work was to understand, from the perspective of public school teachers, how the expansion of full-time secondary education in the municipality of Dourados/MS has impacted the existence, access, and retention of students in night school, especially those who work, focusing on identifying how teachers perceive the reduction of night school classes in the context of the expansion of full-time education and analyzing how teachers relate full-time education to the possibilities of access, retention, and completion of secondary education for young people who work. To this end, a qualitative approach was adopted, with field research involving twelve educators from the public school system in Dourados/MS. The data, collected through a semi-structured questionnaire with open-ended questions, were subjected to Bardin's Content Analysis (CA). The results of the investigation highlight that the need for early entry into the labor market is intrinsically linked to the extreme social vulnerability and family poverty of the students. The educators' perception reinforces the argument that the full-time model is incompatible with the socioeconomic reality of this population, making their continued enrollment unfeasible and intensifying the rates of exclusion and school dropout. It is concluded that Night Education is a fundamental social right and an indispensable tool for social inclusion and the reduction of inequality. Therefore, its provision and quality cannot be neglected or replaced in favor of curricular policies that do not consider the social and economic conditions of all young people, under penalty of deepening the historical duality and exclusion in the country's educational system.