Rio, November 7, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Of every 100 students who begin fundamental education, only half finish eighth grade, and only 30% graduate from high school. This information comes from the vice-president of the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research (INEP) of the Ministry of Education (MEC), Carlos Henrique Araújo. He is in Rio participating in the Training to Include program, sponsored by the Ministry.

According to Araújo, the major problem today with education in Brazil is quality. According to data from the survey carried out by the National System of Educational Evaluation, 59% of the children in the 4th grade have grave difficulties in reading. Of these, he explained, 22% read practically nothing, and 52% have serious problems with mathematical language. "They are at a stage varying from critical to very critical," he explained.

MEC's Secretariat of Educational Inclusion, previously called the Secretariat of the National School Grant Program, intends to encourage states and municipalities to create educational programs geared to social inclusion. To do this, it has been preparing teachers and other professionals in education, establishing a national network of educational inclusion agents motivated to carry out this task. "We don't want just to include children in school but to maintain them there and for them to be successful," affirmed the secretary of the office, Osvaldo Russo.

According to Russo, it is projected that four thousand teachers and municipal agents in the country will have received classroom training by the end of the month. In a second phase, 26 thousand more people will be trained through teleconferencing. "By the end of the year, we shall have 30 thousand muncipal agents trained in the educational inclusion program," he said. (DAS)