Currently, age-grade distortion is an emerging problem for schools in Brazil. Most teenagers in adolescent stage and over 7 million children were found to be behind by at least two years in their schooling. This result was as per the 2017 school census.
There are many reasons as to why many girls and boys in Brazil have fallen behind when it comes to the age of starting school, but a good number of them are expected to repeat academic year because of the drop out cases. Other major cases are falling behind while others were also unable to progress in their academic activities.
A program known as “Trajectorias de Sucesso Escolar” (“Successful School Trajectories”) was launched by UNICEF as they partner with Samsung together with NGO Cidade Escola Aprendiz, to provide appropriate data in relations to this emerging situation and offer the necessary solutions.
Regional data regarding the age-grade distortion are availed on the platform: https://trajetoriaescolar.org.br/. The data on this site provides statistical information about the dominance of age-grade distortion and its geographical spread. On this site, a survey tool is also provided with the main aim being that people will feel encouraged to share important information regarding gender, age and age profiles, among other necessary and important details.
The main reasons as to why this data is published on the site is that the project wish to shed some light on the situation and thus deal accordingly with the challenge of age-grade distortion through the creation of policies that are projected towards specific municipalities and states.
The main objective is to implement flexible initiatives that individual students, schools and regions can adapt to. The implementation is to be done by using the results from the platform. The stakeholders of this project also have high hopes that the students will be re-integrated into the school community by these initiatives hence reducing the likelihood of failure or truancy.
UNICEF insisted that it is very critical in getting to know students, especially when it comes to ensuring efficiency and effectiveness of the public policies. This mission is supported by Sumsang as it believes that they have an important role to play in order to improve schooling across Brazil by using technology.
“It is our belief that the development of Brazilian Education is a task that should be overcomed by all members of the society. Therefore, Samsung strives to collaborate and actively take part in ensuring that there is an improved learning process for all students,” says Costa Isabel, Corporate Citizenship Manager at Samsung Brazil.
The main desire of Samsung is to encourage is to encourage learning in Brazil. This is the key reason for their involvement in the initiative in Brazil. Samsung also collaborated with UNICEF in order to discuss the future of the initiative at the “Promocao de Trajetorias de Sucesso Escolar” (Promoting Successful School Trajectories), also the findings of the recent study that was conducted by Inep (“National Institute of Studies and Education Research Anisio Teixera”) was discussed in the seminar that was held in Brazil in the month of August, last year.
UNICEF – Samsung Marathon
Apart from the successful school trajectories, Samsung has also made another good decision of commuting itself to the UNICEF – Samsung Marathon. This is a programming and technology strategy that is aimed to create educational application that will be used in encouraging students in their studies and also eradicate age-grade distortion in Brazil. Apart from Samsung and UNICEF, Softex is also in partnership in this Marathon. Softex is known to be the “Association for the Promotion of Excellence in Brazilian software”, which is to be implemented as part of the “Brasil Mai’s IT” program.