Ensaios sobre os determinantes da qualidade educacional no Brasil

Abstract

This dissertation is composed of three essays that list the main determinants of the quality of education in Brazil. The first essay analyzes the determinants of educational performance for the 5th year of primary education in public schools, with emphasis on the characteristics of students, families, teachers, schools and location, with the application of a panel of fixed effects between the years 2011 and 2017. The central results of the study suggested that the factors that most explain school performance are the individual characteristics of the students and the mother's education, drawing conclusions from what is discussed in the literature. In turn, the second essay investigates the relationship between educational expenditure per student in elementary school and the quality of education in Brazilian municipalities, focusing on the 5th and 9th year of elementary school between the gap from 2013 to 2019. Using a panel with fixed effects, the estimates showed that the coefficients were positive and significant, indicating that increases in spending increased educational quality in Brazilian municipalities, however, these results demonstrated a small correlation. Finally, the third essay examines the size of the educational performance gap between students attending rural and urban secondary schools between 2017 and 2021. As an identification strategy, the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model with fixed effects of state and municipality. The results around the average showed that the gradual inclusion of covariates and fixed effects reduces the performance gap between rural and urban students, however, inequalities increase over the years.