Schooling in rural São Paulo: analysis of lhe public policy

Abstract

This article describes and analyzes the main actions concerning the public policy on education for the rural population of the state of São Paulo during the last decades. It focuses on the physical location of schools and on the number of grades offered, considering the direct and the indirect access to schools, the latter though transportation. The factors which influenced the expansion of the educacional system, as well as the processes for this expansion and the agents involved on it, are analyzed. The study concluds that there was a continuous expansion of  educational opportunities to rural population in the period but a large difference still remains with respect to urban children. This expansion is related to the economic and agricultural evelopment of the countryside, to the renewed value given to rural culture and to the new expectations generated in the remaining rural population. Although the most recent phases of the process have showed d tendency to decentralization and political participation, they have created a new pattem of material and educational offers - the consolidated school, along with the remaining one-teacher schools -, which can generate inequalities in the access to edllcation, despite the better conditions of the consolidated unities.