ORIGINAL ARTICLE
LIMA, Maria José Rocha [1], RAMOS, Fernando Sadio [2]
LIMA, Maria José Rocha. RAMOS, Fernando Sadio. Research on salary floor and teacher remuneration: a state of the art – 2008-2021. Revista Científica Multidisciplinar Núcleo do Conhecimento. Year. 06, Ed. 11, Vol. 08, pp. 100-133. November 2021. ISSN: 2448-0959, Access Link: https://www.nucleodoconhecimento.com.br/education/teacher-remuneration, DOI: 10.32749/nucleodoconhecimento.com.br/education/teacher-remuneration
ABSTRACT
This article presents a survey on studies on salary floor and teacher remuneration between 2008 and 2021[3]. In this sense, the literature review on the salary floor of the magisterium is a fundamental piece. To this end, the methodology developed for bibliographic search is based on the scientific and careful use of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) theory – in Portuguese, Práticas Baseadas em Evidências (PBE). It is a state of the art that cuts out one of the most decisive factors for the transformation of the educational reality: studies on salary floor and remuneration of Brazilian teachers. In this study, another contradiction between emphatic or grandilohot discourses in defense of the valorization of teaching and the practices of political and educational authorities is exposed, also calling us the low production of monographs, dissertations and doctoral theses, in the academic world, on salary floor and teacher remuneration. Even with the proclamation of the appreciation of the teacher as a decisive factor for ensuring the quality of education, more than ten years have passed since the establishment of the salary floor, however, about 60% of Brazilian municipalities have not yet implemented it and this does not have the expected reverberation in academic studies.
Keywords: State of the art, Salary floor, Teacher remuneration, Teacher salary, Teacher professionalization.
INTRODUCTION
In Brazil, unfortunately due to the unfair cultural tradition, the guarantee of education as a social right was marked by a secular delay and an unthinkable slowness. The causes for such educational delay have been pointed out by theorists, such as the sociologist Florestan Fernandes (1989, p. 160), who when analyzing Brazilian history identifies economic dependence, the obscurantism of the dominant classes and a permanent conflict taken to the interior of the school, which helps little in solving problems, as factors of delay. It’s like an uninterrupted measurement of the correlation of forces. Thus, there are disputes of school projects, of the project of valorization, or not, of the teacher; society project; man’s project, at last, as an unceasing political struggle. What one government does, another undoes. What are these interests that move the non-enforcement of the law that instituted the wage floor? Would the disputes about which Florestan Fernandes speak to us, among the right-wing or left-wing skeptics who almost always sabotage education in Brazil, be expressed?
In 1932, the Manifest of the Pioneers of New Education, which had among its most prominent subscribers Fernandes de Azevedo and Anísio Teixeira, begins the document calling for that in the hierarchy of national problems, none would be overtaken by education, not even those of an economic character. The famous thinker of education Anísio Teixeira warned that “without education, democracy would be a vain word used to justify the sad farce of a derisory universal suffrage” (LIMA, 2011, p. 66). For Florestan, “an essential point is what concerns the cultural tradition and what it has represented of cultural limitation of the teacher, less in theory, than in practice (FERNANDES, 1898, p. 157).
The vision of the magisterium as a priesthood has crossed and consolidated through the centuries. This religious and traditional conception in Brazilian culture, built well in the early days of colonization, when directed by religious, was one of the serious problems faced by teachers for their professionalization and performance of professional school work. In this tradition it was, and is, unacceptable to the teacher to discuss remuneration; the master should take the magisterium as a mission: to be idealistic, to be poor and happy in the exercise of the profession. It’s not uncommon for the teacher not to even have the money to buy books.
In 1827, Emperor Dom Pedro I granted the Law of First Letters Schools of October 15, 1827, establishing in Art. 3 the remuneration of teachers, a salary floor never implemented. His successor, Don Pedro II, even stated that “if he were not emperor, he would wish to be a teacher” and that he did not know “a mission greater and nobler than that of directing young intelligence and preparing the men of the future”. The last monarch of the Empire of Brazil reigned for almost 50 years and nothing concrete did for the remuneration and recognition of the teacher.
The beautiful and expressive pronounced words and legislative acts of the Emperors of Brazil, from 1827 to 1889, did not have the repercussions announced in the policy of teachers’ remuneration. Despite the non-implementation of the magisterium floor, the act of creating the floor in 1827 was emblematic. All this composes the most eloquent evidence of this mismatch between discourse and practice in the political history of remuneration of teachers in Brazilian public schools.
The Brazilian authorities speak with eloquence about the importance of the teacher, however,
cheios de meras frases de efeito, demagógicas, insinceras, ou discursos oficiais apenas ressaltam no magistério o seu caráter de sacerdócio (que realmente), mas sem a contrapartida de oferecer as condições necessárias a que o professor possa atuar na plenitude dos seus recursos e das suas qualificações (TEIXEIRA, 1999, p. 9).
These discourses, which are often transmitting, from the view of the magisterium as a mission of a religious and or assistance/paternalistic character seem to work, as a rule, inhibiting educators, academics, and even trade unionists, from addressing and defending salaries, salary floor, decent teaching remuneration for the magisterium, so that when they do, it is with a certain tibieza.
The idea about the “vocationd teacher”, a purely subjective view, has a negative impact on the pedagogical task, constituting a barrier to overcoming the erroneous view that to teach, some skills are sufficient, without taking into account the complexity of the task. Teaching is not work for lay people. Didactics and pedagogy are scientific fields with significant accumulation of knowledge.
Thus, two serious challenges must be faced for the performance of professional school work and the increase in the quality of education: the non-recognition of teaching as a profession and the uncertainty regarding the purpose of the school. In order to overcome these two problems, a strong movement must be made that opposes the unthinkable situation that is the teacher receiving salary floor almost always well below the salaries received by professionals with the same level of training. This situation forces him to work in several schools at the same time and still to accept the performance of school work in inadequate spaces.
Teachers work under the most precarious conditions: next to fetid toilets, in schools with rooms divided even by partition, without water, without a living room. They work most often without basic equipment, such as wallets, desks, cabinets, among others needed. In distant, inhospitable and unsecured places, assaults and assaults on teachers inside schools are common.
By 2020, 4,300 public schools did not have bathrooms, and broadband internet did not reach 17,200 (20.5%) in 2020. In addition, 35,800 schools continue without sewage collection, 26.6% of the total, according to the 2019 School Census. With regard to didactic-pedagogical resources, teachers, because they do not have them, compete unfairly with media resources, as we are seeing in this period of pandemic. Covid-19 exposed the tragic situation of teachers “spit and chalk”, without maps, globes, illustrations, in the 21st century, and in the era of technological revolution.
It is also essential, for the resolution of these problems, the clear definition of the purpose of the school. For this, it is necessary to stimulate and raise scientific production and a movement that promotes overcoming this confusion established in relation to the function of the school: place of protection, shelter, deposit for children or single space for carrying out school work, which must fulfill its primary purpose of offering the technical and scientific knowledge and contents necessary for symbolic survival.
One of the most pervasive discourses for the deconstruction of this view of the teacher-priest was pronounced by the professor of the University of Bahia – UFBA, journalist and writer João Carlos Teixeira, in the Legislative Assembly of Bahia, in 1999, when he said:
Por lamentável (e iníqua) tradição, no Brasil o professor costuma ser simultaneamente mártir e herói, quando deveria ser apenas (sobretudo) uma pessoa capacitada para o exercício da sua relevante missão social, prestigiada pela sociedade e amparada pelos poderes públicos, com remuneração à altura da importância de que o seu trabalho se reveste para toda a coletividade (TEIXEIRA, 1999, p. 9).
Only in the 21st century was the National Professional Salary Floor established by law. This is how on July 16, 2008, the then President of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, sanctioned Law 11.738/2008. This law established the National Professional Salary Floor for basic public education professionals – PSPN – establishing a value to be, mandatorily, adjusted each year and “below which the Union, the States, the Federal District and the Municipalities will not be able to fix the initial salary of the Careers of the public teaching of basic education, for the journey of, maximum of 40 (forty) hours per week” (BRASIL, 2008). Still, even after this secular wait, more than half of brazil’s 5,570 municipalities do not comply.
In view of this scenario, and according to the proposal, we selected the ten authors who most published on the Salary Floor of the Public Teaching of Basic Education and sought to apprehend the results most highlighted by these authors in relation to the implementation of the PSPN, created by Law 11,738, of July 16, 2008.
People, educational authorities, entrepreneurs, and especially politicians make eloquent and adjective speeches of recognition to the teacher, but the practice is blatantly contradictory.
SALARY FLOOR AND TEACHER REMUNERATION: A LITERATURE REVIEW
As previously contextualized, the object of this work is the implementation of the teachers’ salary floor, on which we present this literature review. To this end, the methodology developed for bibliographic search is based on the scientific and careful use of Evidence-based practice (EBP).
It is noteworthy here that the discussion on evidence-based bibliographic searches is born from the studies of Evidence-Based Medicine (MBE) and expands to other disciplines with the term EBP. According to Santos et al. (2007),
a PBE prevê metodologias e processos para a identificação de evidências de que um certo tratamento, ou meio diagnóstico, é efetivo, estratégias para avaliação da qualidade dos estudos e mecanismos para a implementação na assistência. (…) O movimento da PBE teve origem simultânea na McMaster University (Ontario, Canadá) e na University of York (Reino Unido). Evidência é aquilo que é claro, a constatação de uma verdade que não suscita qualquer dúvida. Evidência científica representa uma prova de que um determinado conhecimento é verdadeiro ou falso. Para que se tenha evidência científica é necessário que exista pesquisa prévia, conduzida dentro dos preceitos científicos (SANTOS et al., 2007).
In this sense, the proposal was to carry out a bibliographic search based on scientific precepts with the objective of extracting from the main object “payment of the National Professional Salary Floor – PSPN”, the most correlated and important research work for study.
Moreover, we justify the adoption of this methodology because there are criticisms of the reviews of traditional literature, which do not have specific and explicit methodologies, thus demonstrating total randomness and bias in their searches. Santos et al. ( 2007) bring up this discussion when it exposes that:
As revisões de literatura tradicionais (hoje chamadas revisões narrativas) há muito são criticadas, uma vez que o método de busca bibliográfica e seleção dos estudos não são padronizados e explicitados. Os resultados obtidos com tais revisões são tendenciosos, não esgotam toda a literatura disponível sobre o tema pesquisado e geralmente são inconclusivos. A busca de evidência requer adequada definição da pergunta de pesquisa e criação de estrutura lógica para a busca bibliográfica de evidências na literatura, que facilitam e maximizam o alcance da pesquisa (SANTOS et al., 2007).
According to Bariani et al. (2007), for evidence-based bibliographic searches, some guidelines should be followed, as we did in this work:
I. Literature searches today are largely in online directories, that is, in online databases. For this work, we conducted a search in the database of Capes, Scientific Electronic Library Online – Scielo, Google Scholar and Google Books.
II. Selection of descriptors, or keywords, aligned with the specificities of the theme. In this way, we avoid searches with broad and generalist descriptors.
III. Delimitation of the typicality of keywords, prioritizing the use of nouns and adjectives; use of words in the singular and, finally, avoiding prepositions, conjunctions or articles.
IV. Verification and validation of the words chosen on publishing sites in the main areas of study related to the research.
V. Search filtering. The search needs to be well delimited, so there are some ways that were followed in this search:
A) Search for the material in the time frame of the research;
B) Exact search of terms. Exact search is facilitated when words or phrases are written in quotation marks;
C)Use of Boolean logical operators AND, OR and NOT, where AND is used to locate more than one term in the same reference; NOT to exclude a common term from being found with the keyword used; and OR to exclude more common terms from being found with the keyword used.
Table 1 – Key search expressions
| Salary floor AND magisterium | PSPN AND magisterium |
| Floor salary AND professional education | PSPN AND professional education |
| Salary floor AND teacher | PSPN AND teacher |
| Salary floor AND teacher | PSPN AND teacher |
| Salary floor AND educator | PSPN AND educator |
| Salary floor AND worker education | PSPN AND education worker |
| Salary floor AND education | PSPN AND education |
Source: Own elaboration (2021).
From the theme National Professional Salary Floor, the key terms were delimited, which are Salary Floor and PSPN. The searches were carried out with the clipping from January 1, 2008 to January 1, 2021 in “advanced search” mode on the CAPES, Scielo, Google Scholar and Google Books portal. The terms OR and AND were then categorized as Boolean operators. The combination of the terms was performed in order to search the databases for the terms: Salary floor or PSPN, combining the search with the conceptual synonyms about teachers. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the prepositions “of” were removed for the purpose of refinement of the search.
After the search for literature, a database was created with all the articles, theses and books found. For the assembly of the database, repeated papers were disregarded, publications outside the period sampled and that were not published in Portuguese.
In order to expand knowledge about national literature, our bibliographic research was based on the search for national articles, monographs, theses, dissertations and books that addressed, in a contextualized way, the salary floor. This filter was elaborated from the title and abstract of scientific articles, theses, dissertations, monographs and books.
The most efficient descriptors were “salary and teaching floor”, “salary and professional education floor” and “salary floor and teacher”. The other, “salary floor and educator”, “salary floor and education worker”, “salary floor and education” returned, together, 12 results. In the end, the search totaled 60 bibliographic productions to be analyzed.
Among the search sources used, Google Scholar and Google Books returned with a higher volume of data. Therefore, the criterion of classification by relevance of the content followed by the selection of the first ten works that contemplated the criteria and objectives of this research was used. The time frame was from January 1, 2008 to January 1, 2021, justified by the date of start of the floor and lengthening until the period of changes in the FUNDEB Law.
We recognize the limitation of search criteria, although we understand that this is an effort to link research and discussions aligned with the progress of discussions on the national wage floor. International articles, news, productions that did not deal with salary floor in the Brazilian context or that approached it in a marginal way were not considered.
BRAZILIAN PRODUCTION AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS
Although the approaches and consolidation of policies of teacher appreciation have evolved for decades, it is from mid-2010 that the discussion in the area of salary floor and teacher remuneration gains greater body, which reflects the growth of publications, both in scientific journals and in specialized books.
A. Number of searches over the years
Over the years, discussions on the PSPN Law have been centralized in the implementation of the policy. When analyzing the productions over 13 years, we observed an increase in publications in the years 2016 and 2019, when compared to the other years of publications. There is an increase in 2016, whose possible correlation is municipal elections and the changes that could come from the new municipal administrations. Another possible rise in 2019 seems to coincide with the social movement and articulation on the National Fund for The Development of Education – FUNDEB, which had, until that moment, provisional character.
Figure 1 – Number of searches over the years
B. Publication types
In general, the predominant type of publication are articles and books, representing 86.7% of the total set of this survey. These studies were mostly driven by productions in the area of Education. Theses, dissertations and monographs had low representativeness in the total set of this survey in relation to articles and books.
Graph 2 – Publication types
C. Publishing area
The academic research in Brazil on the wage floor is centered in the area of education, reaching the rate of 80% (48 publications). Of the total number of publications on salary floor in the area of education, 32 are articles and 10 are books. Therefore, the production of articles and books prevails. In addition, the areas of Social Sciences and Political Sciences together represent 11.7% (7 publications).
Graph 3 – Publishing areas
Figure 4 – Publishing areas by publication type
D. Top publishing regions
Expanding the analysis of national academic production, we observed whether the places of publication of articles, books, etc. were regional or national.
Figure 5 – Publishing regions
The bibliographic search indicates the Southeast region of the country as one of the main places of publication. In addition to the national character, the Midwest, Northeast and South regions are also preponderant, in decreasing order.
E. Main places of study of publications
Figure 6 – Regions of study of publications
Specifically, analyzing the titles and abstracts of publications, we verified the trend of studies on the PSPN Law on a national level (63.3%). Regional analyses comprise about 36.7% of all publications. The Southeast region continues as the focus of many studies, and as we have identified, especially the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais stand out. Next, the Northeast Region emerges, representing 8% in the total set of publications, and it is worth mentioning the States of Bahia, Rio Grande do Norte and Piauí as the focus of analysis of regional studies on the wage floor.
Graph 7 – Publication study UF
F. Main authors
From the identification of articles, monographs, dissertations, theses and books, it was possible to raise the names of the authors who wrote them. It is worth mentioning that when the work had co-authorship, as in some specific books, the names of all were listed.
The authors were then listed and grouped to obtain the number of times that a given author published. To do so, we created a list with these authors and developed a cloud of words to visualize the most prominent ones. The word cloud emphasizes, in a directly proportional way, the frequency of appearance of words. Thus, we can observe that the ten authors with the highest number of publications are: Maria Dilnéia Espíndola Fernandes, Andréa Barbosa Gouveia, Márcia Aparecida Jacomini, Claudio Pinto Nunes, Eliara Cristina Nogueira da Silva Teixeira, Ana Paula Santiago do Nascimento, Andreza Barbosa, Áurea de Carvalho Costa and Dalila Andrade Oliveira. The ranking of the authors helps in the delimitation of the authors and the bibliography on the salary floor. We can see that the authorship is predominantly women.
Figure 1 – Main authors
THE NATIONAL PROFESSIONAL SALARY FLOOR AND TEACHER APPRECIATION: WHAT ACADEMICS SAY
The literature review has a qualitative and exploratory character and was produced to support the doctoral studies of this researcher on the implementation of Law 11.738/2008, which created the National Professional Salary Floor – PSPN. To contextualize the research, it is important that we know how the issue related to teacher remuneration has been addressed in academic productions. It is a research that initially had the sole purpose of contextualizing, situating the authors on the production and academic positions, but made it possible to compare the production of discourses in educational policy and the verification of their practical application in the academic world. For this work, we selected the ten articles of authors who produced the most on floor, teacher remuneration and compliance with the PSPN Law, between 2008 and 2021. These articles address teacher remuneration and their relationships with basic education funding funds.
After all, what do academics say about teacher pay, considering that there were almost two centuries of struggles for the National Professional Salary Floor?
On October 15, 1827, Dom Pedro I established, in art. 3 of the First Letters Schools Act, the first salary floor for the teacher, but this was never applied. Since the 1988 Constitution, trade union and academic discussions have gained increasingly pronounced contours. Few education experts disassociated the struggle for democratization of the struggle for free public school, with teachers with solid initial training and decent pay. On July 16, 2008, then-President Lula sanctioned Law 11,738/2008, which established the National Professional Salary Floor for basic public education professionals, establishing a value to be mandatorily adjusted each year and “below which the Union, the States, the Federal District and the Municipalities will not be able to fix the initial salary of the Careers of the public teaching of basic education, for the journey of a maximum of 40 (forty) hours per week” (BRASIL, 2008). Although the floor has been established by law since 2008, more than 10 years after its sanction in more than half of the municipalities, more than half of Brazilian municipalities violate the Floor Law, without any punishment.
There were two centuries of teachers’ struggles for the creation of the salary floor for the magisterium, but there were still attempts by some governors to prevent their sanction, which were fortunately frustrated.
During a consulting work done for UNESCO/MEC, we found that of 5,570 municipalities, only 30% complied with Law 11.738/2008 in full, that is, paying the initial floor, creating new career plans, ensuring 30% of the workload for studies and planning, in addition to ensuring solid initial training and entry by public tender. Therefore, we decided to study the implementation of the salary floor, and in the case of the doctoral[4] thesis that we are developing, especially about the state of Bahia, which is the 4th largest state of the Federation and the largest in the Brazilian Northeast. Initially, to support the studies of the thesis cited on the implementation of the floor in the 417 municipalities of Bahia, we sought a bibliographic research base that reached dozens of studies. For this article, we present the ten authors who produced the most on the subject in this period. In this context, the aim of this article is to present the development of this line of research, which we consider relevant. We highlight its central issues, its advances and limitations, in short, the state of the art of the literature on pspn.
Despite the dilemma that involves the influences of politics on public policies for teachers and for quality education, in a country of “restricted democracy”, as Florestan Fernandes pointed out (1987, p. 160), we insist on the search for questions that allow us to identify the place occupied by the appreciation of the teacher and education in the academic universe. To answer the question about the interest of the studies conducted on the implementation of the National Professional Salary Floor – PSPN and whether these indicate the repercussions of the salary floor for the valorization of the magisterium, in the period 2008-2021, we searched articles, monographs, dissertations and theses in the area of Social Sciences or the Area of Education.
In the last forty years, more important authors, although few, have been engaged in the analysis of the statutes, programs, and practices of managers and seeking to understand the influence of political parties in explaining the variations in the results of government actions in the area of education. In this period, undoubtedly, studies on education practices and policies come including the teacher, previously almost invisible. Proof of this were the chapters in the Federal Constitution and State Constitutions that highlight the appreciation of the teacher; the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education; the definition of the National Guidelines for Teacher Training; the National Education Plans of Brazil – PNE (2011-2020) and PNE (2014-2024) and Law 11.738/2008, which created the salary floor, documents for which the quality of education and the appreciation of teachers constitute real challenges. In the new National Education Plan of Brazil – PNE (2014-2024), of the 20 goals outlined, 4 concern the teacher, although the National Education Plans have been put aside by the rulers at the federal, state and municipal spheres, and are being transformed into mere protocols of intentions.
Next, we move on to the research of the academics on the PSPN, on its implementation, remuneration and appreciation of the magisterium.
In the last decade, Unesco has published two outstanding works: Professores do Brasil: impasses e desafios (2009), by Bernadette Angelina Gatti and Elba Siqueira de Sá Barretto, and Políticas Docentes – um estado da arte (2011), by Bernadette Angelina Gatti, Elba Siqueira de Sá Barretto and Marli Eliza Dalmazo Afonso de André. These studies provide an X-ray of education workers. Professores do Brasil: impasses e desafios (2009) shows the scale of the challenge that is the valuation of teachers and highlights that “teachers are among the most numerous occupational groups”. And there are still “the challenges of overcoming political conveniences and adopting articulated strategies between the different educational bodies”. In conclusion, the authors use the word “plot”, which is a theoretical challenge and is within the scope of our work. In 1992, we published a monograph entitled “A trama da ignorância” (LIMA, 1996), in which we analyzed the discourses of Brazilian authorities about the teacher, in the Empire and in the Republic, confronting them with the effective policies of valuing the teacher. In 2011, researchers Bernadette Angelina Gatti, Elba Siqueira de Sá Barretto and Marli Eliza Dalmazo Afonso de André published the study on Políticas Docentes no Brasil – um estado da arte, published by UNESCO and with a wide scope. In this study, the authors map and analyze the teaching policies applied in different federative spheres – Union, States and Municipalities – and place at the center of the discussion the initial and continuing education of teachers, the teaching career and the evaluation of teachers. In the conclusions, they speak of the diversity of proposals for teacher appreciation, but they do not refer to the full implementation or not of Law 11.738/2008, which created the National Professional Salary Floor – PSPN –. And they warn:
Se não houver aderência das propostas às políticas próprias dos estados e dos municípios, no caso das políticas federais, e destes últimos, no caso das políticas estaduais que a eles se estendem, ficam comprometidas a possibilidade de desenvolvimento profissional dos docentes e a sustentação das conquistas adquiridas (GATTI; BARRETO; ANDRÉ, 2011, p. 266).
The academic debate on career and teaching remuneration was the subject of research by the authors Rubens Barbosa de Camargo, Andréa Barbosa Gouveia, Juca Gil and Maria Angélica Pedra Minhoto (2009). In this research, the authors analyze the relationships between fundef results based on economic indicators and teacher remuneration, having as parameters the legal references on the National Professional Salary Floor. For this, the authors used “national economic indicators, teacher salaries in state networks and fundef student-year values”. And they concluded that wage variations are related to each of the states, presenting a positive inflection towards recomposing wages, above inflation. They highlight the “need for further studies to understand the dynamics of remuneration”. On the need for further studies to support the fixing of the wage floor, it is worth questioning whether the experts forgot that the masters waited two centuries to conquer the wage floor established in law, for the whole country.
For the authors, “teacher remuneration, in addition to having to be better ‘deciphered’, to provide adequate support to the conception of a PSPN, because it is determined by factors (external and internal) involving different interests” (CAMARGO et al., 2009). All this “to expose its greatest explanatory dimension, revealing it as a concrete expression of a relationship of forces in dispute of projects of society, of school, of man, of valorization of teaching: in short, as a political struggle” (CAMARGO et al., 2009, p. 360). What interests are those that move to non-application of the Law that instituted the wage floor? Would the disputes about which Florestan Fernandes, among right-wing or left-wing skeptics who help little, almost always sabotage education in Brazil, be expressed here?
In a 2010 article, Santiago do Nascimento, Amorim and Camargo (2010) analyzed the remuneration of teachers in the state network of São Paulo at the beginning of their career and highlighted their composition based on the document of the State Department of Education entitled Sistema de Informações Educacionais – Boletim de Acompanhamento de Pessoal (November 2010). With this, they were able to verify the evolution of the adjustments of payments received by teachers, in the period between 1996 and 2010.
Santiago do Nascimento, Amorim and Camargo (2010) found that “remuneration was composed of different bonuses that represented more than 35% of the total”. And that, in relation to the minimum wage, the remuneration suffered a flattening, from 3.6 in 1996 to 2.4 in 2010. The authors intend to contribute to the discussions on teacher remuneration in Brazil by analyzing the periods by management, governors and/or secretaries of education. In the management of Governor Mário Covas, the remuneration of PEB I professionals went from R$ 360.94 in 1996 to R$ 710.00 in 2000 and 2001, in nominal values. Comparing these values, we noticed that remuneration grew 96.71% in five years.
Under Alckmin, the remuneration of PEB I professionals went from R$ 710.00 in 2001 to R$ 1,144.39 in 2005 (NASCIMENTO; AMORIM; CAMARGO, 2010). The increase was 61.18% in four years. The maturity went from R$ 610.00 to R$ 726.19. During this period, the highest percentage of bonuses was paid, with bonuses reaching 36.5% of teachers’ remuneration.
During the period of José Serra’s government, the initial payments of PEB I teachers went from R$ 1,144.39 in 2008 to R$ 1,198.16 in 2010, in nominal values. Analyzing the salaries (R$ 726.19 and R$ 981.88), we noticed an increase of 35.21%. The representativeness of bonuses in the Serra government increased from 36.5% in 2008 to 18.1% in 2010. This means that this government had a policy of incorporating the bonuses in the salary, but with possible real loss of purchasing power, according to the relationship with the minimum wage. The representativeness of bonuses in the Serra government increased from 35.5% in 2008 to 17.4% in 2010.
Thus, the authors conclude that throughout the period studied, when taken as an indicator of the minimum wage (or the necessary salary of Dieese), a strong oscillation was perceived. However, when we consider the years 1996 and 2010, we noticed that there were fewer minimum wages, either in salary or initial remuneration, indicating a flattening in the earnings of teachers from São Paulo.
When it comes to teacher appreciation policy, tensions are high. In an article published by Maria Dilnéia Espíndola Fernandes and Margarita Victoria, with the title “O processo de elaboração da Lei nº 11.738/2008, Lei do Piso Salarial Profissional Nacional para carreira e remuneração docente: trajetória, disputas e tensões”, the authors rescue the recent trajectory of the construction of the National Professional Salary Floor Law (PSPN) for the career and teacher remuneration in Brazil, in the context of the reforms of the Brazilian state. They examined federal law, federal and union documents, and literature on the subject. They highlighted one of the most important political confrontations in the construction of Brazilian federative relations at that historical moment, which was a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (Adin) against Law No. 11,738/2008, filed by governors of the states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and Ceará. In the Direct Action of Unconstitutionality, the governors questioned the national salary floor of public elementary school teachers, established by Federal Law 11.738/2008, discussing the scope of the expression “floor” (art. 2, caput and § 1º); the limitation to the amount paid as initial basic salary of the career or extension to the overall salary; and the setting of workload. And they alleged the violation of the reserve law of initiative of the Chief Executive to dispose of the legal regime of the public servant (art. 61, § 1, ii, c of the constitution); contrary to the federative pact (art. 60, § 4 and item of the constitution); non-observance of the proportionality rule: the working day and the salary established by the law. The authors understood “that PSPN is implanted in terms of conception”. With the Supreme Federal Court, the highest legal body in the country, having approved Law No. 11,738/2008 (BRASIL, 2008a), the legal dispute was resolved, giving cause gain to teachers, ensuring them career plans for public teaching, professional salary floor and allocation of 30% of the workload for studies and planning, in addition to entering the career exclusively by public competition of tests and titles. On December 17, 2008, in the vote of Minister Joaquim Barbosa it was written that “it is not believable to assume that the federated states oppose the reduction of regional inequalities, with the improvement of the conditions under which public education services are provided”. The implementation of the floor in the various subnational units has shown how difficult it is to overcome the localisms of the Brazilian cultural tradition in the historical construction of federalism. For them, the material viability of the PSPN will also depend on a lot of effort on the part of basic education teachers, as well as possible alignments in political relations around the federation model in force. The national scenario presents very different situations in dealing with the wage issue of basic education professionals. What is in common among the federated units on teacher salaries is the low salary of the teacher.
The specialist Dalila Andrade (2013) published the study entitled “As políticas de formação e a crise da profissionalização docente: por onde passa a valorização”, in which she analyzes the teacher’s education and the relationship with professionalization. In the article, the author seeks to understand what are the factors that determine the improvement of education. She criticizes “certain approaches that place the teacher as the main responsible for the educational task and, consequently, for its results, shifting the focus of the structures and social relations that involve the school context” (ANDRADE, 2013, p. 51).
For Andrade (2013, p. 51), “the institution of the National Professional Salary Floor Law and the creation of PARFOR are some of the policies oriented towards greater teacher appreciation”. In this research, the author “seeks to discuss some correlations between initial education and continuing education with remuneration, in an attempt to highlight their relationships for greater teacher appreciation” (ANDRADE, 2013, p. 51). And it concludes that the current educational policies aim to meet the demands for greater teacher appreciation. After LDB 9394/96, teachers’ education level has been increasing significantly. Nevertheless, the legislation was amended allowing the teacher with a high school education to become, in some federal entities, a rule and not an exception. In this the author observes a setback in the legal plan. She concludes, with some apprehension, showing concern about a departure from the pillars of policies: career; working conditions and remuneration, with a possible shift “to a model of responsibility of teachers for their education, especially the continued, as a form of individual and professional growth” (ANDRADE, 2013, p. 69). “There is a general feeling that the teaching profession suffers a process of devaluation” (ANDRADE, 2013, p. 51). The analysis of the research data showed that the correlation between higher initial education (titration) and remuneration is safe. Unlike continuing education, which does not present a safe correlation. This proposes to rethink continuing education policies. The author points out that facing the crisis of the teaching career requires effective measures to strengthen the career, both in the forms of entry and in the permanence of the teacher, in the career, which presupposes working conditions and remuneration.
We see that current educational policies should seek an articulation between training policies and conditions of professionalization, giving greater weight to solid initial training in the definition and certification of the profession. Former Education Minister Rossieli Soares, of the government of President Michel Temer, presented, in the Federal Senate, on May 15, 2018, a document entitled “Panorama da Educação Brasileira”. In the document, the MEC declared 57 million enrollments in the public network, but denounced the very low quality of public education, pointing among the causes the high percentage of teachers with inadequate training, ranging from 30% to 40%. And half the math teachers had no training in the field. The former minister also reported that 80% of basic education teachers are formed in private institutions. In pedagogy courses, of the 690,780 enrollments, 80% of these are in the private network. According to Rossieli, Federal Universities need to understand that teacher training is a national development strategy.
The researcher Maria Dilnéia Espíndola Fernandes (2013), in the article “A valorização dos profissionais da educação básica no contexto das relações federativo brasileiro”, analyzes, from legal and legal instruments, the valorization of basic education professionals through the implementation of Fundeb and the National Professional Salary Floor (PSPN) in the context of Brazilian federative relations. After conducting a documentary research and reviewing the literature on the subject, a. The author found that in Brazilian federative relations, educational policies could contribute to federative collaboration regarding the reduction of social inequalities. The author concluded that “the exercise of local power is still often a hindrance to federative coordination with regard to educational policy” and this “would determine the strong inducing power of the Union in front, among other situations, of the implementation of the PSPN” (FERNANDES, 2013).
In 2016, Andreza Barbosa and Maria José da Silva Fernandes, in the article entitled “Piso Salarial em São Paulo: desvalorização dos professores”, published in the magazine Retratos da Escola, discussed the current situation of salaries and working hours of teachers in the state public network in the State of São Paulo to verify the adequacy to Law No. 11,738, 2008, which created the salary floor of the magisterium. The authors identified several evidences revealing “that the state government systematically circumvents federal legislation, according to the teachers’ working hours to the floor law, and paying, that year, remuneration below the legally established, which increases the devaluation of teachers” (BARBOSA; FERNANDES, 2016, p . 243).
The research paper entitled “Financiamento da Educação e Luta Sindical: conflitos em uma grande rede de ensino”, by Andréa Barbosa Gouveia and Marcos Alexandre dos Santos Ferraz, focusing on the impact of the national professional wage floor law on the disputes of teachers in Curitiba with the manager of the local school network, analyzed the agendas of claims of the Teachers’ Union between 2008 and 2012. The authors focused their focus on items related to floor and remuneration and implementation of 1/3 hour activity. It was possible to observe different ways of vocalizing the demands of the floor and different concrete impacts on the remuneration. At certain times, causing flattening of the career and, in others, flattening of the floor itself. As for the hour activity, this ceases to be a claim of work organization and assumes the characteristic of a fair right. The authors concluded that the way the agendas of claims were constructed changed after the readjustment of the floor – and that, from 2012, “after changing the way of explaining the claim of the floor, the adjustment index begins to focus on the entire salary table, without distinction. Thus, the flattening effect of the career is contained” – and that the implementation of 1/3 hour activity becomes an important theme, striking in the claims. In the agendas prior to 2011, activity time was limited to being an agenda of monitoring compliance with the municipal legislation already in force. Until 2011, the demands for salary adjustment followed the logic of summing a set of percentage indices – period inflation index, real gain index, historical loss index. And until 2011, the adjustment of level 1 of the career (i.e. the floor) always behaved differently from other levels. That is, the floor for the graduate teacher is higher than what occurs in the other points of the salary table (exception made to the year 2010). This means that there has been appreciation of the floor, but with flattening of the career. The interesting aspect is that in the sum of the years 2009, 2010 and 2011, the level 1 of the career has a higher adjustment than the adjustment of the national floor in the same period. As of 2012, this concept of summing multiple indexes is replaced by a single floor face value. The effect of these two distinct strategies is different when observing the final outcome of the negotiations. The authors also conclude that the agenda gains the dimension of claiming a right prescribed by law and conclude by stating: “the specific case of the Municipal Network of Curitiba and SISMMAC shows that teachers are in continuous evaluation of its effects, as well as reevaluating their own tactics and strategies of struggles to be able to enjoy a right that Brazilian society has granted them as fair” (GOUVEIA; FERRAZ, 2016).
One of the most intriguing articles was published in 2016 in the journal Pro-posições, with the title “Análise da carreira docente e valorização do magistério: condições de trabalho e desenvolvimento profissional”, authored by two academics who are on the list of the ten authors who published the most about the valorization of the magisterium, Márcia Aparecida Jacomini and Marieta Gouvêa de Oliveira Penna. The authors addressed several aspects related to the working conditions of basic education teachers in Brazil and their professional development, using data from the research “Remuneração de professores de escolas públicas de educação básica: configurações, impasses, impactos e perspectivas”, carried out in 12 Brazilian states and their capitals. After analyzing career plans, verifying the training required for admission, working hours, incentives for continuing education and career progression, the authors state that “despite the importance of teachers for the promotion of quality education, several problems still need to be addressed in order to ensure effective working conditions for teachers” (JACOMINI; PENNA, 2016). The authors conclude the article by citing a research on teaching status in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay, by Emílio Fanfani (2007, apud JACOMINI; PENNA, 2016), in which it points out that
toda política docente deve ser integral. Isto quer dizer que deve contemplar intervenções articuladas em pelo menos três dimensões: o recrutamento e a formação inicial e permanente, as condições de trabalho (divisão do trabalho pedagógico, carreira, contexto institucional, de trabalho, etc. e o sistema de estímulo e recompensa s materiais e simbólicas (salário e reconhecimento social).
In another paragraph of the final considerations, the aforementioned authors conclude that “research presented in Brazil on the teacher’s working conditions indicates political and social devaluation of teaching structuring such professional practice”. And they affirm, without entering into the merits, that “the teacher must have the salary in line with the value and importance that these professionals have in contemporary society”. Research indicates teacher devaluation with contemporary society and that to change this situation, it is necessary to recognize and value society.
The analysis of “Intencionalidades das políticas de valorização docente que foram efetivadas nos governos FHC e LULA, a partir das políticas de Fundos (Fundef e Fundeb)” was the subject of a study published by Teixeira and Nunes (2016). In this article, the authors examine the salary and career issue of basic education teachers through the analysis of the place occupied by the National Professional Salary Floor (PSPN) in the agendas of the FHC and Lula governments. They also verified whether the policies applied by these governments contributed to the wage improvement of Brazilian teachers. And they conclude that the national wage floor as a measure of valorization of the magisterium received different approaches in the FHC and Lula governments. The Fundef, in the FHC government, although it caused an improvement in the salaries of educators, resented “a national reference for the beginning of a career, which caused this Fund not to achieve its objective of valuing the teaching of basic education”. On the other hand, Fundeb, in Lula’s government, in addition to maintaining a minimum of 60% of the resources for teachers’ payment, instituted the one-year period for the creation of the Salary Floor in a specific law, which culminated in Law No. 11,738/2008, which established the implementation of the Position Plan (TEIXEIRA; NUNES, 2016, p. 252).
In an article by Robson da Silva Rodrigues and Áurea de Carvalho Costa (2019) entitled “Da Constituição Federal de 1988 ao Plano Nacional de Educação 2014-2024: ardilosas apropriações da noção de valorização do trabalho docente”, the authors conclude that the policies implemented between 1988 and 2014 promoted the devaluation of the magisterium. The research had as theoretical reference the historical-dialectical materialism. The authors say that by observing the educational activity in daily practices, “those who implement educational practice contradict the educational policies that claimed to aim at valuing teachers. This contradiction stems from the application of notions of valorization emptied of axiological meaning.” In these cases, as well as state legislation, “the recognition of the value of the teacher is related to external prescriptions on their work and that result in rewards in the form of remuneration, benefits and career progression, linked to the culture of performance” (RODRIGUES; CARVALHO, 2019, p. 231).
In a study conducted by Andréa Barbosa Gouveia and Maria Dilneia Espíndola Fernandes (2019), based on data reported by the Annual Social Information List (RAIS, 2016) on salaries of teachers in the states of Mato Grosso do Sul and Paraná, it was demonstrated that the implementation and maintenance of the National Professional Salary Floor had been due to induction of the Federal Government and consequent union action. The teaching union agenda incorporated the defense of the principle of professional valorization and built the need for a National Professional Salary Floor (PSPN) as a structuring element. The national regulation of pspn occurred in 2008; however, due to the Brazilian federative pact, compliance with the legislation depends on local governments. This implied a broad mobilization of the teaching unions so that the definition of remuneration would incorporate the national rule. For the authors, “the scenario of institutional crisis installed in 2015, followed by a restrictive economic agenda for social rights, has put at risk the set of hard-won conditions for the valorization of teachers” (GOUVEIA; FERNANDES, 2019, p. 89).
In a research conducted at the Municipal Education Network of Belo Horizonte – RMEBH, the specialists Francilene Macedo Rocha and Savana Diniz Gomes concluded that “the law of PSPN, unlike the valorization of the magisterium that recommended, induced a lowering in the remuneration and restriction of the horizon of teachers’ struggles for the unique career of teachers of RMEBH, conquered in 1996” (ROCHA; MELO, 2019, p. 3). For the authors, with the policy of National Professional Salary Floor there was a process of precariousness of teaching work in RMEBH, from the segmentation of the teaching career in elementary school teacher and teacher for early childhood education, which broke the logic of the unique career of the teachers of RMEBH. This article presents a discussion about the changes in the career and remuneration of teachers of the municipal education network of Belo Horizonte (RMEBH) from 2003, with the creation of the position of child educator (EI), and from 2008 onwards, with the establishment of the national professional wage floor law (PSPN). The period surveyed was from 2003 to 2016. For the analysis, the researchers had as theoretical reference classical critical authors, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and contemporaries, such as Oder dos Santos, João Bernardo and Ricardo Antunes, among others. They were based on bibliography of the area, on documentary research focusing on national and municipal laws on career and remuneration and publications of the Union of Education Workers of the Municipal Public Network of Belo Horizonte (Sind-REDE/BH).
The article “Remuneração docente: efeitos do Plano de Cargos, Carreira e Remuneração em contexto municipal”, by Maria Dilnéia Espíndola Fernandes, Solange Jarcem Fernandes and Viviane Gregório de Campos (2016), published in the journal Ensaio: Avaliação e Políticas Públicas, was prepared from a case study. In this study, the authors sought to verify the effect produced by the Job, Career and Remuneration Plans (PCCR) implemented in the municipality of Campo Grande, in the period from 1996 to 2016, in terms of salary remuneration for a teacher over 20 years of career. The analysis of the evolution of the teacher’s remuneration was made from the examination of their holerites, compared with the PCCR and the minimum wage. The authors found that there was a positive impact on the remuneration of the teaching profession, with the mandatory municipal PCCR, and that the degree and working time were important for the teacher’s valorization. However, the full payment of the PSPN (National Professional Salary Floor) remained, however, history in the municipality, which should also be guaranteed through the PCCR.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS
The collection of articles on the relevance of studies regarding the full implementation of the National Professional Salary Floor – PSPN for basic education professionals corroborate, to some extent, the results. With regard to the devaluation of the teacher and the understanding of the meaning of evaluating the repercussions of PSPN on its valorization, the conclusions confirm the studies that consider institutional models, social demands, forms of government, party policies and political-ideological spectrums as influencers of results, although these are not the only causes. More important than the formal characteristics of state and social institutions is how an institutional configuration influences political relations.
The redemocratization of the country, the construction of a set of laws and the observation of the functioning of the institutions transformed the study of public policies. This is evident when we identify the formal or formal institutional variables in the analysis of the determining factors of educational policies, such as the behavior of the judiciary; the observation of the federative structure, with its obstacles; localisms as opposed to the federative collaboration policy; and interest groups and clashes of political-ideological positions that sabotage educational policies. Similarly, the institutional issue serves to identify similarities between the units of analysis, enabling the focus only on the variation of other desired characteristics, such as parties, elections and socioeconomic conditions of federative entities.
We observed a significant number of states and municipalities that apply PSPN according to their interests and social demands, often in default of the law. In summary, the complexity of party policies imposed on us the need to create a variety of models and theories to analyze their processes and results, as was clear in the discussions of each article. Such analytical strategies, in different measures, complement each other and, at the same time, corroborate the joint and comprehensive development of this field of research on public policies for education, particularly on the correlation between quality education and teacher appreciation.
g. Main topics covered
The bibliographic search included the extraction of abstracts of the texts and especially the keywords of the articles, monographs, dissertations and theses. When the books were analyzed, the main topics of bibliographic indexing were removed. By agglutinating all the topics covered, we generate the frequency of each keyword.
The following word cloud allows you to rank themes on six more relevant subjects. They are: educational policy, teaching work, salary floor, national professional salary floor, valorization of teaching and teacher remuneration, which suggest a great correlation with the object of study of this work.
Figure 2 – Main keywords
In which so many words of the cloud weigh that exalt educational policy, teaching work, salary floor, national professional salary floor, appreciation of teaching and teacher remuneration, these words do not seem to keep the correlation expected in academic production. This is because they do not produce greater impacts on the production of a significant number of master’s dissertations and doctoral theses, and these studies are concentrated in articles, or in bibliographic indexations of books.
In the experience of more than forty years of militancy in the classroom of primary, middle and higher education – as a union leader in the state of Bahia, vice president of the National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE), state deputy from 1991 to 1999, legislative consultant in the House of Representatives (1999 to 2003), Special Advisor to the Minister of Education (2003-2004), Special Advisor to the Presidency of INEP and Assistant Secretary of Professional Education of MEC – this researcher has empirically met the tibieza of many education experts and educational authorities, when it comes to defending decent salaries for the teacher. He also knew the impacts of this conception so ingrained in the cultural tradition of Brazil in the little significant academic production on salary payment, as if this were a minor theme.
In these four decades of militancy in education, this author met two renowned Brazilian intellectuals who advocated decent remuneration for the teacher, with dismay: the sociologist Florestan Fernandes and the philosopher Luiz Felipe Pondé. Florestan (1989, p. 58) considered “the salary deduction of the first-degree teacher the most deleterious of all”. And Florestan concluded: “few countries reduce the first-degree teacher to a condition as close to relative misery as Brazil.” For him, “the same is true of the high school teacher, exposed to a condition of insecurity and low pay without parallel. These degrees of education are pillars of schooleducation.” And Felipe Pondé interviewed by journalist Thais Oyama, in the Program Linhas Cruzadas of the Padre Anchieta Foundation (21/10/2021) denounced that “treating the profession of the teacher and education as an idealized theme, as a priesthood, is a strategy to keep the teacher poor and happy”. The philosopher points out that “it is necessary to say this, because in Brazil the teacher’s working condition ends the life of anyone. Teachers’ salaries are among the worst in the world” (PONDÉ, 2021).
Pondé stresses that “this treatment produces discouraged people; people who suffer a lot to work; people who do not have much horizon” (PONDÉ, 2021). Therefore, as good as being in the cloud of ranked words, this should be a central theme in master’s dissertations and doctoral theses, not only in the area of education, but especially in the area of Public Law. After all, not complying with the Floor Law is an uninsurable transgression of the law; should be the subject of master’s and doctorate studies in social and political sciences, since this calls into question the National Education Policy, the Federal Constitution and the Law of the National Education Plan, enshrined by votes in the National Congress. It should be noted that not complying with the Floor Law represents a dismantling of the Educational Policy, since 4 (four) of the 20 goals of the current PNE relate to the valorization of the magisterium. Moreover, this calls into question party programmes, providing a real disservice to democracy.
The magic words used to inhibit discussions, claims, and academic studies on teacher’s salary are: priesthood and corporatism. These strategies have been working secularly.
Therefore, this result of such expressive words, in the cloud – in which salary floor, teaching work, educational policy, national salary floor, national salary floor, valorization of teaching, remuneration – is not articulated with the results of searches on the numbers and types of publication extracted from the abstracts of the texts, the keywords of the articles, monographs, dissertations and theses and books, from which the main topics of bibliographic indexing were removed.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
When we arrive at this last part of the study, we elaborated reflections and conclusions about the Political Parties and the implementation of the national professional wage floor in the municipalities – discourse and practice. A considerable path was taken in search of the construction of a theoretical framework that would allow not only to expose the reality of teachers regarding the implementation of Law No. 11,738/2008, known as the National Professional Wage Floor Law – PSPN in its entirety, within a small time frame (2008-2018). We also seek to expose the contradiction between the discourses of politicians who include in the statutes and party programs the defense of the magisterium and the contrast of their practices in the exercise of power. The contradiction is configured between the grandilohot discourses of appreciation of the teacher and the practices, often demeaning.
In no historical period, as in recent decades, the teacher’s role has received so much emphasis on debates about national systems and educational policies and by different actors, both public and private, and national, international and multilateral organizations.
The research demonstrates the trajectory of mismatches, fights, defeats and victories that preceded the discussion and approval of Law No. 11,738/2008. Likewise, it would not be possible only to relate the parties to compliance with the law, without demonstrating the intricate Brazilian party political system, since its origins.
The relevance of this research work is shown to evaluate the results of policies for teaching and for the increase of the quality of education, especially in the last decade. It is worth noting that the National Education Plan has four of its twenty goals directly related to the valorization of the magisterium. And two others, which have indirect repercussions.
In this perspective, the choice of this theme represented the possibility of evaluating the public management of education and the confrontation of discourses and party practices. In this sense, it was possible to verify the effective application of the policy of valorization of the magisterium from a tool created by the MEC with the objective of making available to the municipalities instruments for information, monitoring, evaluation and monitoring of policies to improve the quality of education: the Plan of Articulated Actions – PAR / MEC.
A first conclusion is that, despite so many discussions and emphasis on valuation policies, notably the creation of a law establishing the minimum salary for teachers, the effective valuation of the teacher is far from being achieved.
The analysis in 417 municipalities in the State of Bahia, carried out for research purposes aimed at the elaboration of this author’s thesis[5], allowed us to gather total data from the largest of the States of the Northeast of Brazil on the Implementation of the Salary Floor of the Magisterium of Bahia, correlating them to the Political Parties ahead of the municipalities. Of the 417 municipalities surveyed, including those without a party, only 146 (35%) fully comply with Law 11,738/2008; and of the remaining 271, there are 30 (7.1%) who did not give any information. Thus, it can be affirmed that 241 (57.7%) municipalities do not fully comply with the National Professional Salary Floor Law.
Although 180 municipalities in Bahia claim that they pay the value of the PSPN, this does not mean full compliance with the Law, which only has its full legal effect if it is articulated to the Salary Floor, to the definition of at least 33% of the work as hours activity (HA), and the guarantee of the Career Plan. It is noteworthy the existence of a single municipality that declares not to have a Career Plan, not to comply with HA and not to pay the PSPN.
A second important conclusion, and the figures show this, is that only 35% of bahian municipalities comply with the National Professional Salary Level Law of Education Professionals – PSPN, and almost 60%, more than half of bahian municipalities, do not fully comply with Law 11.738/2008, after 10 years of its sanction.
Possibly, the non-payment of the floor justifies because the majority of the teachers interviewed want to create a national career for the teaching, complaining about a new law. The result of the sample research in 38 municipalities made it possible to confront and corroborate the entire documentary survey, as well as bring the reality of professionals who also work in union bodies, essential in the struggles for the realization of the PSPN. We noticed, in the statements of the union teachers, even with some differences, the understanding that a policy of valorization that encompasses compliance with the floor, adequate working conditions and initial and continued training, would be fundamental for the category. Likewise, the National Career would make it possible to overcome the difficulties generated by the decentralized autonomy enjoyed by federal entities, due to the absence of a National Articulated System of Education.
Another important conclusion of the research is that the differences between the various parties are not significant when we examine references to teachers in party programs. Of the 32 parties that include education among the topics covered in their Programs, only 12 (34.2%) make some reference to teachers. Seeking those who cite “valorization, working conditions, salary and training”, there are 10 partisan acronyms in the following distribution: 2 left, 3 center and 3 right. There are few important differences between the right-wing parties, the center parties, the center-left and left parties when it comes to speeches in party programs and the effective implementation of Law 11,738/2008. This is an unexpected result, since the center-left and left parties have always been at the forefront of union and parliamentary struggles in defending the National Professional Salary Floor of the Magisterium.
In the work of Florestan Fernandes (1979), we seek to understand the reason for this little important difference between right, center and left parties, when it comes to the appreciation of the teacher. In this case, regarding the application of permanent policies of valorization of the magisterium and the reason for the non-application of the Law of the Salary Floor of the Magisterium by the Political Parties, including those who have in their programs the valorization of the teacher and speak about it as a decisive factor for the quality of education, which explains so many contradictions between the discourses and practices of Political Parties when it comes to the effective valorization of the teacher?
For the sociologist, founder of Brazilian educational sociology, constituent deputy of the Partido dos Trabalhadores Florestan Fernandes, we had about the teacher a puzzle to be deciphered, which consisted of the tradition of objectification and cultural brutalization of teachers, proper to Brazilian culture. After quoting Marx’s writings from 1844, Fernandes adds that in a comparison of the teacher with the proletarian, it is possible to affirm that the teacher was and is still objectified in Brazilian society. Conduit, he’s an intellectual worker who doesn’t just work with his hands. The challenge is, as he says, to seek an understanding of this cultural brutalization, which has been going on for so long, and which is even heavier when it comes to teachers who are dedicated to the teaching of children, or primary teachers (FERNANDES, 1979).
The sociologist states, here and there, that lay and literate members of the dominant social layers are both pessimistic about the effectiveness of Brazilian institutions and indifferent to the functioning of schools and with teaching and student work (FERNANDES, 1979). Florestan also denounces a deep distrust of the elite in relation to the intellectual. For him, Brazilian society is strongly unequal and very hierarchical. If in the Empire, the democracy of the lords prevailed, in the Republic the democracy of the oligarchs prevailed. Brazilian democracy is limited and a civic culture is dispensed with, since only a privileged minority has access to wealth, power and knowledge (FERNANDES, 1989).
Thus, we conclude that in Brazil, cultural tradition and skepticism seem to be the causes of teacher devaluation and disbelief of the transforming power of education.According to Florestan, skepticism or dogmatism regarding the role of the school means nothing in the dynamics of social transformations. As a reinforcement to these words, the educator Dermeval Saviani (1987) warns of the need for the leaders of popular movements to overcome the view of the school as a mere instrument of bourgeois domination, which only arouses the interest of the population for its ability to promote social ascension. At this point can be found the answer to the almost insignificant difference between the right, center and left parties, when it comes to the application of the Salary Floor of Education Professionals, which is not restricted to remuneration, but to career, working hours, training and valorization of teaching and consequent improvement of the quality of education.
REFERENCES
BARBOSA, Andreza; FERNANDES, Maria José da Silva Fernandes. O Piso Salarial em São Paulo: desvalorização dos professores. Retratos da Escola, Brasília, DF, v. 10, n. 18, p. 243-257, jan./jun. 2016.
CAMARGO, Rubens Barbosa de; GOUVEIA, Andréa Barbosa; GIL, Juca; MINHOTO, Maria Angélica Pedra. Financiamento da educação e remuneração docente: um começo de conversa em tempos de piso salarial. Revista Brasileira de Política e Administração da Educação – RBPAE, v. 25, n. 2, p. 341-363, mai./ago. 2009.
FERNANDES, Florestan. O dilema educacional brasileiro. In: PEREIRA, Luiz; FORACCHI, Marialice M. (Orgs.). Educação e sociedade: leituras de sociologia da educação. 10. ed. São Paulo: Nacional, 1979.
FERNANDES, Florestan. O dilema educacional. São Paulo: Cortez; Autores Associados, 1989.
FERNANDES, Maria Dilnéia Espíndola; FERNANDES, Solange Jarcem; CAMPOS, Viviane Gregório de. Remuneração docente: efeitos do Plano de Cargos, Carreira e Remuneração em contexto municipal. Ensaio: Avaliação e Políticas Públicas em Educação, Rio de Janeiro, v. 28, n. 106, p. 25-44, jan./mar. 2020.
FERNANDES, Maria Dilnéia Espíndola; RODRIGUEZ, Margarita Victoria. O processo de elaboração da Lei nº 11.738/2008, Lei do Piso Salarial Profissional Nacional para carreira e remuneração docente: trajetória, disputas e tensões. Revista HISTEDBR On-line, v. 41, p. 88-101, 2011. Disponível em: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/histedbr/article/ view/8639837. Acesso em: 26 set. 2021.
GATTI, Bernardete Angelina; BARRETTO, Elba Siqueira de Sá; ANDRÉ, Marli Eliza Dalmazo de Afonso. Políticas docentes: um estudo da arte. Brasília: Unesco, 2011.
GATTI, Elba Siqueira de Sá Barreto. Professores do Brasil: impasses e desafios. Brasília: Unesco, 2009.
GOUVEIA, Andréa Barbosa Gouveia; FERRAZ, Marcos Alexandre dos Santos. Financiamento da educação e luta sindical: conflitos em uma grande rede de ensino. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, v. 37, n. 134, p. 285-302, jan.-mar. 2016. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/es/a/mvMXV3kDKSmkqbWBq3SvQLL/?lang=pt. Acesso em: 26 set. 2021.
GOUVEIA, Andréa Barbosa; FERNANDES, Maria Dilneia Espíndola. Agenda Sindical de Professores da Educação Básica: desafios postos a partir do Piso Salarial Profissional Nacional. Práxis Educativa, Ponta Grossa, v. 14, n. 1, p. 84-98, jan./abr. 2019. Disponível em: http://www.revistas2.uepg.br/index.php/praxiseducativa. Acesso em: 26 set. 2021.
JACOMINI; Márcia Aparecida; PENNA, Marieta Gouvêa de Oliveira Penna. Carreira docente e valorização do magistério: condições de trabalho e desenvolvimento profissional. Pro-posições, v. 27, n. 2, p. 177-202, maio/ago. 2016.
LIMA, Maria José Rocha. A trama da ignorância e outros escritos. Salvador: BDA, 1996.
NASCIMENTO, Ana Paula Santiago do; AMORIM, Renata Rodrigues de; CAMARGO, Rubens Barbosa de. Composição salarial dos docentes da Rede Estadual Paulista: uma análise a partir do Boletim de Acompanhamento de Pessoal da SEE/SP, 1996/2010. Fineduca – Revista de Financiamento da Educação, Porto Alegre, v. 4, n. 7, 2014.
OLIVEIRA, Dalila Andrade. As políticas de formação e a crise da profissionalização docente: por onde passa a valorização? Educação em Questão, Natal, v. 46, n. 32, p. 51-74, 2013.
RODRIGUES, Robson da Silva; COSTA, Áurea de Carvalho. Da Constituição Federal de 1988 ao Plano Nacional de Educação 2014-2024: ardilosas apropriações da noção de valorização do trabalho docente. Política & Trabalho – Revista de Ciências Sociais, n. 50, p. 231-248, jan./jun. 2019.
TEIXEIRA, Eliara Cristina Nogueira da Silva; NUNES, Cláudio Pinto Nunes. O piso salarial como insumo da valorização docente nos governos de FHC e Lula: da Política de Fundos à Lei do Piso. Práxis Educacional, v. 12, p. 251-270, 2016.
APPENDIX – REFERENCE FOOTNOTE
3. This article is part of the research work carried out for the Doctoral Thesis in Education entitled Partidos Políticos e Piso Salarial do Magistério Baiano: no Discurso e na Prática, which is in the final stage of preparation and will be defended at the Ibero-American International University (UNINI).
4. See footnote number one.
5. Cf. footnote no. 1.
[1] PhD student in Education at the Ibero-American International University – UNINI -; master’s degree in education from the Federal University of Bahia-UFBA-, Psychopedagogy from Cândido Mendes University – AVM, Specialist in Psychoanalysis by the Brazilian Association of Studies and Research in Psychoanalysis – ABEPP-, Specialist in Black Cultures in the Atlantic by the University of Brasília – UnB-, Specialist in Higher Education Teaching Methodology, faculty of Education of Bahia – FEBA – Full Degree for Special training in the Curriculum of the 2nd Degree, in the Area of Health Sciences; Primary Teacher, graduated from the Central Institute of Education Isaías Alves. ORCID: 0000-0003-1766-2169.
[2] Advisor. PhD in Social Sciences/Educational Sciences, Curriculum Program, Profesorado and Educational Institutes, University of Granada, Spain. Master’s degree in Contemporary Philosophy from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Graduated in Philosophy from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Dedica Director – Journal of Education and Humanities. ORCID: 0000-0001-7654-5638.
Submitted: October, 2021.
Approved: November, 2021.
