Financing of basic education in Brazil: an analysis of the legal arrangements adopted during the republican period

Abstract

This article deals with the legal arrangements developed throughout the history of the Brazilian republic to finance basic education. For that, a analysis of the policies adopted since the beginning of the republican period was carried out. The purpose is to provide subsidies for the debate on the financing of basic education, to demonstrate in what historical moments more or less legal protection to the financing regulation was established. It concludes that from the 1930s the constitutional linkage of tax revenues prevailed, which was no longer foreseen only by the Constitutions of 1937 and 1967, granted in authoritarian periods, whose governments worked with legally less rigid financing arrangements. After the dictatorship of 1964, the binding policy was again adopted, which, however, was restricted by budget disengagement measures (FSE, FEF and DRU). In the mid-1990s, therefore, an attempt was made to perfect the binding rule through the creation of FUNDEF and FUNDEB, which will be in force until 2020, and has introduced rules on the use of resources and social control mechanisms. Therefore, it has been realized that financing education, even though it may have a strong legal structure, can be mitigated to protect the budget from possible account mismatches.