Educational targeting in the fight against poverty: limits, omissions and opportunities

Abstract

Educational targeting has become one of the hegemonic mechanisms in the fight against poverty. Both international organisms and developing countries support targeting as one of the best strategies in order to simultaneously guarantee poverty reduction and economic growth, and consequently to tackle the challenges generated by globalisation. The main objective of the article is to point out some of the limits, omissions and opportunities of educational targeting as a priority strategy to fight against poverty. In doing so, it analyses the World Bank’s proposals in education, poverty and targeting and it presents one of the targeting pioneering programmes implemented in Latin America: the Bolsa Escola programme (BE). An analysis of the impacts of the programme is also included. This analysis is based on the results of an intensive qualitiative fieldwork containing more than 80 interviews with mothers and students who benefit from the programme as well as with teaching staff. The analysis demonstrates that although targeting could be a necessary and useful strategy, it is not sufficient either for ensuring school attainment or for reducing poverty.

Keywords:

• globalisation
• Latin America
• poverty
• targeting
• World Bank
• Brazil

Notes

1. It is important to notice that the BE programme focuses on primary education, as do the majority of the programmes of this nature applied in Latin America. The Mexican Oportunidades programme is an exception to this tendency.

2. Following Pawson’s proposal (2002), we understand ontology to mean any theory hidden beneath the development of different social programmes – their raison d’être, more than their contents.

3. According to the estimations by Cardoso and Souza (2003, quoted by Schwartzman 2005), 61 municipal BE programmes existed in 1999, in addition to 17 programmes run by a non‐governmental institution, Missao Criança.

4. F.H. Cardoso governed the country for two consecutive mandates, from 1994 until 2002, when Luís Inacio Lula da Silva, at the head of the Workers’ Party, won Brazil’s federal elections.

5. Despite the fact that Brazil was subjected, as were all other Latin American countries, to the structural adjustment policies implemented by the WB, this restructuring process was postponed in comparison to other countries in the region. As indicated by Sader (2001), it only happened after 1990 when a coherent neoliberal project was formulated in Brazil, first with the Collor government (1990–1992) and later with the Cardoso government (1994). This is why the Brazilian case is defined with expressions such as ‘late neoliberalism’.

6. The fieldwork was undertaken based on a qualitative methodology entailing interviews with three key stakeholders: mothers who were beneficiaries of the BEM programme; students who were beneficiaries of the programme; and the teaching and management staff of those schools hosting students who were beneficiaries of the programme. In total we did more than 80 interviews and we gathered various information related to families’ and children’s social and educational conditions and the impacts of the programme on these conditions.

7. Despite the fact that the BEM programme is theoretically articulated with the Escuela Plural programme, in practice there are still numerous hindrances to this. The main factors explaining this situation are the fact that working conditions for the teaching staff continue to be difficult and that there is a high concentration of poor students at certain schools.