COVID-19 and early childhood in Brazil: impacts on children’s well-being, education and care

ABSTRACT

This article describes and analyses the corona virus pandemic consequences on Brazilian early childhood education, on small children families' life conditions and on teacher's work, since March 2020, when preventive measures, such as social distancing and schools closure, were adopted by states and municipal authorities in the country. The text covers four main aspects of this situation: (a) economic and social factors affecting families with small children during the pandemic; (b) early childhood education policies and initiatives during the period of school closure; (c) the new roles of teachers; (d) a number of narratives from small children experiences and feelings. Data were obtained from different sources: reports published on the Internet; preliminary data from on going researches; and information given by some public schools. The collected information shows how school and home's spaces and times are now mixed up and how teachers and parents roles are being shared since the schools closed. Children tell how they miss going to school, their teachers and friends; parents miss the school support and its presence in their lives; teachers have to improvise using virtual means of communication and are afraid of returning to schools when they reopen.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood
• COVID-19
• Brazil
• children’s narratives
• teachers’ new roles

Acknowledgements

The authors want to express their gratitude to:

• Amanda Lopes da Silva and colleagues, from EMEI Jardim Monte Belo, a public preschool from São Paulo, who collected children, mothers and staff opinions and registered their voices specially for this article.

• Elenice de Brito Teixeira Silva, a researcher at ObEi, a teacher at The State University of Bahia and a graduate student at the UFMG School of Education PhD Program, and her colleagues from ObEI, who sent their preliminary unpublished reports from the project Childhood in the Pandemic Context: Experiences from children and their families.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The survey is based on 1516 interviews made by telephone during July 2020 (UNICEF 2020, 2).

2 The 12 municipalities included each state’s capital, 6 sorted out between the 25% municipalities with the largest number of students and 5 from those 25% with students from the lowest socio economic level in each state (Instituto Ruy Barbosa 2020, 4–5).

3 US Dollar exchange value at October 21th, 2020: 1 US$ = 5.6 BRL.

4 According to national education legislation, Basic Education includes: Early Childhood Education (ages 0–5), administered by municipalities; Elementary Education (ages 6–14), administered by municipalities and states, and Secondary Education (ages 15–17) administered by states. Early Childhood Education includes day care centres for ages 0–3 and preschools for ages 4–5. Higher Education is the main responsibility of the federal government, but many states also have their own State Universities.

5 The Fundação Carlos Chagas (FCC) survey used a convenience sampling method, with questionnaires distributed online and answered by 14,285 basic education teachers between April 30 and May 10 (FCC/F. Lemann/F. R. Marinho/I. Península/Itaú Social, 2020, 2–5).

6 From the Instituto Península study, based on 7773 online questionnaires for basic education teachers collected between April 4 and May 14 (FCC/F. Lemann/F. R. Marinho/I. Península/Itaú Social, 2020, 2–5).

7 ObEI (Childhood and Early Education Observatory) was created in May 2020, to follow up the educational policies being adopted during the pandemic at two interior regions in the state of Bahia. It is linked to NEPE – the Nucleus of Studies, Research and Educational Extension Paulo Freire, a research group certified by CNPq, the National Research Council of Brazil. It follows research ethical protocols supervised by the University ethical commissions.

8 São Paulo municipal schools follow legal rules and the Department of Education norms about the use of children’s images and how to document children’s activities; the EMEI parents interviewed for this article gave permission for video and audio records of their narratives.

9 Children answered the online questions with the help of adults at home (EMEI Jardim Monte Belo 2020b, 1).

10 MIEIB: Brazilian Early Childhood Education Interforuns Movement. A civil society movement, it represents state and municipal forum from all over the country.

11 Gestrado: Group of Studies on Educational Policies and Teaching Work, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). Gestrado follows the UFMG research ethical protocols.

12 The pedagogical counsellors sent their unpublished report to the Gestrado research group, at UFMG.

13 ‘Quilombos’ are remote areas occupied by escaped negro slaves in the past.

14 Normally schools reopen in August, after the July winter vacations, for the second semester of the school year.