This is a story of how activist coalitions beat back an attempt by the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, to gut funding for basic education including early childhood education. An amendment to the Brazilian Constitution in 2006 and a federal law in 2007 established, albeit in time limited form, a new source of funding for education in Brazil. These measures established the source of funding (FUNDEB) from 2008 until 2020. The provisions replaced but expanded previous funding streams. They provided that the Federal government would add 10% to the local municipal and state funding streams.

As the FUNDEB provisions faced their 2020 time limit, a large national campaign which involved public debates, social movements and forums aimed to restore and improve the original funding provisions. The campaign’s plan provided that the federal contribution would increase from 10% to 23% by 2026 and would be used to make the system even fairer by targeting poorer jurisdictions no matter what those jurisdictions were raising themselves. The government opposed the key provisions and tried, for example, to siphon off half of the federal contribution to subsize the basic family support program. The government was beaten back and the national campaign provisions succeeded in passing both into law and into the Constitution.

CIESPI was particularly concerned about the impact on early childhood funding and was actively involved through the National Coalition on Early Childhood to support the successful national campaign. This CIESPI effort ties into its new four-year international project administered by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and including additional partners in Palestine, South Africa and Eswatini to improve inclusion and participation in and the effectiveness of early childhood education in low-income communities. The CIESPI part of the project will concentrate on improving the context of early childhood in the communities of Rocinha and part of São Gonçalo in the state of Rio de Janeiro.