SISTEMA BRASILEIRO DE FINANCIAMENTO À EDUCAÇÃO BÁSICA: PRINCIPAIS CARACTERÍSTICAS, LIMITAÇÕES E ALTERNATIVAS

Education is fundamental for social and economic development and school finance is one of the main features of an educational system. Assuming that a greater amount of resources brings more school quality, one can say that an "appropriate" primary and secondary school finance system should guarantee: (i) a satisfactory level of resources per pupil in each educational level; and (ii) equal opportunities for all students. This paper aims to analyze in what extent the actual system, particularly the Fundef, it is well succeeded in accomplishing these objectives, determining its main characteristics and limitations. The results suggest that although Fundef promoted a better resource distribution in the northern and northeastern regions, when considering the whole country the final result is negative. Besides that, when projecting future enrolment, two out of three scenarios indicate that Fundef distortions are worsened. Considering that, we also analyze the possible impacts of school finance centralization, including redistributive impacts among state, state's capital and other municipalities.