O impacto do Fundeb nos municípios do estado de Goiás - 2018/2022

Abstract

This study developed a geographical and theoretical reading regarding the financing of Basic Education in the state of Goiás, Brazil, especially in municipalities with small populations, focusing on the Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and the Valorisation of Education Professionals (FUNDEB) as the prime object of analysis and expression of the relationship between State, territory and inequality. Based on theories of Milton Santos, the thesis moved away from normative interpretations and sought to understand the materiality of educational financing and its effects on society. The study was based on the principle that education, as a public policy, reveals the structural contradictions of Brazilian fiscal federalism, especially when observed in small population municipalities, whose tax base is restricted and possess limited technical capacities. A critical and interdisciplinary approach was applied to the study, articulating geography, education, and economics based on authors such as Santos (1996, 2002), Bourdieu (1986), Araújo (2013), Davies (2021), and Amaral et al. (2021). The theoretical-empirical analysis confirmed that FUNDEB fulfils a redistributive and supplementary role, but that its effectiveness is conditioned by inequalities of economic base, territorial scale, and institutional capital. Although the funding expansion of the Federal Government's complementation (Constitutional Amendment No. 108/2020) has improved the investment capacity, the redistribution model focused on students’ enrolment remains limited because it does not take into consideration fixed costs and local particularities, which reinforces the need for a territorial sensitivity in weighting the fund distribution criteria. The predominance of personnel expenses, the lack of planning, and technical difficulties revealed that the funding operates within an unequal system, closer to a logic of compensation than to full equity. From a theoretical point of view, the research demonstrated that FUNDEB is not only an accounting instrument, but a spatialized policy that materializes the territorial selectivity of the State. Space, in this understanding, is a fundamental explanatory category: it expresses inequalities and unequal capacities to implement policies. Thus, the understanding of FUNDEB goes beyond the financial debate, inserting itself in the field of critical geography and the theory of distributive justice, in which the challenge of educational equity is also revealed as spatial and structural.