In some cases, the obvious not only needs to be said, but repeated: data from the area of , especially data from the School Census, needs to be public and available to the population as a whole. As custodian of this data, it is up to the National Institute of Studies and Research () to provide transparency to this information to allow the country to monitor, inspect and participate in the implementation of public educational policies. Something that, unfortunately, it resists doing, as it refuses to share data even with control bodies that constitutionally have the duty to monitor, such as the audit courts.
On the 8th, we finally had some good news: following a public civil action, the 8th Federal Court of the Federal District ordered Inep to adopt administrative measures to disclose microdata relating to the National Secondary Education Examination () and Basic Education School Census, in relation to their past, current and future editions.
According to federal judge Cristiane Pederzolli Rentzsch, the Access to Information Law (LAI) guarantees the right to access personal information when necessary “to carry out statistics and research of obvious public or general interest”, and individual identification must be preserved, but without harming the usefulness of data of public interest.
The judge based the decision on , which reinforced this duty of transparency by expressly determining the disclosure of educational data from the annual census and exams and education evaluation systems in active transparency. Written by together with deputy Adriana Ventura and sanctioned by President Lula in November 2024, the law was proposed precisely to reverse the (and knowledge) promoted by Inep’s obscurantist decision based on one of the General Data Protection Law (LGPD).
This legal diploma is in addition to the , also prepared by Ficam Sabendo, in partnership with deputy Tabata Amaral, which requires the collection, standardization and publication of a series of data not yet covered by the census release.
Although it is a shame that it took three years of battle, with the approval of a new law and a court decision to force Inep’s management to modify the delay it had caused, it is encouraging to know that the Judiciary is an ally in promoting and strengthening the right to education. We hope that, with this, Inep will review its retrograde and harmful stance for the most important public policy that a nation can have: educating its citizens so that they can fully exercise their rights.
According to the decision, the institute has up to 180 days to comply with the decision. We’ll keep an eye out.
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