O One (National Secondary Education Examination) is no longer exclusively a gateway to university and resumes, from now on, its original mission of evaluating the quality of basic education in the country.
A decree signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) this Monday (30) formalizes the integration of the test into the Saeb (Basic Education Assessment System), transforming student performance into official indicators for monitoring public policies and in both public and private schools.
The MEC (Ministry of Education) strategy attempts to resolve a historical gap. Currently, many students focus their efforts only on Enem, neglecting the Saeb diagnostic tests.
With the unification of responsibilities, the government hopes to reduce abstention rates and obtain a more faithful and comprehensive portrait of Brazilian education. In practice, the test that defines the young person’s academic future will now also serve as the main metric to identify regional inequalities and compliance with the PNE ().
Created in 1998, Enem emerged precisely with the proposal of evaluating the knowledge of Brazilian students at the end of basic education. It was only in 2009 that the exam underwent a reformulation to also serve as a form of selection for federal universities, consolidating itself, since then, as the main mechanism for access to higher education in the country.
What changes for the student?
Despite the new layer of administrative complexity, for the student preparing for the test, the access structure remains unchanged.
Enem continues to be the central criterion for Content (Unified Selection System), which offers places in public higher education institutions; the Prouni (University for All Program), aimed at scholarships at private colleges; and the Fies (Student Financing Fund), which helps pay tuition fees for private courses, in addition to maintaining international agreements that allow admission to universities in Portugal.
What changes, fundamentally, is the use of data: Inep starts processing grades not just to classify candidatesbut to certify skills and guide investments in infrastructure and pedagogical methods.
To avoid distortions in statistical data and ensure comparison with previous years, the MEC established a transition schedule.
An ordinance will detail how the 2025 Saeb results will be used to compose the indicators for 2027 and 2028.
The change occurs at a time of expansion of educational infrastructure, with the announcement of more than one hundred new works delivered across the country and the advancement of school connectivity, totaling investments that exceed R$413 million via Novo PAC.
