Challenges
May 18, 2026
The new National Education Plan and the challenge of execution
Approved text shows higher density in five dimensions, but faces the issue of the attractiveness of the teaching career
Approved by Congress and sanctioned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in April of this year, the new National Education Plan (PNE) repositions the quality and equity of access to education at the center of educational policy — but its effectiveness will depend on the real capacity of the networks and the conditions of the teaching career.
The previous plan had a strong access mark. The new one, instituted by law no. 15.388/2026, maintains the concern with coverage, but reorganizes it within a more complete reasoning: access with permanence, permanence with completion, completion with learning, learning with a minimum standard of quality.
This is an important conceptual advance, as it addresses a historical shortcoming of Brazilian educational plans: the expansion in the number of enrollments without equal density in the monitoring of real learning. Here we can identify a point of support for the plan’s execution: learning is not organized simply by decree, but by the teacher’s daily mediation.
The second strong axis is equity. It now occupies a structuring position in the approved text, with goals aimed at reducing inequalities between social, racial, and regional groups. It is necessary to ensure literacy without inequalities among students defined by race/color, sex, socioeconomic level, region, and location, as well as to reduce learning disparities throughout Elementary and Middle School.
The monitoring by indicators sensitive to these differences signals a relevant inflection: the national average ceases to be a sufficient parameter. A network can improve its average indicators and still reproduce deep inequalities. Again, it is necessary to emphasize: from a simple statistical goal, true equity depends, in large part, on the capacity of the teacher to deal with concrete differences in the classroom.
There is also an important expansion in the treatment of modalities and of groups historically underserved. The incorporation, in the approved text, of goals for Indigenous School Education, Quilombola, Rural, Special Education in an Inclusive Perspective, Bilingual Education for the Deaf, and Education for Youth, Adults, and the Elderly represents a qualitative shift. These agendas cease to occupy a peripheral position and become part of the core of national planning, with direct political implications for priorities and resource allocation. Here, the challenge is not just technical, but cultural — requiring the teacher, always them, a training capable of navigating between different matrices of knowledge and belonging. After all, to achieve a real qualitative shift, professionals with consistent preparation are necessary.
Another central axis is full-day education. In the approved text, it is now treated not only as an extension of school time, but as the integral development of students, with formative activities that include arts, languages, and sports. There are clear quantitative goals, but the conceptual shift is the most relevant point: full-day education ceases to be a time-based policy and becomes a curriculum policy — an innovation in the PNE, but one repeated ad nauseam by teachers who deal daily with ambitious and often unfeasible agendas.
Literacy
In literacy, the text assumes a more assertive stance. It establishes progressive goals until universalization is achieved during its validity. At the same time, the debate continues regarding the feasibility of learning goals, especially in the final years and in high school. This point is decisive: a plan can fail due to timidity as much as voluntarism. This is where politics finds its most evident limit: literacy is not just about meeting a goal, but about ensuring conditions for teaching work to be carried out consistently.
In High School, Professional Education, and Higher Education, a similar movement is observed. The approved text seeks to balance expansion with retention and quality, with greater attention to course completion, reduction of dropout rates, and alignment of training with social and economic demands. The integration between High School and Technical Education gains centrality, repositioning professional training as part of the regular curriculum, rather than a residual alternative. This demands an even more challenging role from the teacher, dependent on training and experience: to guide choices that already project beyond school – the so-called “life project”.
The chapter on infrastructure and technology also appears more sophisticated. In the approved text, the notion of infrastructure is no longer limited to the presence of minimum items but now considers the effective teaching conditions, including adequate spaces, laboratories, connectivity, and diverse learning environments. The promotion of digital education is associated with the critical and ethical use of technologies, indicating concern with digital culture and not just access to equipment. Without these conditions, the teacher ceases to operate as a full mediator and begins to act in a containment regime.
Management
In management, professional development, and school climate, the approved text broadens its scope. Addressing violence, improving working conditions, and valuing democratic management indicate a more comprehensive understanding of educational quality, which now incorporates institutional and organizational dimensions. Nevertheless, the attractiveness of the teaching career remains one of the system’s main bottlenecks — a decisive bottleneck, since, in practice, the teacher is the structural pillar that sustains everything else. A pillar that is little valued.
The most structural innovation, however, seems to be in the field of monitoring and implementation. The approved text provides for projections of goals by federative entity, systematic production and dissemination of data, in addition to biennial action plans with budgetary linkage and accountability. This is an attempt to reduce a recurring weakness of the ten-year plans: their distance from the concrete execution of public policies. The plan advances by establishing permanent instances of federal pact and coordination between entities, which seeks to reduce the fragmentation of Brazilian educational policy.
Added to this is the requirement for two-year action plans, with goals, resource allocation, and accountability, bringing planning closer to concrete execution. It is in this scenario that political and administrative action gains centrality — even if its effects, in the end, fall upon the teaching work in the classroom.
This plan is articulated with the National Education System (SNE), strengthening the collaboration regime and creating permanent coordination instances between the Union, states, and municipalities. Such an arrangement repositions the PNE as an instrument of federative coordination, and not just as a normative guideline. In a country marked by deep territorial inequalities, this dimension is decisive.
In the financing, the law resumes the ambition to increase public investment in education, but with a more gradual trajectory. The mismatch between the previous target of 10% of GDP and the effective level of approximately 5% to 6% over the last decade highlights the fiscal and institutional limitations faced. The law proposes progression to 7% in the medium term and 10% by the end of its validity, associated with the Student-Quality Cost reference as a minimum provision parameter and the more direct link between resources and educational results. This point of the plan has the power to directly impact the educational reality, provided that it includes teacher work as one of its highest priorities.
There is still tension surrounding the exact definition of validity, with institutional references oscillating between different timeframes. However, the normative horizon is clear: the new PNE inaugurates a decennial cycle that replaces the previous plan and establishes guidelines for the next decade.
In summary, Law 15.388 presents a higher density in five main dimensions: it reorganizes planning into articulated objectives, shifts the focus from access to learning, incorporates equity as a structuring axis, strengthens implementation mechanisms, and expands the centrality of historically marginalized modalities. However, it does not explicitly and decisively address the issue of teacher career attractiveness — a central factor for this set of goals to actually redefine the planning of educational policy in the country.
And, in the end, the question arises: and the professor with this? The plan does not ignore him. It foresees training, appreciation, and improvement of working conditions. But it does so in a distributed manner, without clear centrality; it speaks of salary equalization, but does not specify concrete adjustment percentages nor does it directly establish the link between these increases and specific funding sources.
If the student is the protagonist of the educational process, the teacher equally occupies a central role: it is he who, as a mediator between plan and reality, makes the success — or failure — of the proposed goals viable in practice. One way or another, the word “teacher” needs to be read in every paragraph of the new PNE. However, it is not always there.
The goals, ambitious and coherent, will once again fall upon a faculty marked by low remuneration, unequal training, and unstable working conditions.
Herein lies one of the plan’s central tensions: the sophistication of the design is not matched by the foundation that supports it. Without structurally addressing the teaching career and prioritizing it as required, the risk is not new — high goals supported by insufficient conditions for achievement. There is time for correction. May it not take another decade.
Who wrote this column
Roberto Munhoz
