Only seven percent could demonstrate basic math skills
Em março de 2022, um relatório da UNICEF colocou em números aquilo que muitos temiam: na Guiné-Bissau, apenas sete em cada cem crianças do terceiro ano dominam operações matemáticas básicas, e onze sabem ler com competência. O estudo, que abrangeu trinta e dois países de baixo e médio rendimento entre 2017 e 2021, revelou que esta não é uma crise nascida da pandemia, mas uma falha sistémica que a pandemia veio aprofundar. Por detrás de cada percentagem há uma geração de crianças a quem o futuro está a ser negado antes mesmo de aprenderem a escrever o próprio nome.
- A Guiné-Bissau figura entre os piores do mundo: ocupa o nono lugar na cauda do ranking de matemática e o oitavo no de leitura, ficando muito abaixo das medianas globais de 18% e 30%.
- A pandemia fechou salas de aula já frágeis, agravando uma crise de aprendizagem que existia muito antes do primeiro confinamento.
- Em cinco países africanos estudados, incluindo a Guiné-Bissau, as crianças que abandonaram a escola revelaram competências de leitura praticamente nulas — um sinal de que quem fica de fora fica completamente para trás.
- São Tomé e Príncipe apresenta resultados relativamente melhores, com 29% de proficiência em leitura, mas o abandono escolar continua a excluir os mais vulneráveis também neste país.
- A UNICEF exige intervenção urgente centrada nas crianças fora do sistema, reconhecendo que recuperar a aprendizagem perdida exige muito mais do que reabrir escolas.
Em março de 2022, a UNICEF publicou um relatório com um título que era já uma pergunta incómoda: "As crianças estão realmente a aprender?" Os dados recolhidos entre 2017 e 2021 em trinta e dois países de baixo e médio rendimento respondiam, em grande parte, que não. Na Guiné-Bissau, apenas 7% dos alunos do terceiro ano dominavam matemática básica e 11% liam com competência — números que colocam o país entre os piores do mundo, muito abaixo das medianas globais.
A diretora executiva da UNICEF, Catherine Russell, sublinhou na introdução do relatório que a COVID-19 havia intensificado uma crise educativa que já ameaçava o futuro de milhões de crianças. A pandemia não criou o problema; expôs e agravou falhas estruturais de longa data. Nos países estudados, a maioria dos alunos do terceiro ano não atingia os objetivos de aprendizagem esperados para o final do segundo ano — em leitura ou em matemática.
O relatório incluiu dois países lusófonos. Enquanto a Guiné-Bissau ocupava posições de cauda nos rankings, São Tomé e Príncipe apresentava resultados mais próximos da mediana global, com 29% de proficiência em leitura e 24% em matemática. Ainda assim, em ambos os países — como em outros cinco nações africanas analisadas — as crianças que tinham abandonado a escola revelavam competências de leitura quase inexistentes. Na Guiné-Bissau, pelo menos uma em cada sete crianças já tinha saído do sistema de ensino.
A UNICEF concluiu com um apelo urgente: reconstruir as competências fundamentais de todas as crianças, com atenção especial às mais vulneráveis, aquelas que nunca chegaram a entrar numa sala de aula ou que a abandonaram sem nada aprender. Para estas crianças, o fosso entre o que sabem e o que precisariam de saber não parou de crescer.
A United Nations Children's Fund report released in March 2022 delivered stark numbers about what children in Guinea-Bissau actually know by the time they reach third grade: only seven percent could demonstrate basic math skills, and just eleven percent showed competency in reading. The findings came from a study titled "Are children really learning?"—a question the data suggested had a troubling answer across much of the developing world.
The UNICEF researchers had gathered information between 2017 and 2021 from thirty-two countries and territories with low to middle incomes, including two Portuguese-speaking nations: Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe. They focused on third-graders, measuring whether these students had mastered the fundamental skills expected by the end of second grade. What they discovered was a pattern of educational failure that predated the pandemic but had been made worse by it. Catherine Russell, UNICEF's executive director, wrote in the report's introduction that the disruption caused by COVID-19 had intensified "a global education crisis that was already threatening the futures of millions of children worldwide."
The numbers told a grim story. Across the countries studied, most students had not reached learning targets in either reading or math. The global median showed thirty percent of third-graders meeting reading standards—a range that stretched from three percent in the Central African Republic to eighty-two percent in Belarus. For math, the median was eighteen percent, with less than one percent in the Democratic Republic of Congo and seventy-one percent in Belarus. Guinea-Bissau fell well below these medians, ranking as the eighth-worst country for reading competency and ninth-worst for math among the thirty-one nations with available data.
São Tomé and Príncipe presented a different picture. Twenty-nine percent of its third-graders met reading standards—placing it fifteenth among the thirty-one countries—and twenty-four percent demonstrated math competency, putting it above the global median. Yet even this relative success masked a deeper problem that affected both Portuguese-speaking nations. The researchers found that in five African countries, including Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, children who had dropped out of school possessed virtually no reading ability. In Guinea-Bissau and most of the other nations studied, at least one in every seven children had left the education system entirely.
The UNICEF report called for urgent action to strengthen basic educational skills for all children, with special focus on the most vulnerable—those already outside the school system and denied any chance to learn. The crisis was not simply about pandemic recovery; it was about confronting a systemic failure that had existed long before lockdowns closed classroom doors. For millions of children in Guinea-Bissau and across low-income countries, the gap between where they were and where they needed to be had only widened.
Citações Notáveis
The pandemic intensified a global education crisis that was already threatening the futures of millions of children worldwide— Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director
Urgent efforts are needed to improve basic educational skills for all children, with particular attention to the most vulnerable who are out of school and denied the opportunity to learn— UNICEF report
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why focus on third-graders specifically? Why not measure older students?
Third grade is the checkpoint. By then, children should have the reading and math foundations they need to learn everything else. If they don't have it by then, they're already behind, and catching up becomes exponentially harder.
Seven percent in math is catastrophic. How does a country function with that?
It doesn't, not well. You're looking at a generation that can't calculate, can't manage money, can't access jobs that require basic numeracy. The economy stays trapped.
The report says this was happening before COVID. So the pandemic didn't cause the crisis—it just made it visible?
Worse than that. The crisis was already there, already damaging children's futures. The pandemic came and pushed more children out of school entirely, and disrupted whatever learning was happening. It took a bad situation and made it catastrophic.
Why is Guinea-Bissau so much worse than São Tomé and Príncipe? They're both Portuguese-speaking, both in West Africa.
Different histories, different resources, different political stability. But the real answer is that we don't know enough yet. The report flags the problem; it doesn't fully explain why some countries fail so completely while others, even nearby, do better.
What happens to the children who drop out? The ones with zero reading skills?
They're locked out. No secondary school, no skilled work, no way to read a contract or a medicine label. They become invisible in statistics, but their lives are constrained in every direction.