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Announced by MEC (Ministry of Education) and by Inep (National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira) in May 2020 as " another gateway to higher education ", the Enem series has not advanced and has not even one date to occur.
The model was proposed by the then Minister of Education, Abraham Weintraub, and Alexandre Lopes, who was then president of Inep. The assessment would be part of the new Saeb (Basic Education Assessment System). At the end of each year of high school, the student could take a test.
At the end of the cycle, each student would have a final grade that could be used to enter higher education and even programs such as Prouni (which offers scholarships to private universities) and Fies (student financing). The model would help students to enter universities without necessarily taking an entrance exam.
In the proposal of the new Saeb, the government also planned to increase the tests for all school grades, since today it only assesses students from the 2nd, 5th and 9th years of elementary school, in addition to the 3rd year of high school.
The UOL questioned three times the MEC and the INEP in relation to Enem show. One in March, another in June and the last in September, but the organs did not return on any of the occasions.
Officials heard by the report, on the condition of anonymity, claim that the model has not worked because the current administration (Milton Ribeiro at MEC and Danilo Dupas at Inep) does not want to move forward with proposals from their predecessors. Others claim that the pandemic has "crossed" the agenda.
The UOL had access to a technical note sent to the presidency of the council questioning the purpose, frequency and format of the test, among other things.
"From a technical-pedagogical point of view, the proposal has positive and negative points that need to be taken into account for its maintenance or not. It is enough, it should be noted, that every educational assessment process needs to be considered as a scientific research and that all methods and deadlines must be respected", informs the note.
The autarchy's response came through an official letter, to which UOL also had access. In it, Inep is restricted to informing that a working group was created to discuss the issue and also the New Enem, which will include the changes in the New High School.
The idea was that the Enem series would be applied in October this year and that it would be 100% digital. At the time of the announcement of the new format, Inep guaranteed that the creation of the evaluation would not exclude the edition of the traditional Enem. But that, from 2024, the vacancies of the existing Enem and the serial Enem would be different.
Experts defend Enem remodeling
For Chico Soares, professor emeritus at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and former president of Inep, the proposal of the Enem series was not good. "It imitates the serial entrance exam, which has the strategy of getting closer to students in its region. It makes sense for the University of Juiz de Fora, Uberlândia, but not for a national exam," he explains.
The former president of Inep assesses that the proposal "would kill the reform of secondary education". "The reform has its criticisms, such as the way the government chose to discuss it, but it has a very good conceptual idea and Enem needs to help implement the reform", says Soares.
Today, the New High School presents changes in the students' curriculum. In addition to expanding the workload from 800 to 1,000 hours, the student will have a part focused on basic general training and the other on training itineraries, where they can choose the area they will go into.
The president of the CNE (National Council of Education), Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro, also advocates a remodeling of the current Enem. The focus, according to her, should also be to update the traditional exam with the changes foreseen by the New High School.
"The best thing at the moment is to discuss the new design of Enem for 2024, before that it is impossible to implement, since the process in schools will not have been concluded", explains the president of the CNE.
A schedule released by the MEC in the first semester foresees the implementation of the reform in 2022 for the 1st year, in 2023 for the 2nd and in 2024 for the last year of high school. At the end of the cycle, the folder also promises that Enem will have been updated.