A assistência estudantil e a efetivação do direito à educação no IFRN

Abstract

This work analyzes Student Assistance Programmes performed at IFRN Campus João Câmara. This subject is gaining importance in the entire country due to the spread of the Federal Institutes since the last years. In the state of Rio Grande do Norte, we can observing the development of the Federal Institutes in many regions of that state, and emphasis being given to the fact that many of their units have been built on the countryside of the mentioned state. On this context, the Student Assistance Programmes present themselves as important mechanisms enabling many students to stay in these Institutes. Therefore, we decided to think of: What is the Student Assistance Policy resulting from the regulations made in recent years by the Federal Government and, in particular, by IFRN? To what extent the programmes meet the students’ social needs regarding their stay at IFRN Campus João Câmara? What are the consequences of entering that programmes through the adoption of criteria based mainly on student's family income? The methodology used prioritized the bibliographical research and literature review in order to grasp the state of art regarding to the main issue studied in this work, as well as the further development of analytical categories that inform the object of the present work. The methodology, used in this dissertation, also took into consideration a documental analysis about the Student's Assistance regulation and the analysis of secondary data about the socioeconomic profile of registered students, as well as the implementation of interviews among students registered on Student Assistance Programmes. This research pointed out that the IFRN Campus João Câmara has been assuring access to the referred Programmes through socioeconomic assessment performed by Social Services and that they meet demands related to many school meals and funding of many school expenses (through a kind of financial aid). Among the students placed in the Student Assistance Programmes prevail the ones whose families survive with a minimum wage and a part of them receives money from the “Bolsa Família” programme. The job contracts of main financial officers are of low value and their incomes are not good at all. A representative of them has entered in the informal labor market. The students interviewed claim to be a right the Student Assistance Programme, however, they reveal that they feel privileged to have been included in it, as they recognize that many students are not covered by that Programmes. One emphasized that they made possible and has improved conditions for the further development of the present studies. This study reveals, on one hand, important advances in the Student Assistance to the extent that from the beginning of the activities, the Campus João Câmara has ensured offer of some programmes in a specific area, as well as it has registered the improvement of resources at that Campus from year to year. On the other hand, it is a quite strong concept that the right to the Student Assistance should be available only to students in poverty through the selectivity and the targeting of access. That said, even with an increase in terms of resources, the courses' offer has been insufficient to meet the actual demand.