PTRF descentralização gestão escolar e padrões de execução

Resumo

The Financial Resources Transfer Program (PTRF, from the Portuguese Programa de Transferência de Recursos Financeiros) is a fiscal decentralization policy implemented by the São Paulo Municipal Secretariat of Education, which transfers resources directly to public schools to cover maintenance, materials, and educational activities. From 2018 onward, the program underwent a significant budgetary expansion, with transfers rising from BRL 38.7 million in 2017 to BRL 524.5 million in 2023 — growth unrelated to changes in enrollment or the number of school units. This shift raises the study's central question: did the increase in the PTRF's financial scale bring about qualitative changes in spending patterns, or did the regulated autonomy model preserve the historically entrenched hierarchy of expenditure priorities? The study analyzes PTRF financial execution patterns over the 2023–2024 biennium, examining the institutional factors that shape how transferred resources are used. The research is exploratory in nature and draws primarily on administrative microdata extracted from SIG-Escola, the program's management and accountability system. The dataset comprises 120,756 expenditure records from 628 school units across five Regional Education Directorates, totaling BRL 482.9 million, categorized according to their educational purpose using the Student Quality Cost (CAQ) framework. Results show that 72.1% of resources were allocated to infrastructure and building maintenance — a proportion consistent with earlier literature, but now applied to an incomparably larger financial base — and only 5.5% to pedagogical, cultural, and broader educational experience activities. Five findings structure the interpretation: resource expansion did not reconfigure spending patterns; the per capita transfer model produces formal equality without ensuring material equity; financial autonomy operates as an emergency response mechanism rather than as an instrument for developing the school's educational project; budgetary instability subordinates the pedagogical calendar to the accountability calendar; and the Secretariat of Education, aware of the documented patterns through its own SIG-Escola system, limits its oversight to the legal compliance of expenditures, without supervision oriented toward the program's pedagogical purpose. A counterintuitive finding indicates that the absence of cultural activity expenditure in the most vulnerable schools does not stem from insufficient resources — these units ended the biennium with an average unspent balance of BRL 188,000 — but from limitations in management capacity and planning. Drawing on these findings, eight policy improvement proposals are formulated around four axes: restructuring building maintenance management; strengthening the pedagogical dimension of the program; reducing institutional inequalities across regional directorates; and promoting training, technical support, and democratic governance. The study contributes to the debate on basic education financing by demonstrating that fiscal decentralization, absent equitable institutional support, strategic guidance, management training, and active pedagogical oversight, tends to reproduce rather than overcome inequalities.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Dissertação

Ano

2026

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Português

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/39946

Temas

Políticas PúblicasFinanças PúblicasDesenvolvimento RegionalGovernançaEducação

Palavras-chave

Descentralização financeiraAutonomia escolarGestão escolarFinanciamento da educaçãoPolíticas públicas educacionais