RURAL EDUCATION AND STUDENT RETENTION: ACTIVE SCHOOL SEARCH, EDUCATIONAL ACCESS AND THE RIGHT TO LEARNING IN RURAL TERRITORIES

Abstract

This article examines the challenges of schooling in rural Brazil, with emphasis on active school search as a strategy to address truancy, dropout, and inequalities in access and retention. Methodologically, this is a theoretical essay of bibliographical and documentary nature, grounded in authors of rural education, in Brazilian educational legislation and in institutional documents on school retention, linking classical references in the field to contemporary discussions on the right to learning and territorialized policies, with targeted mobilization of official data from the Brazilian School Census to dimension the object. The text problematizes the structural conditions that shape the schooling trajectories of children and young people living in rural communities, arguing that barriers to retention result from historical, territorial, economic and institutional determinations rather than from individual choices. It distinguishes the tradition of rural education, urbanocentric and compensatory in orientation, from the perspective of educação do campo, understood as a social right and a formative project committed to rural subjects and territories. It analyzes how distance, precarious school transport, school closures, insufficient infrastructure, limited connectivity and socioeconomic vulnerability affect access and retention. It discusses active school search as a territorialized rights-guarantee practice, articulated with the Active School Search Strategy promoted by UNICEF, Undime and the national collegiate bodies of social assistance and health, and which goes beyond bureaucratic recording by entailing listening, reintegration, follow-up and intersectoral articulation. The article concludes that its effectiveness depends on coordinated public policies for transportation, infrastructure, teacher training, contextualized curriculum and social protection, without which locating the absent student does not guarantee retention nor secure the right to learning.