Although primary education enrollment in Ceará is over 95%, the quality of education is poor as revealed by national student assessments. Dropout rates are a high 11% and completion rate is only 73%. As a result of late entrance in the education system and repetition rates of about 10%, age-grade distortion nears 56%. The state’s illiteracy rate was nearly 15% in 2003.

The main objectives of the Ceará Basic Education Quality Improvement Project are to support the Government’s goals of reducing education’s low quality, inefficiencies and inequalities, thus improving human capital formation in the state and alleviating poverty. The main thrust of the project is basic education, including preschool and grades 1 through 8.

The project seeks to do so by:

• improving education quality in both academic achievement and learning environment;
   
• expanding access to drop-outs and excluded youth through the use of alternative methodologies;
   
• fostering equity in the provision of education services in the poorest municipalities; and
   
• strengthening the managerial and administrative capacity of the central, regional and municipal levels to deliver public education services efficiently.