performance students, and about a third were among the bottom performance students. This evidence suggests that the teaching career in Brazil is attracting a high share of lower performing students. In fact, the cut-off ENEM score required for admission to public higher education institutions is much lower for _licenciatura_ courses in these universities. In year 2014 the mean cut-off scores for _licenciatura_ in specific disciplines and in pedagogy were, respectively, the 5th and the 2nd lowest in a classification of 75 courses.<sup>5</sup> In addition, _licenciatura_ offered by private institutions are among courses with less competition for admission and therefore might be the choice of students with weaker educational background.<sup>6</sup> Figure 2 - Percentage of Public Upper Secondary Schools Teachers with Higher Education <!-- Start of picture text --> 82.0 87.6 88.5 78.9 89.8 82.3 95.3 89.6 93.2 87.5 91.6 87.7 92.8 93.2 81.0 93.5 83.6<br>74.4 75.4 76.9<br>52.2 54.5 54.4<br>47.4<br>42.2<br>38.0 36.2 39.0<br>11.4<br>7.4 7.6<br>5.7 5.2 3.3<br>1995 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015<br>Higher Education Licenciatura Postgraduate<br>Pedagogy Pedagogical supplementation Private institution<br><!-- End of picture text -->

* _Private institution_ indicates percentage of higher educated teachers that attended only private higher education Institution. _Source._ School Census, microdata, INEP/MEC.

Other factors that may be affecting the quality of trained teachers are related to the nature and quality of teacher pre-service training programs. As pointed out by Bruns et al. (2012) and Carnoy et al. (2008), teachers pre-service training, in general, gives low relative importance to didactics and techniques of teaching and classroom management. In order to shed light on these aspects we explore the changes in teacher pre-service training programs in the last 10 years.

Table 1 – Graduates from higher education programs

|**Areas and Programs**||**Year**<br>||**Dife**<br>|**rence**<br>|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||**2005**|**2010**|**2015**|**2005- 2015**|**2010- 2015**|
|_Training of specific subjects* _<br>|_77,795_|_95,550_|_82,158_|_6%_|_-14%_|
|Mathematics|10,194|11,915|10,896|7%|-9%|
|Portuguese|12,609|23,864|17,772|41%|-26%|
|_Other teacher training_**|_118,570_|_108,041_|_123,867_|_4%_|_15%_|
|Pedagogy|74,508|107,808|122,835|65%|14%|
|Normal Superior|44,062|233|1,032|-98%|343%|
|_Bachelor in specific subjects***_|_31,365_|_12,197_|_13,022_|_-58%_|_7%_|
|Mathematics|2,502|237|719|-71%|203%|
|Portuguese|7,146|1,347|1,213|-83%|-10%|
|**_All higher education programs_**|**_730,484_**|**_973,839_**|**_1,150,067_**|**_57%_**|**_18%_**|

* _Licenciatura_ courses in typical secondary education fields, like math, Portuguese, physics, biology, etc. ** E arly childhood education and early grades of primary education training. ***Bachelor's degree courses in typical secondary education fields. Source. Synopsis of the Census of Higher Education - INEP / MEC.

In the aggregate, the number of graduates in pre-service training courses practically stagnated and the bachelor's degree in typical secondary education fields dropped sharply in the period (Table 1). There was a decrease in the presence of potential teachers with a bachelor’s degree in favor of the _licenciatura_

> 5 Data from the Unified Selection System (SISU) of the Ministry of Education. The most recent data available in a complete and systematic way for all public higher education institutions that participated in SISU were from year 2014.

> 6 Dada from Synopsis of Tertiary Education Census - INEP/MEC shows that the average number of candidates per offered place in _licenciatura_ face-to-face courses is 0.68 and in bachelor’s degree face-to-face courses is 1.45.

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