Education can be efficient and transformative when one focuses on whole student development. That’s why, besides sharing theoretical knowledge, it’s essential that schools provide meaningful education that makes sense for children and adolescents and meet the demands of this century.

    For over two decades, the Ayrton Senna Institute has disseminated this message and aimed at breaking barriers moving towards quality education. We are committed to society; especially educators, managers and public and private leaderships. Our goal is disseminating knowledge and initiatives to promote integral education as a pillar for fully developing students from municipal and state public schools.

    We believe integral education creates more opportunity for children and adolescents as it goes beyond simply imparting knowledge and developing cognitive skills by teaching math, Portuguese and science content. Integral education also provides possibilities for developing social and emotional competences such as self-confidence, determination, stress tolerance and others; these skills support people as they face their daily challenges.

    In practical terms, we have to prepare children and adolescents to make use of these and other competences to take a stance in a critical, responsible, creative, collaborative, autonomous, resilient and solidary way, whether it’s in a personal, academic, professional or social context.

    In order for this education to be a reality, we create educational technologies with science-based evidence. In 2017 we assisted in making sure that scientific findings about education created a positive impact on education secretariats and classrooms in more than 500 Brazilian municipalities in 16 states.

    In 2017 we also worked intensely on supporting nation-wide public policies. Some of the most prominent actions undertaken by Ayrton Senna Institute included participating in initiatives, monitoring efforts and mobilizing resources to support the creation of Base Nacional Comum Curricular or BNCC (The Brazilian National Common Core), which determines the basic content curriculum required from Early Childhood Education to Elementary School for every Brazilian school. The final version of the document includes not only cognitive skills, but social-emotional skills, which shows that integral education can become a reality in Brazilian schools.

    Our efforts for implementing successful education solutions in large-scale are only possible thanks to our state and municipal-level partnerships and the support of socially-responsible companies, which provide assistance and consultancy to education secretariats and schools, especially in regards to incorporating innovative methodologies and social-emotional competences in teaching programs.

  Our initiatives in 2017 wouldn’t have been this successful without education professionals, researchers and scholars from different areas of knowledge, public and private sector organizations and engaged citizens. This team enabled us to promote concrete changes in the lives of children, adolescents and adults; and paved the way for us to continue advocating for education in order to propel the full development of our students and our country in the coming years.

    In 2017 one of the main events held by the department in charge of Gestão de Políticas de Aprendizagem (Learning Policies Management) in Ayrton Senna Institute was a seminar named Educação no Século 21: Alfabetização – Dilemas do passado e caminhos para o future (Education in the 21^st Century: Literacy – Dilemmas of the past and paths for the future). The event was created to raise educators and managers’ awareness about important literacy practices and public policies and how they relate to different aspects of integral education.

    Also in 2017, the Institute intensified a project called Gestão de Política de Alfabetização (Literacy Policies Management); an innovative proposal aiming at promoting full literacy at the right age for children in the public school system. This initiative fosters and develops reading and writing skills, introducing body and scientific literacy as well as social and emotional skills. As part of the project, we conduct training for school managers and pedagogical coordinators so they can disseminate practices and solutions learned across education networks. Last year the project benefited almost 36,000 students (12.3% more than 2016) and involved 443 schools from 24 municipalities.

    Regarding initiatives Grade School initiatives, our department conducted training for teachers who work with literacy and flow correction as part of the Se Liga and Acelera Brasil programs. In 2017, 87 cities implemented Se Liga, mobilizing over 12,000 students. Thanks to the initiative, 86% of these students were taught and drop-out was only 3%. The Acelera program encompassed 43 municipalities and impacted 11,000 students, 95% of which were promoted in at least one school year. Drop-out rates stayed under 3%.

    Se Liga and Acelera Brasil engaged over 1,600 teachers trained by the Institute staff which also shared methodologies and perspectives for integral education, including discussions about social and emotional competences. The training sessions also created a connection between science and education; teachers involved in our partnerships received papers done by researchers of the NeuroEducação magazine. The publication is supported by the Institute and comments on topics related to neuroscience for learning.

    Throughout the year, we conducted various advocacy and mobilization initiatives to foster integral education as a way to solidify our Rede de Gestores (Managers Network), one of the Institute’s key strategies to disseminate knowledge and practices about the topic to public managers from different locations. The network is comprised by 14 municipal secretariats and one state secretariat of education. We partner up with the secretariats to build a repertoire of good practices in education management and develop common plans to tackle the most pressing educational challenges. In 2017, 60% of network members claimed to have used practices shared by the group to solve a problem in their city. In November, we conducted a workshop with some 30 representatives of these secretariats and planned actions for 2018 as we promoted our collaborative effort to create future initiatives.

    Aiming at promoting integral education to support full-development and meet high school students’ expectations, the Ayrton Senna Institute expanded its initiatives on Developing Educational Solutions in 2017.

    Partnering up with the Secretariat of Education in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, we took the integral education proposal to 15 schools and benefited 2,200 students. Professionals from the schools, regions and the Secretariat of Education participated in classroom and distance training sessions.

    In 2017, students from our partner schools performed, in average, 12.3% above the state network average in Portuguese and 9.4% in math. The approval rate of schools involved was 18% higher to the network in the same two subjects. We concluded the year in the state conducting a seminar for roughly 300 professionals from the cities involved. The objective was to share practices and knowledge related to integral education as presented by school teachers and managers themselves. In the event we also promoted the launch of an e-book that gathers new practices of educational management to inspire concrete experiments of integral education in the school routine. The book can be accessed in our website free of charge. 

    Thanks to its innovative nature, the project conducted by the Institute in the state of Santa Catarina was chosen to represent Brazil in the largest innovation festival of the world, SXSWedu in Texas, USA. In the conference, we were the only Brazilians to present a case about implementing a teaching proposal in public schools. In our presentation, the international public learned about the pillars of our work as well as our challenges and accomplishments thus far.

    In another front, the Ayrton Senna Institute developed an extensive training effort to transfer the methodology management of the SuperAção Jovem program to the technical teams at the Secretariat of Education of the state of Sao Paulo. The program has been carried out for 14 years in partnership with the state, focusing on empowerment and developing social-emotional competences in Elementary and High School students. Throughout the year, the program reached 1,400 schools with the Sala de Leitura (Reading Room) partnership and benefited 25,500 students plus an additional 9,500 students from 65 integral education schools. As of 2018, the State Secretariat is fully in charge of implementing the SuperAção Jovem program in the network schools.

    One of the Institute’s hallmarks is promoting public policies focused on integral education. Therefore, for the first time, we assisted in reviewing the Elementary School curriculum for the Sao Paulo education network as part of an effort connected to the Base Nacional Comum Curricular or BNCC (the Brazilian Common Core), in partnership with the Municipal Secretariat of Education.

    Finally, we launched the first series of self-instructional integral education courses in partnership with Movimento Santa Catarina pela Educação (Santa Catarina for Education Movement). The main course of the series had 1,000 enrollees and 70% of them concluded it. For 2018 we expect this content to contribute to teacher training courses at the Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), which we partnered with in late 2017. 

    The Ayrton Senna Institute advocates and monitors initiatives to promote a sense of shared responsibility in different sectors of society to affect relevant changes in our country through education.

    In 2017, we bolstered our engagement and dialogue with Observatório do PNE (Observing the National Plan for Education); a movement that gathers dozens of Brazilian education organizations working to advance the implementation of the Brazilian National Plan for Education, which set twenty education goals to be achieved by 2024. For that purpose, we contribute to a publication which analyzes the three-year the plan. With two studies published thus far, we reflect on school access, literacy and strategies to integrate the Union, states and municipalities to deliver educational outcomes.

   We also continue supporting the Rede Nacional de Ciência para Educação, or Rede CpE (National Science Network for Education), working to update the Platform of Science for Education supported by FAPERJ, the Foundation for Research Support from the state of Rio de Janeiro. In this process, we identified around 6,700 researchers from different sectors to integrate science and education. Currently, the network is comprised by 100 research groups. Furthermore, we supported the presentation of the Rede CpE coordinator, neuroscientist Robert Lent, at the international conference held by the Science of Learning Centre of Australia. This international initiative showcased the efforts of Rede CpE as it represents Brazil in the global movement to create science networks for education.

    We contributed to the book Ciência para Educação – uma ponte entre dois mundos (Science for Education – a bridge between two worlds) in the chapter about developing social and emotional skills written by Ayrton Senna’s chief-economist and Insper professor Ricardo Paes de Barros. That was the first collaborative publication done by members of the network; it touches on 11 topics where scientific research can contribute to teaching and learning processes.

    We also expanded the Letramento em Programação project (Literacy in Programming), which uses computer programming as a tool to develop competences such as logical reasoning and creativity for Elementary School students. In 2017 it reached 41 schools, in the city of Itatiba, state of Sao Paulo; the success of the initiative encouraged the municipal government to enact a bill which makes it an official part of the education public policy.

    This year the program also reached the cities of Morungaba and Vinhedo in the state of Sao Paulo and seven cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. This region also hosted the first edition of the Tech Oscar, an event held for students to share what they learned throughout the year. The Tech Oscar is held in the north side of the state in partnership with IMED, a regional higher education institution which conducts the program. The 3^rd edition of the event in the state of Sao Paulo gathered students from the country side and attracted over 500 people in a ceremony held in the Sao Francisco University in Itatiba.

    Thanks to the experience with the Letramento em Programação program and our work with integral education and technology, we also participated on knowledge disseminating activities such as the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) in Stanford, which tackled programming languages focused on children’s education in the 1^st Scratch Conference in Brazil held by the University of Sao Paulo (USP). We also organized Expo Educação+Futuro+Tecnologia (Expo Education+Future+Technology) in partnership with Fundação Telefônica; the event gathered 250 public and private education professionals to share experiences about how technology connects schools to the 21^st century education.

        New Ideas

    EduLab21 is a lab from Ayrton Senna Institute which connects managers, educators and specialists from different parts of the world to produce, systematize and disseminate scientific knowledge. The lab’s goal is to expand education borders, prepare children and adolescents to live in the 21^st century and build a better world. Our actions are centered on two internal departments, Novas Ideias (New Ideas) and Aplicação em Políticas Públicas (Application in Public Policies).

    In 2017, through Novas Ideias, eduLab21 launched the Technical Assistance model for states and municipalities. This work strategy’s purpose is to research, systematize and produce knowledge about social and emotional competences in the curriculum, present this refined knowledge to the secretariats and support local teams in decision making and designing strategies around social and emotional competences. The work model is flexible and it can be tailored to meet the needs and potentialities of each network.

    In the state of Goias, our Technical Assistance initiative supports the state’s Secretariat of Education in decision making and strategic projects to promote integral education. With our support, this topic was included for the first time in the Aprender+ (Learn+) text books, part of the school material given to students in 2017. In the state of Ceara, the city of Sobral is a reference in terms of good educational outcomes. Sobral has been a partner of the Institute for years, and in 2017 we contributed to the municipal education network by including social and emotional competences in the curriculum.

    In northeastern the state of Ceara, as we continued our efforts with the State Secretariat, we helped integrating programs and projects that promote the development of students’ social and emotional competences by raising awareness and training teachers and other professionals. In the city of Fortaleza, we conducted an International Seminar for 400 educators, including managers and researchers from Brazil and abroad. In the event, we shared inspiring experiences and exchanged information to enhance our understanding about integral education. The initiatives in northeastern Brazil were supplemented by content developed for Ayrton Senna Institute’s first app related to social and emotional competences and integral education, which is available for educators and students in the network.

    Also in 2017, we developed an initiative called Dialogos Socioemocionais (Social and Emotional Dialogues) with teachers from Ceara and Goias to support training initiatives where students and educators alike can work to promote social and emotional development along with classroom teaching.

    In the city of Chapeco, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, in partnership with the OECD, the State Secretariat of Education and The Industry Federation of Santa Catarina (FIESC), we conducted a project to build an international training assessment tool focused on gathering experiences and portfolios of teachers and students to develop critical thinking and creativity in line with the integral education model. The initiatives originated by this partnership already inspired a new bill which was enacted in 2017. This bill includes the integral education perspective in the network’s education policy.

    Finally, in 2017, we gathered various researches from different scientific papers published in distinguished magazines and disseminated them in congresses and events in Brazil and outside the country to showcase the importance of integral education and including social and emotional competences in our students’ curriculum.

        Application in Public Policies

    Regarding the eduLab21 Aplicação em Políticas Públicas initiative (Application in Public Policies), 2017 was a milestone year filled with actions to raise awareness in society and assist public managers on implementing integral education by producing, systematizing and disseminating evidences and knowledge about the topic to achieve full student development.

    One of these projects was conducted with the Secretariat of Education from the state of Espirito Santo. We identified the local team’s needs and created workshops to contribute to the proposal of incorporating social and emotional competences in the state curriculum; which includes discussing what these competences are and what they entail. It’s important to develop these skills as they are described in national and international documents. Local initiatives include lectures and meetings which attracted more than 4,000 managers from the secretariat and other institutions as well as municipal secretaries and school principals from municipal and state schools. We are now part of the Conselho Gestor (Managing Board) presided by the Secretary of Education and represented by different departments of the Secretariat and other institutions.

    This year the eduLab21 staff also researched, studied and highlighted concepts and methodologies used in impact assessments to establish a protocol and standards focused on integral education and initiatives for developing social and emotional competences. For that purpose, we revised over 150 scientific publications and produced texts and lectures about its findings. The information was shared with educators and public managers, and we conducted stages of the impact assessment in four programs: Amigos do Zippy, Mente Inovadora, Integral Education Programs, Se Liga and Acelera Brasil.

    In order to share concepts and information about social-emotional competences with the scientific community, we organized five events in partnership with CLEAR/FGV for educators and educational managers.

    In 2017 we supported a Work Group in the Avaliação da Educação Básica initiative (Basic Education Assessment) organized by the Brazilian National Council of Secretaries of Education (CONSED), which is comprised by representatives of the 27 state Secretariats of Education. The goal was to create a unified proposal of basic assessment for the state system and discuss current issues and potential improvements. The outcome was systematized and presented in a publication we produced in partnership with CONSED.

    Finally, we also conducted a study to organize and consolidate content to help reduce youth drop-out. We made this material available to public managers and opinion leaders. It can be used as a tool to support the people in charge of drafting policies. This study resulted in a report named Políticas Públicas para Redução do Abandono e Evasão Escolar de Jovens (Public Policies to Reduce Youth School Drop-Out) which was posted in GESTA.org.br; the report was produced in partnership with Fundação Brava and presented on TEDx.

    2017 was very challenging but also presented numerous opportunities for growth for the Ayrton Senna Institute. Most notably, we conducted over 7,000 hours of training and reached 156 employees in our team (between active employees and those terminated in 2017). That’s an average of 44 hours of training per staff member. According to a 2016 survey by the Brazilian Training and Development Association (ABTD), that’s twice the average of the Brazilian market – a mere 22 hours per staff member.

    The financial investment in training hours for staff also stands out in the national scenario. In Brazil, the annual average of staff training and development investment is R$ 624 (approximately US$ 160), while the Institute’s average reached R$ 3,000 (approximately US$ 785). Furthermore, we invested in an online training platform for our intern staff and hope to expand the tool to every employee in 2018. These initiatives underscore how much we care about training our staff, even in light of economic downturns and budget restrictions.

    From a quality of life perspective, we instituted a weekly home office policy, implemented Summer Friday (staff go home earlier on Fridays during daylight saving time) and maintain regular ergonomics and massage programs to guarantee well-being. Another important focus for us is to get our teams accustomed to the competence-based assessment process, which is already in its third year. We also exchange constant feedback to promote better synergy between teams. In 2017 we focused on different agile methodology trainings, particularly for the teams in charge of designing and implementing the Institute’s projects.

    Supplemented by the quality and growing recognition of the Ayrton Senna Institute’s initiatives, these actions also resulted in an increase in the number of CVs received for every new job position, an average of 4,500 CVs per job position announced. In 2017, we hired a total of 37 staff in different departments such as IT, consultancy, third sector, financial and others. Most of our new hires hold graduate diplomas and master’s degrees, which adds up to our highly qualified staff.

    Facing the economic challenges that affected Brazilian organizations in 2017 requires creativity and innovation. 2017 was a year of comings and goings; so we looked for new partnership models to maintain a level of quality in our work in behalf of education in Brazil.

    In 2017, more companies joined our cause by donating to the Institute. These companies include Aramis, PB Kids, Perflex, Moneygram and SAP. We launched checkout donation with the Cinepolis movie theater chain. Moviegoers from around the country can contribute to education buying tickets in the Cinepolis chain.

    Throughout the year, we also resumed the partnership with Neoenergia, an organization that contributes strategically to support education initiatives in the cities where the company is present.

    Our long-time partners are just as important as our new ones because they believe in what we do and understand that education drives the complete development of our people and society. These are some of our earlier partners: Boeing, Citi Foundation, Droga Raia, Editora MOL, English Live, Fundação Volkswagen, Instituto Natura, Itaú, P&G, Suzano and all the companies from the LIDE Educação group.

    In 2017, we advanced the Salary Donation modality which allowed workers from companies like Bayer, BCG, BNP, Buscapé, Castrol, P&G and SAP to collaborate with the Institute.

    We strive to provide ever-increasing support to our Business department. For that purpose we conducted a new Cause Marketing survey in partnership with ESPM, Ipsos and Smiles, through which we created a database about the potential of this business model for clients and society, from an Institute perspective as well as any other institution that decides to go in depth in that topic.

    Also in 2017, we created the executive board of Global Development. This new area of the Institute is important not only for attaining resources from global funds and companies willing to invest in education, but also to work with countries that are prominent in the field.

    In order to keep our partners up to speed with the Brazilian education scenario and our efforts to affect change, we created Educafé. This meeting is held every two months at the Ayrton Senna Institute headquarters and it counts on an efficient strategy to foster the bonds with our partners.

    To remember the accomplishments of the three-time F1 champion in the tracks and his life, many initiatives marked May 1^st, 2017. One of them was the inauguration of a public square called Praça Ayrton Senna do Brasil, in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of Ibirapuera.

    On stage, the play Ayrton Senna, o Musical (Ayrton Senna, The Musical) was conceived in partnership with the Senna family and Bradesco. The musical premiered in Rio de Janeiro and it portrays the trajectory of one of the greatest Brazilian icons. The musical is directed by Renato Rocha and performed by an outstanding cast.

    An example of determination, competence and resilience, Ayrton Senna inspires race car drivers around the globe. One of them, four-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, a big fan of Senna, has matched the Brazilian’s 65 pole position record. To celebrate the achievement, Hamilton was celebrated in the Montreal track and was awarded a replica of the Brazilian three-time champion’s helmet from the 1987 Formula 1 season. Hamilton also participated in an event held by Petronas where the institute got a customized car painted by Brazilian muralist Eduardo Kobra.

    Ayrton Senna was celebrated by Disney Pixar studios with a special miniature car as a tribute to the driver during the launch of “Cars 3” in Brazil.

    In 2017, another initiative marked the history of marathons in Brazil. For the first time, the Ayrton Senna Racing Day, in its 14^th edition, attracted more than 4,000 athletes and Senninha Racing Day, in its 2^nd edition, attracted 450 junior athletes. Both marathons were held in the same day at Autodromo de Interlagos. During the event, different generations celebrated the 30^th anniversary of Ayrton Senna’s first win in The Monaco Grand Prix.

    Ayrton Senna received an unforgettable tribute in London with the launch of McLaren Senna, the first car to bear the name of the three-time F1 champion, designed to be the faster McLaren car created so far. Only 500 units of this powerful machine were made and one of them was auctioned in 2 million pounds (US$ 2.65 million). The money goes to the Institute and will contribute to making Ayrton Senna’s dream a reality, to build a country of opportunity for every child and youth through education.