This publication began to be drawn up in 2008 as an effort of a civil society organization. It was a long process, marked by numerous difficulties to access consistent and disaggregated data on the educational situation and spending on education in the city of São Paulo. Information that might portrait the existing educational service, offered by the municipal, state and federal governments, and private sector, as well as the existing inequalities among the different regions of the city.
It is important to note that a first version of this material was made available in 2009 for the advocacy of the Working Group on Education of Rede Nossa São Paulo (Our São Paulo Network) in the City Council and for the work of the Executive Committee of the Education Plan of the City of São Paulo. The Committee is a collegiate body created in 2008 by the Municipal Secretariat of Education to coordinate the production of the City’s Ten Year Plan, made up of public authorities, trade unions of education professionals, social movements and organizations, universities, students, families and other segments. At the time, the material served as a contribution for the preparation of the diagnostic document on the situation of education in the city, debated at the São Paulo City Education Conference held in June 2010, attended by 1,500 people.
Since then, important advances in obtaining data have become possible, especially after the enactment of the Law on Access to Information in Brazil (Law 12,527 / 2011), which made mandatory the provision of information by public agencies. However, much remains to be done, discovered and revealed about the education in our city and how it is developed in the most different areas of this immense and complex metropolis.