(2 May 2019) When students at Ceilândia state school No. 7 in Brazil's capital came back from their break in February, they were met by two dozen uniformed police officers in a place they barely recognized anymore. Guns in their holsters, the officers ordered students to form rows in the schoolyard.
The students were given white T-shirts pending the arrival of their uniforms.
From now on, boys would have to keep their hair short and girls tied at the back.
No more shorts, caps, brightly colored nail varnish, earrings or any distinctive pieces of clothing. Students arriving late wouldn't be let in.
The quasi-military approach is one of the most visible educational efforts happening under new Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who campaigned on promises to improve Brazilian schools, which are widely recognized as a problem.
A 2015 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked educational performance in Brazil as 63rd out of 72 countries and regions.
Schools co-run by police are modeled after Brazil's exclusive military colleges, which are run by the armed forces and tend to perform better than most public schools - a fact that makes many parents eager to see similarly rigid discipline.
Under the model, teaching remains in the hands of the education ministry, while police officers oversee discipline and enforce a new code of conduct. Implementation of the pilot program in a school must be approved by a majority of parents, teachers and school staff in a referendum.
The Ceilândia school is one of four in Brasilia that voted to take part.
Officials in Brazil's capital hope to add 36 more schools by the end of the year and reach a total of 200 by 2022.
Bolsonaro's administration is pushing similar expansions nationwide, though it has yet to say how many it plans to convert across the country.
Some states have been exploring the model since the early 2000s, but a large expansion worries many education experts and teachers' unions, who say such schools can become exclusionary and go against the concept of a free, open-to-all public schooling system.
"A professor is a professor and a policeman is a policeman, those are two different public policies where they (police and professor) are 'actors' but, it's not good the policeman to have a role inside the school as a leader of the discipline" said Claudia Costin, an expert in Education and former Director for Education at the World Bank.
Those against the model, argue that these schools have managed to improve results because problematic students are quietly substituted for better performing ones, often from wealthier backgrounds.
"A public school in the suburbs had so many demands to fulfill for timing, for wearing a uniform, that they (students enrolled) were leaving and were replaced (by other students)," said Roberto Schiavini, a professor at the school in Brasilia applying the model.
Another red flag for critics is the introduction of guns in schools, particularly in the nation that leads the world in total homicides each year, the majority from firearms.
The expansion is a flagship measure of the Bolsonaro administration but a spokeswoman for the education ministry said it had no data on how many such schools existed or studies on long-term benefits of the model.
Most recently, Bolsonaro said public funding for sociology and philosophy could be eliminated.
It doesn't always work out in such calm fashion.
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