MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF STUDENT ASSISTANCE: PROPOSING A MODEL FOR PNAES MANAGEMENT IN FEDERAL INSTITUTES
Student assistance; monitoring and evaluation; PNAES; Federal Institutes; student retention.
Student assistance is a strategic public policy designed to guarantee the retention of students in situations of socioeconomic vulnerability within Brazilian federal educational institutions. Since its institutionalization by Decree No. 7,234/2010 and its consolidation as a National Policy by Law No. 14,914/2024, the National Student Assistance Program (PNAES) has significantly expanded its scope, imposing on institutions the responsibility for monitoring and evaluating their actions, as provided in Article 7 of the aforementioned law. However, the Systematic Literature Review conducted in this study, which analyzed a corpus of 9 selected studies from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, as well as the ENANPAD proceedings (2020–2025), identified that the lack of monitoring and the absence of a national standard for collecting and recording data on policy beneficiaries and outcomes were present in 5 of the 9 analyzed studies. Meanwhile, insufficient targeting—indicating the exclusion of vulnerable students who were not covered by formal eligibility criteria—constituted the most recurrent finding within the corpus, identified in 6 of the 9 studies. Given this scenario, this research aims to propose a monitoring and evaluation model for student assistance applicable to all 38 Federal Institutes of Education, Science, and Technology, with the purpose of supporting PNAES management in monitoring student retention actions. This is an applied research study with a qualitative approach, and an exploratory, descriptive, and propositional character. Data collection will be carried out through requests submitted via the Electronic System of the Citizen Information Service (e-SIC), based on the Access to Information Law (Law No. 12,527/2011), addressed to the 38 Federal Institutes that comprise the research universe. The collected data will be subjected to content analysis (Bardin, 2016), using a priori categories constructed from the theoretical framework on public policy monitoring and evaluation models. As a result, the development of a Technical-Technological Product in the Process modality is expected, consisting of evaluation dimensions, indicators, information sources, monitoring periodicity, and a workflow to support decision-making, with an emphasis on targeting and universalization dimensions as specific criteria for policy evaluation. This research contributes to filling a gap identified in the scientific literature and institutional management by proposing a structured instrument that responds to current legal requirements and strengthens student assistance as an effective policy for retention and equity in the federal network of professional and technological education.