The space of socio-educational inequalities in São Paulo

This article presents the first results of a research on the current state of educational disparities in São Paulo. Based on a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the IBGE 2010 Census data, the relationship between social position, life conditions, and the social uses of the educational system is analyzed. The results show that a first axis opposes, as expected, rich and poor neighborhoods, and a second axis reveals a less evident opposition inside the districts of Sao Paulo. Based on high school credentials, this second opposition differentiates the neighborhoods in the middle and upper class regions as well as in the poorer regions of the city outskirts. In this extremely unequal city, we aimed to, first, have a structural representation of the city and identify the relative position of an industrial area, in the east side of the city, where we identified the growing number of private schools. The statistical analysis presented tries to understand the position of this district within the social space of São Paulo and offers elements to think about the changes in school supply and the emergence of new educational strategies in families of popular groups