Full-Time Education and Social Protection in the Baixada Fluminense: Portraits of a Joint Path

In Brazil, the unequal and unfair trajectory of most students has been contributing to the discussions on the need to extend the school day to full time in the context of public policies in education. The offer of a full-time school, having as one of its intentions, ensure greater educational opportunities, has been increasingly associated with the care of students in situation of social vulnerability, a condition intrinsically connected with the idea of social protection. From such perspective, this work - which aims to discuss the relations between full-time education and social protection in the context of public basic education - based on bibliographical and documentary research, clearly defines as a field of investigation, a public school located in the Baixada Fluminense, a suburban area of Rio de Janeiro, which develops a proposal of full-time education and whose majority of students experience, to a greater or lesser degree, the condition of social vulnerability. Based on theoretical discussions, the article presents the concept of social protection as related not only to the concreteness of human survival, but also to aspects that aim to ensure full citizenship, such as socio-cultural conditions, among which education is included. It also reports, among its results, that the proposal of fulltime education, here investigated, when offering a broader school education, moves towards social inclusion and the guarantee of social rights, assuming the character of a social protection policy, a relevant matter, given the dynamics of inequality strongly structured in our country.