برون سپاری حمل و نقل مدرسه روستایی : یک راهنمایی برزیلی برای عمل در سطح شهری

In Brazil, Rural School Transportation (RST) falls under the responsibility of state and municipal governments. However, there are no clear rules to guide the provision of this essential service. RST in Brazil is characterised by inefficient contracting practices, poor service control by school administration, and lack of legal instruments to penalise poor services, thus allowing operators to run services according to their own commercial criteria. In addition, payment is low, leading to the employment of old vehicles, lack of safety equipment, and non-convenient routes, among other aspects. As a result, school children provided with this service are subject to long travel time over large distances, and irregular and late services, coupled with poorly maintained roads. When children finally arrive at school they are tired, which often negatively affects their school performance and attendance, contributing to early school drop-out. In order to contribute to the improvement of school transportation quality, state and municipal authorities must develop the required organisational, planning, and regulatory skills. Accordingly, this article addresses the elements and the structure of a handbook that is being elaborated for local governments.

Regulating services that are relevant to society, such as public school transportation, may be regarded as one of the main functions of the government as it pursues quality services that meet the population’s wishes and needs (Viscusi, Vernon and Harrington, 1997). The following steps are needed for the development of an efficient regulatory structure1: (i) establishing a regulatory strategy; (ii) selecting the elements to be regulated; (iii) defining the treatment to be given to data resulting from the regulatory process; and (iv) determining the legal procedures and directives for contracting out those services (Badwin and Cave, 2002 and Viscusi et al., 1997). However, and as pointed out by CEFTRU (2008a), in the real world very few municipalities have specific regulations for Rural School Transportation. In some municipalities, school principals determine which students will benefit from school transportation in rural areas, based on procedures and criteria that are not always objective. In other situations, outsourced service operators themselves define the transportation routes. These factors contribute to poor quality, informally-operated services being offered to the population. One may reasonably assume that failure to apply penalties and regulatory/inspection mechanisms, in addition to the lack of quality-driven incentives to service operators, leads them to perform services based on their own interests, and not on the best interest of all that are involved. Allied to poor compensation for service operators, this situation inevitably results in inefficient services. In the case of Rural School Transportation Systems, which play an important role in ensuring children’s access to, and retention in school, inefficient service provision may seriously jeopardise the students’ learning process (Ripplinger & Wang, 2007).

This article has set out basic guidance for regulating Rural School Transportation. However, it is worth stressing that regulation of such services on its own is not sufficient to achieve high quality services (see the concept of high quality services adopted for the purposes of this article). Accordingly, for a state or municipality to be successful, the regulatory activity must be consistent with all the elements that were established in strategic, tactical and operational planning. The basic elements that need to be regulated by the managing entity have been outlined, and it is the responsibility of the municipality to adapt them to its real needs. Minimum criteria for regulating physical and operational aspects, in addition to the actors involved in performing the services have also been presented. A section demonstrated that there are various ways of carrying out and contracting Rural School Transportation services while abiding to the existing legislation. If the government decides to run the services directly, there is a variety of contracts that can be drawn up to enable it to do so, ranging from acquisition to administrative contracts, in addition to contracts for construction work. In that sense, special attention needs to be paid to such contracting considering the legal particularities of each one of those ventures. All such contracting comes under the 1988 Federal Constitution, which make public bidding mandatory but provides for different modalities and types of process. Given that situation, and bearing in mind the need for efficient administrative procedures, the present article has sought to establish the best bidding practices in addition to suggesting the best design for contracts governing Rural School Transportation services that are managed indirectly (by private enterprise).