Piauí of Rafael Fonteles (PT-PI) climbs 25 places and takes 2nd place in the national education ranking

From last to second

In 2009, Piauí's state school system had the worst score in the country on the high school Ideb (Brazil's basic education index): 2.7, 27th out of 27. In the 2025 assessment, released by Inep, the federal education research agency, in August 2026, the same system scored 4.9 and placed 2nd, behind only Paraná, with 5.1, and tied with Goiás and Espírito Santo. São Paulo's state system, once the country's 1st, has 4.3 and is 10th, as this publication reported; Rio de Janeiro's, with 3.7, is 23rd.

The figures come from Inep's official spreadsheet by federal unit, which Abestadão downloaded and checked. Inep does not publish a ranking; the position was calculated by counting how many state systems have a higher score than Piauí. By that criterion, the climb is almost continuous: 26th in 2005, 27th in 2009, 18th in 2015, 14th in 2019, 9th in 2021, 6th in 2023 and 2nd in 2025. In twenty years, the score went from 2.3 to 4.9. No other state system climbed as far in the period: the second-largest gain, by Pernambuco and Goiás, was 2.0 points, against Piauí's 2.6.

Passing and learning

The Ideb multiplies two things: student pass rates and the score they earn on the Saeb, the national Portuguese and math exam. A system can rise on the index just by passing more students. In Piauí's case, the spreadsheet shows both. The pass rate in state high schools went from 66.5% in 2005 to 99.5% in 2025, the highest in the country. And the Saeb score, which measures learning, also rose: Piauí had the 13th-best average among state systems in 2023 and moved to 5th in 2025. In math, it ranked 3rd, behind Paraná and Goiás; in Portuguese, 7th.

That is why 2nd place cannot be explained by pass rates alone. On learning alone, Piauí is among the top five, not the top two. It is a first-rate result, with no rounding needed.

Full-time schooling

The sources that accompany the result point to the same explanation. According to the Natura Institute, in an analysis distributed by Agência Brasil, Piauí “is the only state in Brazil with 100% of its state high schools full-time,” and the change was made between 2022 and 2025. Revista Fórum, which recalls that the state “held last place in the national Ideb ranking for high school,” reports that full-time enrollment went from 21% to 81% of students, integrated with vocational education, and that Governor Rafael Fonteles (PT-PI) put education at the center of the state's project. Fonteles took office in January 2023; since that year's assessment, the system has gone from 6th to 2nd place, and the shift to full-time schooling noted by the Natura Institute covers the same period. The climb, however, began earlier: from 2009 to 2021, under other administrations, the system had already gone from 27th to 9th place.

It is a plausible explanation and consistent with the timing of the climb, but the table alone does not prove cause, and this report found no study isolating the effect of full-time schooling in Piauí's system.

What the table does not say

A ranking position is a relative measure, and the 2025 2nd place is shared with two other systems. The year 2021 comes with a caveat from Inep itself, because the test was administered during the pandemic. The series used here is regular high school; reports citing a score of 5.0 use a different cut.

Caveats aside, the fact stands: the state that many commentators in the Southeast still use as a synonym for backwardness now has the second-highest score in the country for state public high schools, ahead of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.