Buying School Supplies in Curitiba, Brazil
HAVANA TIMES – My five-year-old daughter will start school next year. It’s a public school. We don’t have to pay for her schooling, and she will even receive textbooks and meals for free.
However, uniforms, notebooks, exercise books, pencils, and other supplies are the parents’ responsibility. They aren’t expensive, but they aren’t cheap either, considering how tight the average worker’s finances are in this country.
A set of uniforms, if bought new, can range between 300 and 600 reais. Considering that at least two sets need to be purchased, we’re talking about 600 to 1200 reais.
We should remember that for 2026 the minimum wage is set at 1,621 reais ($300 USD).
Parents like us, with low purchasing power, turn to used uniforms, which some parents tend to sell at modest prices when their children finish school. We recently managed to get about 15 pieces of uniform for the modest price of 100 reais.
The school gave us a list of the materials we need to buy. We’ve only bought half of the items so far and we’ve already spent 130 reais.
Our daughter will use the same shoes and backpack as last year; otherwise, we would have to add another 150 or 200 reais to the bill.
Knowing that Brazil is a capitalist democracy with marked left-leaning elements and a working class with very low purchasing power, the possibility of studying is there for most people. The education system is better in the southern states.
Even though when it comes to buying school supplies it seems like parents are never prepared—because it’s not easy to set aside 300 or 400 reais within the monthly budget—I’m grateful that our daughter can grow up in a country where at least education is within reach.
Unlike Cuba, where there is a sort of tacit contract between the system and the people that establishes giving up a decent life in exchange for certain “free” services.