The Provão

Provão means "Big Test" in Portuguese. During the last year of the graduation course, all students of selected majorings are submitted to a Big Test, so as to evaluate the quality of the respective faculty or university.
The Law nr. 9131 assigned to the Ministry of Education (art.3 of Law) the task of conducting periodic evaluations of the institutions of higher education in Brazil.
The law established some guidelines for the evaluation:
- all students from pre-determined majors should be submitted to the Provão (the number of majors evaluated depends on the infrastructure of the government; in 1996, first year of the test, three majors were evaluated; in 2003, there were twenty-six); all institutions offering those majors should register for the Provão
- the grade of each institution would be made public, but not the individual grades; the individual grades would be privately informed to each student only
- taking the test is a condition for obtaining the diploma; the performance of each student in the Provão does not interfere with his/her approval in the institution; the diploma must inform the date in which the student was submitted to the Test
- if the student so desires, he/she can repeat the Test in other years, to try a better individual evaluation
- the results of Provão would be used by the Ministry to establish policies to improve the quality of superior institutions

Visit the homepage of the Provão (in Portuguese only); among several other information, you can access the actual tests applied in past years. Click to read the FAQs about the Provão.

As especified by the law, the aggregated results of each faculty are made public; a query can be done by the name of institution, by cities, or by majorings using this query form (you can use one or more fields).

The releasing of the raw results of the Provão are followed by extensive reports. These reports are meant to picture the situation of superior education, compare it to situation of previous years and help plan the actions for the future. Click the link to access all the yearly reports of the exams applied to date.

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