Stanford University, Felipe de Souza Oliveira
This paper examines how the UK-Brazil Skills for Prosperity (S4P) program interacted with the BNCC English curriculum and what this reveals about structural inequality in Brazilian public schools. Using a qualitative, interpretive case-study design, I analyze ten semi-structured interviews with actors who oversaw or managed S4P across an international donor agency, a philanthropic consortium, and technical partners in five pilot states. Findings show that S4P generated extensive curricula, teacher-training packages, and digital platforms but, as a time-limited, externally funded partnership, did not substantially alter the material conditions of English instruction in most public networks. I argue that the program exemplifies means-ends decoupling, where organizations fully comply with a policy’s formal activities and outputs while these means remain structurally unable to achieve its ultimate goals. In doing so, S4P reinforced existing stratification in access to linguistic capital, offering cautions for the design of future public-private partnerships in education.