Government to require national exam for medical graduates in October | Business

Education stocks, which had been trading higher in the morning, reversed course and led losses on the Bovespa index after the announcement. The index closed up 1.34%, but Cogna plunged 9.23%, followed by Yduqs with a 6.38% drop. Outside the index, Ânima and Cruzeiro do Sul fell 1.62% and 0.52%, respectively. The exception was Ser Educacional, which gained 5.66%—possibly because many of its medical programs are new and thus have fewer students eligible for the exam.

The new test, dubbed the Exame Nacional de Avaliação da Formação Médica (ENAMED), is seen by parts of the education sector as a brake on expansion. Courses that repeatedly receive poor evaluations may be shut down or become ineligible for student loan and scholarship programs such as FIES and ProUni.

“SEMESP [a private higher education association] believes the new exam should not serve solely as a control mechanism, but rather as a tool to promote academic excellence and continuous improvement,” the group said, noting that other assessments for medical education already exist, such as ENADE, Revalida, and ENARE.

The National Association of Private Universities (ANUP) praised the initiative, saying that “an annual exam covering all specialties will raise the quality of evaluations and strengthen schools’ commitment to medical training.”

The ENAMED will also be used as the theoretical component of the ENARE, Brazil’s national medical residency exam. Currently, medical students are required to take the ENADE exam in their final year, but their performance does not affect their professional future—only the institutional evaluation of their course.

“Historically, many students haven’t taken ENADE seriously, since the results had no impact on their careers. That distorted course evaluations by undermining the reliability of the data,” said Silvio Pessanha, president of IDOMED, the medical school division of Yduqs. “ENAMED breaks that cycle. By tying the score to residency access, it gives students a real incentive to take the exam seriously, making it a more accurate reflection of their knowledge.”