The first day of the 2025 National Senior High School Examination (Enem), which was administered this Sunday, focused on themes related to gender issues. One of the questions addressed the demands of socially imposed beauty standards and focused on the impact of this phenomenon on public figures.
This statement used examples of aesthetic demands on famous women as a motivational text. Examples include Brazilian actress Paola Oliveira, who was criticized for being “too fat,” and Australian Margot Robbie, who was questioned as “not beautiful enough” to play Barbie in a 2023 movie.
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The test also dedicated at least two questions about the world of sports from a female perspective, focusing on inclusion and social issues. One of them was about medal-winning athletes Raissa Real, Rebecca Andrade and Beatriz Souza. Another article, based on the testimony of a former soccer player, highlighted the unglamorous reality of suburban athletes. Among the questions were provocations about gender violence in schools and the failure of the “bourgeois state” to ensure gender equality.
The writing proposal, with the theme “Perspectives on Aging in Brazilian Society,” used excerpts from Clarice Lispector, in which the author talked about “what she likes” about old age. This test excluded other classic names of Brazilian literature, for example Machado de Assis and Manuel Bandeira.
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Learn more about Enem 2025
Enem 2025 had 4.8 million subscribers. This time, the Ministry of Education (MEC) has decided to restart secondary education accreditation. As a result, the number of candidates aged 18 and over who have not completed basic education has increased by 200%, with enrollment from 24,000 to 81,000 from 2024 to 2025. Another group that saw a notable increase was those over 60, which grew by 191% between 2022 and 2025, from 5,900 to 17,192 candidates in this age group.
Another important change is the way students will compete for a place in the Unified Selection System (Sisu), which will take effect in January 2026. From this year, candidates will be able to use their grades from the past three years, as long as they have not sat the trainer exam. This news infuriated young people who are at the end of their senior year of high school. They only have one grade to compete with students who have already taken more enems, and the cutoff grades for more competitive courses tend to increase.
On this first day, in addition to writing, there will be 90 questions divided into human science and language. Next Sunday, 90 more items in mathematics and natural sciences will be added. Through this exam, the majority of vacancies in federal universities and new students who benefit from Puruni, the federal government’s scholarship program for private institutions, are selected.
In 2025, candidates will face a new set of rules. For example, the writing test had formalized guidance in the participant handbook for so-called “wildcard quotations.” This is a strategy that has become popular in recent years and consists of memorizing common references for the proposed topic.
The use of repertoire for argumentation is scored in Enem Essay Competency 2. Measures a candidate’s ability to use sociocultural repertoire to understand a topic and create a thesis argument text that is coherent with the proposal.
To demonstrate repertoire, students are encouraged to cite books, thinkers, films, songs, series, etc. Proper citations will earn you more points. Until 2024, writing teachers recommended memorizing common quotations that can be used in any text.
Now in 2025, the MEC emphasizes in its Participant Handbook that this strategy should not be used as it undermines the credibility of the text and does not demonstrate mastery of the content. “The recommendation of the National Institute for Educational Research Anísio Teixeira (Inep), the agency associated with the Ministry of Education (MEC) responsible for the test, is to further investigate the repertoire of authors within the text,” the text states.
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