Education: schools and universities (UFPB, IFPB and the private network)

The municipal network improved on the Ideb index, IFPB outperforms the national average, and UFPB ranks in the Northeast's top 5.

In public basic education, João Pessoa's municipal school network advanced on the Ideb index for the early years of elementary school, going from 5.0 in 2021 to 5.2 in 2023, surpassing the target set by Inep for the cycle, according to the City's own announcement. Proficiency in Portuguese Language and Mathematics rose from 5.29 to 5.55 in the same period, with the pass rate stable at 94%. The Federal Institute of Paraíba (IFPB), meanwhile, posted an average of 4.9 on the 2023 Ideb, above the national average (4.3) and the state average (4.0), with campuses such as Itaporanga and Catolé do Rocha among the standouts of the federal network in the state.

In higher education, the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), headquartered in João Pessoa, ranks as the 5th-best university in the North and Northeast in the 2025 Folha University Ranking (RUF), behind only UFPE, UFBA, UFC and UFRN, and 28th in the overall ranking, which evaluates 204 public and private institutions across the country. The RUF weighs five indicators — research (42% of the score), teaching (32%), job market (18%), internationalization (4%) and innovation (4%). UFPB's best performance came precisely in teaching, an item that considers higher education faculty opinions and the percentage of professors with a master's or doctoral degree, in which the institution obtained the 22nd-best score nationally.

The city also has an extensive private network, from early childhood education to higher education (with institutions such as UNIPÊ), but no public, official comparisons of performance among specific private schools were found in the sources consulted — information that was therefore omitted.