Asking MoreEfficacy in Education

Improving quality and equity in education

Vicky Colbert Founder and Director of Fundación Escuela Nueva

efficacy.pearson.com

Vicky Colbert has been a leader of transformative education in Colombia and around the world for almost 30 years.

As Founder and Director of Fundación Escuela Nueva she has helped the model reach more than five million children, and repeatedly demonstrated its effectiveness in improving educational outcomes for children in challenging circumstances.

Efficacy in Education

The lack of quality education is one of Latin America’s great blights, but pockets of excellence

exist that serve as inspirations for the future

The Escuela Nueva system enabled Colombia to provide complete quality primary education in areas where little or no educational opportunities existed before

In 1989, the World Bank selected it as one of the three outstanding reforms in the developing world that had successfully affected a national policy

It has been adopted as far away as Vietnam, which decided to scale the model nationally for both rural and urban schools.

The model is one of the longest running bottom-up educational innovations in the developing world, and has reached more than five million children.

Escuela Nueva transforms the conventional school and way of learning from teacher-centred instruction to a child-centred, participatory learning approach

The model assumes it is essential to develop mechanisms that are replicable and financially, technically and politically viable.

From the outset, the system introduced strategies to facilitate replication of processes and expand on a national scale.

FinancialFinancial Technical Political

Evaluations have shown that Escuela Nueva significantly improves academic results in rural and urban schooling, as well as the self-esteem and peaceful behaviour of children, whilst also reducing dropout and repetition rates

“Colombia is the only country in the region, after Cuba, where rural schools obtain better performance results than urban schools, except for those in mega cities, primarily due to Escueal Nueva.”

UNESCO

A strong research base and evidence that demonstrates results, effectiveness and efficiency are major reasons for Escuela Nueva’s impact on national policy and its continuing success

Proving effectiveness has helped the model scale. The issue is not only coverage or impact. The issue is quality and sustainability.

Efficacy in Education

Vicky Colbert, Fundación Escuela Nueva efficacy.pearson.com