An education model called Escuela Nueva has revolutionised life for some seven million children and earned the 2017 Yidan Prize for its Colombian founder, Vicky Colbert. On the eve of this year’s Yidan Prize Summit, she talks about taking her school of the future to the world
"Over the past 40 years, Vicky Colbert has developed and successfully delivered, across 16 countries in three continents, an innovative learner-centred approach to rural schools that equips students from the most resource-constrained regions with 21st-century skills.” So said Dorothy K Gordon, head of the judging panel for the Yidan Prize for Education Development, which was bestowed on Colbert at the award’s inaugural ceremony in 2017.
Of the prize, Colombia-born Colbert says, “It was a tremendous surprise, but also has really tangible financial support for the projects we are moving forward on.”
Colbert was lucky enough to enjoy a good education herself, which is not true of many in Colombia, a nation plagued by great social inequity. Colbert grew up understanding the importance of a good education, as her mother was an educator who founded teacher colleges in Colombia. Colbert went on to obtain a master’s in the sociology of education at Stanford University before returning to Colombia to embark on what would become a “life project.”
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“As a sociologist, one always wants to reduce inequity and drive social change,” says Colbert, speaking over the phone recently from Colombia. “And I learned that quality basic education is crucial for self-sufficiency, sustainable development, peace, democracy. Education is at the heart of everything. It’s the way to improve lives and provide people with economic opportunities. My professional commitment from the outset was to do something about it. I decided to contribute to the lives of the most underserved children in Colombia and to help reduce inequality.”
Colbert set about creating an educational model that could be used to improve the quality and relevance of basic education.
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“There were so many problems that we had to rethink everything,” she says. Colombia’s rural schools in particular were suffering from high drop-out and repetition rates; incomplete schooling; low student learning achievement; ineffective and costly teacher training; emphasis on memorisation over comprehension; lack of adequate materials; low teacher morale; teacher-centric methods; irrelevant curriculums; low self-esteem of children; and weak relationships between school communities and parents.
But these difficulties presented opportunity for Colbert to rethink everything, and to plan systemically from the outset.