Vicky Colbert founded Fundación Escuela Nueva in Colombia, which has helped over 5 million children access improved education through its child-centered learning model. The Escuela Nueva system enabled Colombia to provide quality primary education in rural areas that previously lacked educational opportunities. Evaluations have shown Escuela Nueva significantly improves academic results and self-esteem while reducing dropout and repetition rates.

1. Asking More
Improving quality and
Efficacy in
Education equity in education
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Vicky Colbert
Founder and Director of Fundación Escuela Nueva

2. Efficacy in
Education
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.

3. 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

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

5. 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

6. 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.

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

8. 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.
FFininaanncciaial l Technical Political

9. 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

10. “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

11. 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

12. 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