The foundation’s aim is mainly concerned with helping to overcome poverty by improving educational outcomes. Using the effective schools’ approach, AraucaníAprende is working with teachers to strengthen their capacity and improve education performance in the two main subjects (mathematics and language) as the basic pillars in primary education. AraucaníAprende also addresses the management issue in those schools in which it works, by training school administrators to focus school management on learning results and by providing them with expert help in identifying, structuring and implementing all processes required for achieving a quality management certificate provided by the Ministry of Education. To ensure replicability, AraucaníAprende works in the counties and its schools in close collaboration with the municipalities, the Ministry of Education and its decentralized entities in the Region.

AraucaníAprende also uses information and communication technologies to enhance teaching and learning (using low-cost projectors, laptops and digital content), to help students acquire information handling skills through projects (i.e. low-cost robotics) and to expand their worldview by promoting peer-to-peer communications.

This non for-profit foundation started in 2005 in 17 schools in Temuco, Freire and Vilcún counties. In 2006, AA expanded its work to 44 schools in Angol, Lautaro, Padre Las Casas, Galvarino and Cunco counties. In 2007, AraucaníAprende expanded its work to 49 schools.

In short, this effort is aimed at impacting schools in high poverty sectors of the Chilean Araucanía region, and trough education, offer a better future for their children.

To help AraucaníAprende please contact us at   info@araucaniaprende.cl   or call 56-45-742242 (fax #: 56-45-244944)

Background

Araucanía Region’s educational attainment. The Chilean educational reform started in the early nineties with the aim to improve the quality and equity of the educational system. After more than a decade, a new curriculum is in place, schools have more resources (books, some computers) and most parents have now a choice of schools for their children in an increasingly competitive system. However, according to yearly national measurements (“SIMCE” test[1]) of learning to a large sample of students across the country, the quality of education is not improving in any significant terms. This stagnation is particularly worrisome in low-income schools where students show poor learning results; far below the national average, which is well below OECD countries according to the TIMMS and PISA[2] tests.

According to the SIMCE tests, the Araucanía region, with 1,341 schools (67% of which are rural), has consistently the lowest educational results of the 13 regions in the country, especially in mathematics and language.

It is also the poorest region; it has the largest indigenous population (Mapuche) and has also among the lowest figures according to the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) (10th out of 13 regions in education, last in health and 9th in terms of income). On a closer look inside the Araucanía region, it becomes evident that the situation is even worse in the poorest counties, which have many schools where a large proportion of students do not manage the basic linguistics and arithmetic skills required at their age and school level, even after 4 years of schooling. The Araucanía is the region that concentrates the largest number of counties with low or very low HDI of Chile.

According to CASEN (Mideplan 2003), the Araucanía region has 29,7% of its population below the poverty line, whereas the country, as a whole, has an average of 18,7%.  Improving education is considered by UN the foremost tool to overcome poverty, but many schools in poor areas of the Araucanía region have not managed to improve by themselves or through the official channels. They need better teaching models and adequate learning aids for their less advanced students.

“Effective schools” model. A number of schools in poor areas in Chile and elsewhere have shown that with well-proven learning methods, low-income children can significantly improve their learning outcomes. Indeed, some of these schools have achieved outstanding results, close to those more common in private paid upper-class urban schools. These schools are known as “effective schools” and UNICEF has documented the experience of fourteen of these schools in Chile, showing their common points and suggesting a path to follow for other schools in similar situations. Children graduating from these schools can pursue further studies and become professionals or technicians and therefore overcome their poor background. Effective schools are becoming a powerful hope for poor children, and a path to follow for other schools dealing with poor children.

According to PREAL and UNICEF[3], effective schools are those that manage to consistently deliver good quality education to all their students, despite their low-income and social background or the scarcity of the available resources. Effective schools show a common pattern of good management and rigorous teaching routines.  In terms of pedagogy, teachers in an effective school: (i) have explicit and clear goals known to all students and their parents; (ii) follow rigorously a number of classroom routines (i.e. 15 minutes of group reading in every language lesson; a monthly theme to be worked in depth by all students); (iii) have a lesson plan with a content network that covers the whole curriculum, which is permanently analyzed with the school administration together with the learning goals that have been defined; (iv) have high expectations on each student and a good relationship with them; (v) perform frequent evaluations to monitor learning progress and act rapidly with students that show learning problems. Besides, effective schools also act upon management, by focusing on learning outcomes more than on administrative issues. This includes continuous evaluation processes and clearly defined roles for each stakeholder (principal, teachers, parents, students).  In addition, openness of the schools towards its community is key and partnerships to improve educational performance with the municipalities, private sector, universities and communities are encouraged.  In sum, a effective school will have: (i) good management focused on results; (ii) teachers with solid knowledge, using new didactics and innovative materials in the classroom, conducting rigorous planning and evaluating students’ performance periodically, and (iii) community orientation.

Effective schools have demonstrated that teachers working with poor students can significantly improve their learning results by adhering to rigorous methods that comprise at least three elements: an improved didactics, good teaching and learning materials and permanent learning evaluations for feedback.