A silent revolutionary

She has been creating a silent revolution in schools not only in her own country Colombia but also others in Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. Combining her passion for teaching, inherited from her schoolteacher mother, with her study of sociology and education from Stanford University, Vicky Colbert has transformed large sections of Colombian community, particularly in the rural and marginalised areas.

Her funda is simple — “The only way to build future citizenship and have peace in the country is through the right type of quality education.”

At the World Innovation Summit in Education organised by the Qatar Foundation in Doha last month, she was declared the WISE Laureate for Education. With a cash prize of $500,000, the award recognises her work in developing and spreading the Escuela Nueva (‘new school’ in Spanish) model of education to over five million children worldwide.

The notable innovation by Vicky was in transforming the conventional teacher-centred educational model. Steadfast in her belief that different children learn at different paces, her model ensured the participation of parents and the community in the child’s education. It brought into play cost-effective teaching material to widen the reach to rural, remote, and marginalised areas and communities, transforming the role of teachers from mere transmitters of information to facilitators.

Making education relevant

“Rather than seated in rows, where the children look at other children’s back, they sat in small groups facing each other and learning through dialogue and interaction. The flexible grade promotions allow students to advance at their own pace, which is so crucial for success in multi-grade schools,” she says.

This model was created in Colombia at a time when rural primary schools faced high rates of grade repetition and student dropout, and low teacher morale. In the Escuela Nueva (EN) model, the curriculum is far from a mass-produced generic entity — it is locally adapted and made relevant to the everyday lives of students and the regions they inhabit.

Quiet revolutionary

Apart from basic subjects such as math, science and language, there are activities that strengthen each school’s relationship with the local community. More important, it focuses on the child’s self-esteem, and reinforces the democratic values necessary for peaceful co-existence.

At the high-profile WISE 2013 event, where over 1,500 eminent educationists, social entrepreneurs, and ministers from all over the world were present, this quiet revolutionary received the prize saying: “I may be the most visible person at EN, but there are thousands of children, teachers, parents, colleagues from national and international organisations on this journey with me… I receive this prize on behalf of all of them.”

She bagged the award for her “determination and persuasion to transfer ideas and processes to those who can put them to practical use. This innovative model continues to empower children to become free-thinking citizens, capable of building secure and prosperous communities.”

Later, interacting with Indian journalists, Vicky said traditional schoolteachers are “very distant from their students. But in our schools, everybody — teachers, parents, local community — works together for the child’s education. And students put their skills to use in the home and the community.”

She began this journey over 40 years ago; at 24, she joined the Ministry of Education and visited remote rural schools. As she went on to become the Vice-Minister of Education in the early 1980s, the EN model became a part of national policy. She left the government after two years and, knowing that “innovation often fails within governments and bureaucracy”, founded an NGO with the same name and later a Foundation. Along the way, the World Bank, Unicef and other organisations became partners after evaluating the model and its universal efficacy.

Comprehensive evaluations of the EN model have confirmed that its students not only academically outperform their peers from other streams of education, but also demonstrate higher self-esteem and social skills.

Where girls score

“We’ve found that girls’ participation and leadership skills are particularly boosted, as girls are quicker to grasp this model.” The students learn to live together, work in teams and take initiatives — essential global leadership skills “which I now call the 21st century skills”.

Vicky makes an interesting point when she says that she has actually done nothing new or earthshaking, only translating “complexity into simple manageable action, which any teacher without a PhD can manage”. This amazing social entrepreneur is quick to give credit to the “many wonderful teachers in Colombia who were doing many wonderful things in the rural, remote areas long before I began”.

Giving an example, she says that if you bring an MBBS doctor from the health sector 100 years ago and put him in a hospital today, he would be lost because everything has changed. But not so for a teacher from 100 years ago; she is not lost because nothing has changed except the way of learning.

Maintaining that none of these ideas are new, she says “they existed 100 years ago, but they are being practised only at the elite schools and not low-income schools. Now we have also adapted this model to urban, migrant and displaced populations throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, East Timor and Vietnam, and reached over 5 million children”.

Social entrepreneurs

So what makes a good social entrepreneur?

“We learn from the extremes; we start where there are pressing needs and we are very passionate and hard-headed. In obstacle we look for an opportunity. Bill Drayton, who actually created the concept of the social entrepreneur through the Ashoka Foundation, says you need three things to succeed: Good innovation, a paradigm shift, and strategies to replicate and scale up. An ethical fabric is also extremely important.”

Vicky says that in Colombia there were many problems of drugs and violence among the youth, which got people like her thinking “not only systematically but also with cutting-edge pedagogies. Over 30 years ago, we were talking of the new role of the teacher, shift of learning paradigm, collaborative and self-paced learning… So we try to fill the gap between governments and the entrepreneurs who are doing amazing things at different levels.”

India experience

Vicky Colbert, founder of the Escuela Nueva (EN) NGO and later Foundation, is convinced that the EN model would work wonderfully in India, not only in reaching quality education to schoolchildren but also in empowering women. Several years ago, the World Bank sent some Indian bureaucrats and teachers to be trained in this model. But nothing much came of it. Six years ago, the Unicef brought in some more Indians, but the EN model is yet to reach India!

She herself visited India many years ago, intending to set up the EN model here. “Unfortunately, I chose Hyderabad, which is not the right place as there is an NGO in every block.” She soon realised that to do anything meaningful in India you have to get the right partners.

Vicky is sad that nothing much came from her efforts because “there was momentum and so much interest from the Government of India. I always feel that it is good to have innovations first within the system. But I also know that innovations fail within governments, so you need other partners on the ground. But government support is so essential.”

She has met Education Secretaries from India, and says she tried to do something in Rajasthan because the bureaucrat was really interested. But by the time the project could materialise, he was no longer the Education Secretary. “But this happens everywhere, and that is why I had to create an NGO, because when I left the Ministry (in Colombia) I knew this baby is going to fall down!”

Vicky still harbours the dream of “using this approach for women’s organisations in India, which is the world’s largest democracy, and this model gives 21st century skills, which would be relevant to women’s empowerment.”

(The writer was in Doha at the invitation of the Qatar Foundation to attend the World Innovation Summit for Education.)

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