In a joint effort between the Municipality of Renca and Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, the commune will join this 2019 the professional development program for teachers and directors "Un Buen Comienzo", which seeks to contribute to the improvement of the quality of early education by supporting schools in improving pedagogical and leadership practices.

For the first time in the 12 years of work of the early education program "A Good Start", Fundación Educacional Oportunidad will implement this initiative in the municipality of Renca, where nine municipal schools will receive the strategies and methodologies proposed by the program for two years.

The objectives of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad's program are to improve children's learning in the area of language, promote quality interactions in the classroom, increase the effective use of time dedicated to teaching and learning, improve attendance and strengthen the leadership of management teams.

To begin this work, 29 educators and kindergarten technicians were trained for three days in language and time use strategies such as: oral comprehension, vocabulary, writing, organization of the day, among others.

 "They have given us very applicable strategies to implement with the children. We had not had such a complete course and it is very good for us and for the community. I loved the vocabulary strategy, we had not worked on it in this way and we are leaving with my technician with many ideas to implement with the children", commented Paula Contreras, kindergarten educator at Rebeca Mate Bello School.

Mariela Allende, kindergarten educator at the Isabel Lebrún school, had a similar opinion: "It was very entertaining, very playful and the trainers were very good, they answered all the questions. The interaction of choices, as part of the vocabulary strategy, where the children cover their mouths for the wrong meaning of a word and when the correct meaning is mentioned, they take their hands out and say the word, was the one that most caught my attention".

The Renca schools that join 30 other establishments in the O'Higgins region for 2019-2020 are: Escuela Juana De Lestonac, Escuela Básica Monserrat Robert De García, Liceo Thomas Alva Edison, Escuela Rebeca Matte Bello, Escuela Gustavo Le Paige, Escuela Domingo Santa María, Escuela Capitán José Luis Araneda, Escuela Isabel Le Brun and Escuela Juana Atala de Hirmas. In total there are nine schools, 16 classrooms (pre-kindergarten and kindergarten), 29 educators and kindergarten technicians and their respective management teams that will seek to provide more and better learning opportunities to nearly 500 children in the commune.

Daniela Eroles, Director of Education of the Municipal Corporation of Renca, commented that it is a joy to join the Foundation's program where the children will ultimately benefit the most and stressed that "our main concern is to provide the best education throughout the educational path of our students and that is why starting from kindergarten education is essential for the future of the children".

A Good Start works directly with the educational teams (educators and kindergarten technicians), management teams (principals and UTP heads), community DAEM teams and also actively involves the parents of the communities in which it is implemented. At the end of the two years of the program, the schools and districts that have graduated from the program become part of a large Improvement Network that shares strategies, work methodology and common objectives focused on children's learning. This network stands out for its collaborative work and is currently made up of 56 schools from 12 municipalities in the O'Higgins Region.

What measures can we implement to promote attendance in the early years? These are the issues that we should be discussing, and that will make it possible to prevent the high dropout rates that alarm us today.

Mr. Director,

It is not important whether 138,000 or 358,000 children and young people have dropped out of school. What is important today is how we prevent more young people from becoming part of that number.

Evidence, both national and international, shows that promoting regular school attendance at an early age has a positive impact on learning and habit formation, which in turn reduces the risk of dropping out of school.

What measures can we implement to promote attendance in the early years? These are the issues that we should be discussing, and that will make it possible to prevent the high dropout rates that alarm us today.

Marcela Marzolo M.
Executive Director
Fundación Educacional Oportunidad

Educational teams and directors of 30 municipal schools join the professional development program for teachers and directors of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, which seeks to contribute to improving the quality of early education, supporting schools in improving pedagogical and leadership practices so that students can achieve better social-emotional and language development.

This year 2019 around 100 educators and nursery school technicians and their respective management teams from 30 municipal schools in five municipalities in the O'Higgins region will join the early education program Un Buen Comienzo (A Good Start).

Improving children's learning in the area of language, promoting quality interactions in the classroom, increasing the effective use of time dedicated to teaching and learning, improving attendance and strengthening the leadership of management teams are the objectives pursued by Fundación Educacional Oportunidad's program, which has been successfully implemented in nearly 200 Chilean municipal schools for the past 11 years.

The new municipalities in the O'Higgins region to join the program are Mostazal, Malloa, San Fernando, Olivar and Paredones. Sammy Ormazábal, mayor of Paredones, appreciates the work that will be done with the Foundation to improve the quality of early education and emphasizes that "the program will not only be related to educators and kindergarten technicians, but also to the management teams, the DAEM and will actively involve the parents".

As a starting point, during the summer, and for 3 days, the new educational teams were trained in the language strategies of Un Buen Comienzo. "It is a structured, organized, well thought-out program that is aimed directly at our children, since we often apply strategies that come from other levels such as basic education, and there is not much language material that we can apply, and the program provides just what we needed," said Rosa Cifuentes, an early childhood educator from the Olivar community, who participated in the training.

Natali Ramírez, an educator from the commune of Malloa, has a similar opinion: "what has most caught my attention are the vocabulary strategies, which have a clear intentionality". In addition, the professional emphasizes that "the program will provide concrete tools to carry out a more systematic work".

A Good Start works directly with the educational teams (educators and kindergarten technicians), management teams (principals and UTP heads), community DAEM teams and also actively involves the parents of the communities in which it is implemented. At the end of the two years of the program, the schools and communes that have graduated from the program become part of a large Improvement Network that shares strategies, work methodology and common objectives focused on children's learning. This network has been working collaboratively for one year and is currently made up of 56 schools from 12 municipalities: Chimbarongo, Codegua, Machalí, Coltauco, Las Cabras, San Vicente, Doñihue, Mostazal, Peumo, Quinta de Tilcoco, Pichidegua and Rengo.

Marcela Marzolo, executive director of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, says that "we are very happy to welcome new communities and schools in 2019 that will participate in Un Buen Comienzo and that will join the Improvement Network in the future, increasing the challenge for the Foundation to achieve the sustainability of the strategies and the collaborative work in the network.

The Zúñiga school in San Vicente has been implementing Un Buen Comienzo for three years now and is part of the network. For early childhood educator Tamara Sepúlveda, "this program is an opportunity for professional growth and a tremendous tool that will strengthen the new teams in every way. In addition, the results show that there is progress, I saw it in my children".

Using innovative and diverse strategies tested by Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, two Fundación Integra kindergartens in the O'Higgins Region were able to increase attendance and reduce chronic absenteeism, providing more learning opportunities for children.

Attendance is a key factor in the learning and development of children in the early education stage. Aware of this fact, and alerted by the reality of high non-attendance of infants, Fundación Integra Región de O'Higgins worked during 2018 implementing a series of strategies to increase attendance.

Missing 10% or more of school days in a year - regardless of the reason - is qualified as "chronic absenteeism" and is associated with lower learning, mainly in language and mathematics in 1st and 5th grade.

Fundación Integra's annual goal is for each child to attend 75% of the school year's school days. At the end of the pilot program in the middle school levels (3 to 4 years old) of two kindergartens in the region and comparing the results between a level that received the strategies and another that did not participate in the pilot program, it was observed that 78% of the children in the intervened level met Fundación Integra's attendance goal and only 60% in the non-intervened level. In addition, the percentage of children with chronic absenteeism decreased by 24% (77% in the non-intervened level and 53% in the intervened level).

These achievements were possible thanks to the systematic and committed work of educators and principals with strategies arising from Fundación Educacional Oportunidad's program, Un Buen Comienzo, which have proven to be effective in municipal schools in the O'Higgins Region. 

"We are very happy to work with Fundación and the progress we have been able to achieve. We believe that the focus on educational quality is achieved when our children are really in educational spaces, which is why each of these tools that we work together with the Foundation are vital for these objectives. We also want families to understand the importance of their children attending classes and that is why we will continue with this program in 2019", said the regional director of Fundación Integra Yenny Villanueva Carvallo.

The Bello Horizonte kindergarten achieved the best progress in meeting the attendance goal of Fundación Integra Región de O'Higgins. Its senior middle level not only achieved a 12% increase in attendance, but also surprised by decreasing a high rate of chronic absenteeism, from 97% in 2017 to 45% in 2018.

Nicol Delgado, kindergarten educator at the Bello Horizonte kindergarten, explains that they are surprised with the good results obtained and points out that "the best strategies were Super Attendance, which motivated the children to attend classes, and the meetings with parents to explain the importance of their children attending kindergarten".

Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, through its early education program Un Buen Comienzo, has been working on school attendance for more than 7 years, designing and testing strategies together with the educational teams and directors of more than 150 schools in the O'Higgins and Metropolitan regions. Yanira Aleé, Assistance Coordinator of the Foundation, points out that "this achievement of Fundación Integra would be impossible without the great involvement of the classroom teams and the directors of the pilot kindergartens, who applied our strategies and also created new ones, achieving these surprising results".

In Chile, attendance is measured as a monthly average per grade, which does not allow the identification of children suffering from absenteeism, so Fundación Educacional Oportunidad proposes a change of look and performs an analysis for each child, detecting important figures of chronic absenteeism. To combat it, both universal strategies are used, aimed at all children, and individual ones, focused on those children who are at risk or are in the category of chronic absenteeism. These include an attendance superhero who motivates children to attend classes, an attendance panel, parent meetings where information is provided to families, incentives and an Attendance Committee, among others.

In the coming years, Fundación Integra intends to implement the strategies in more kindergartens in the O'Higgins region, in order to achieve the institutional goals, but above all to ensure that the children who attend the institution have many more opportunities for learning and comprehensive development.

We know that early education is a key stage in the comprehensive development of children, but its benefits are evident only when it is of high quality. We thank the participating institutions, and we hope that this work will be a contribution to public policies on early education in our country.

Yesterday, 24 civil society organisations linked to early childhood education presented to the Undersecretary of Early Childhood Education a document entitled "Analysis, proposals and measures to contribute to improving the quality of early childhood education processes in Chile".

The document addresses five key areas that have an impact on the quality of educational experiences and therefore on children's learning. These proposals focus on the promotion of effective interactions in the classroom, initial training and professional development of educational teams (educators and technicians), the importance of pedagogical leadership, family involvement in this educational stage and how to evaluate to improve the quality of early education processes.

We know that early education is a key stage in the comprehensive development of children, but its benefits are evident only when it is of high quality. We thank the participating institutions, and we hope that this work will be a contribution to public policies on early education in our country.

In a document submitted to the Undersecretary of Early Childhood Education, 24 civil society organisations related to early education and gathered in an Inter-institutional Working Group, seek to contribute with measures aimed at improving the quality of education from 0 to 6 years of age in Chile.

Effective interactions; initial and continuous training of educators and early childhood technicians; pedagogical leadership; family involvement and process evaluation are the five areas in which the Inter-institutional Roundtable on Early Childhood Education submitted proposals and concrete measures to the government to contribute to improving the quality of teaching in early childhood education.

In each of the five areas mentioned, a brief diagnosis and bibliographical discussion is presented, leading to measures that could be implemented, some of them by the Ministry of Education, others by universities, professional institutes and technical training centres, and even by the educational establishments themselves, as appropriate.

The Undersecretary of Early Childhood Education, María José Castro, valued the work of the Inter-institutional Roundtable, noting that "Chile needs this type of work, from civil society, the private sector and the government to improve Chilean education". Regarding the proposals, she commented that "once again the focus is on the quality of kindergarten education, where there is 100% agreement between what the document proposes and what the government is promoting".

The Inter-institutional Working Group was led by Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, which has been successfully implementing early education strategies in Chilean municipal schools for 10 years. Marcela Marzolo, executive director of the Foundation, highlighted the quality of the proposals and the serious work of the roundtable: "the proposals and measures contained in the document were discussed and agreed upon by organisations with extensive experience in education. As a Foundation, we believe that they can be a real contribution to public policies, as they gather the experience of the field together with the evidence - both national and international - about what we should be doing if we really want to provide quality early education that ensures learning and a harmonious and comprehensive development of the children of our country".

Marcela Bertoglio, director of the School of Kindergarten Education at the Universidad Católica del Maule considers that "it was a consensual work, but with different points of view that aim to improve quality and the processes that we know should be implemented in early education". For her part, Marta Edwards, executive director of the Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Psicosocial, assures that "the issue of quality within educational spaces is fundamental, as it is what really impacts on children's learning, and feeling that our proposals are aligned with the Undersecretariat indicates that we are moving in the right direction as a country".

A few months ago, the Ministry received the proposals of "The Initial Plan", of which many of the organisations participating in this roundtable were part, and whose focus was on access, quality and institutionality. The document presented this week focuses exclusively on the quality of early education processes. What is understood by quality education, how it is achieved, how it is measured, who are the actors involved, are some of the questions that this document answers with concrete proposals, being a complement and a deepening of what was presented by El Plan Inicial to the Ministry of Education.

The "Mesa Interinstitucional de Calidad de los Procesos en Educación Inicial" had the active participation of 24 civil society organisations: Acción Educar, Centro de Estudios de Desarrollo y Estimulación Psicosocial (CEDEP), Centro de Estudios Montessori, Centro de Estudios Primera Infancia (CEPI), Centro de Justicia Educacional, Comité para la Infancia y la Familia, Corporación Emprender, Desafío Levantemos Chile, Educación 2020, Educa UC, Elige Educar, Fundación CAP, Fundación Chile, Fundación CMPC, Harvard University, Hogar de Cristo, Fundación Aprendiz, World Organization for Early Childhood Education, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Protectora de la Infancia, Tu Clase Tu País, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Universidad Católica del Maule and Universidad de las Américas.

THE PROPOSALS