Un Buen Comienzo - Oportunidad Educational Foundation

40 schools from O'Higgins and Metropolitan regions met in 2nd UBC learning session

Posted on 20192020 by Herrera

Around 200 people, including educators and kindergarten technicians, heads of technical-pedagogical units, directors and managers from the municipalities of Malloa, Paredones, San Fernando, Mostazal and El Olivar, in the O'Higgins region, and Renca in the Metropolitan region, analyzed the results of the first semester's work with the Fundación Educacional Oportunidad team to project the improvements to be made to face the remainder of the school year.

40 municipal schools from the Metropolitan and O'Higgins regions that participate in the professional development program A Good Start met this Thursday to share the progress they have made in their prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms during the first semester and to project an improvement plan for the end of the school year.

Collaborative work is the basis of the continuous improvement methodology used by this program, whose objective is to improve the quality of early education, supporting schools in improving pedagogical and leadership practices so that children can achieve better socioemotional and language development.

During the day, a workshop was held to allow educational teams and managers to reflect on the results obtained to date. On the other hand, tools were given to the management teams to strengthen the areas that have allowed them to achieve good results in their schools and to adjust those where there is room for improvement.

The executive director of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, Marcela Marzolo, pointed out that this Learning Session "is a very relevant instance, since for the second time this year it brought together the educational and management teams and the community representatives of all the schools participating in the Good Start program to share their achievements, learning and challenges, learning from each other and reflecting collectively to find together the best ways to move forward to achieve the goals, which translates into more and better learning for the children at the early childhood level".

Jordi Longás: "It is well proven that the positive relationship between school and families points to success".

Posted on 20192020 by Herrera

The Spanish doctor in pedagogy shared his experience in socio-educational networks with educational teams and directors of the O'Higgins Region.

Jordi Longás, a researcher specialized in the creation of spaces for collaboration between schools and the community, visited Rancagua to give a talk and share experiences with nearly 100 participants of the Improvement Network A Good Start (UBC) of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, composed of educators, kindergarten technicians, UTP heads, directors and managers of 89 schools and 118 classrooms in 12 municipalities of the O'Higgins Region.

During the event, together with the members of the only network in Chile focused on improving kindergarten education, Longás presented details of his experience in collaborative work and invited the participants to carry out practical exercises to recognize who their collaborative networks are and what relationship they are building with them.

"We have had a spectacular day with a lot of participation and interest in collaborative work," said Jordi Longás after the meeting. And he took the opportunity to leave a message to the community: "it is well proven that the positive relationship between school and families points to success. I would tell them to help the teachers, to trust them and also that the school trusts the parents. Between them, they should build good collaborative relationships".

At the meeting, representatives of the communes of Coltauco and Chimbarongo, members of the UBC Improvement Network, also had the opportunity to share with their peers from the O'Higgins region some of their successful practices to improve children's learning. Afterwards, they joined a panel to exchange ideas that was moderated by Álvaro González, Systemic Leadership Coordinator of Líderes Educativos.

The director of the Chimbarongo Nursery School, Marcela Lira, emphasized that "it was very enriching to listen to Jordi because he gave us new tools to further improve our Improvement Network. The fact that we were able to share our experience is part of what it means to work collaboratively: We all learn from each other".

Headmasters and principals of 60 municipal schools in the VI Region are trained in sustainability.

Posted on 20182020 by Herrera

In order to maintain the strategies of the Good Start programme over time, directors of municipal schools and school managers from 13 municipalities in the O'Higgins Region attended training given by the area of Continuous Improvement of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad.

Sixty schools from 13 municipalities that make up the Improvement Network of the Good Start programme met to learn about and deepen their knowledge of sustainability tools that will allow them to maintain the strategies and methodologies of the Good Start programme in their classrooms, schools and municipalities over time.

"The objective of this instance is to study and strengthen the sustainability processes experienced by the school and community teams this year 2018 through the delivery of concrete tools for continuous improvement. In this, the management teams and supporters play a fundamental role, as they are the ones who must lead the process that ensures that the strategies and methodologies that worked at the initial level are maintained, making this a continuous process in the classroom, school and commune until quality is fully integrated into the structure and operation", explains Carolina Soto, director of the Foundation's Continuous Improvement area.

During the day, attendees recalled the importance of sustaining strategies to maintain quality, studied their sustainability processes, highlighted the importance of recording specifically in the PHEA (plan, do, evaluate and adjust) improvement cycles to build learning and adjusted ideas or innovations to continue improving in the second half of 2018.

"It has been a great help for us this year and now we want to sustain the strategies, so we are very interested that this programme can be repeated in the other classes and that is why we have attended this training. We have to recognise that this programme has changed early education," said Hernán Barraza, principal of the Mariano Latorre school in Codegua.

Prior to this training, management teams and supporters have received workshops on PHEA continuous improvement cycles, data analysis, the 5 elements theory for sustainability and the 7 levers for leadership.

The objective of all these trainings is to empower management teams and supporters by providing them with the tools to lead improvement processes and implement strategies and methodologies of the Good Start programme to improve teaching and learning autonomously when the Foundation is no longer with them on the ground.

The head of the Chimbarongo DAEM, Víctor Gajardo, values this work with Un Buen Comienzo, "working with the Foundation has been wonderful. We were among the first municipalities to join the programme and it has given us excellent results".

A Good Start is a professional development programme for teachers and managers that seeks to contribute to improving the quality of early education, supporting schools in improving pedagogical and leadership practices so that children can achieve better socio-emotional and language development, and that this 2018 seeks to sustain the strategies delivered in previous years in schools and municipalities.

Launch of the book "A Good Start for the children of Chile".

Posted on 20182020 by Herrera

The Centre-UC and the Centro de Políticas Comparadas en Educación (CPCE) of the Universidad Diego Portales have carried out 10 years of registration and rigorous evaluations of pre-school and kindergarten teachers and children in 153 municipal schools in the O'Higgins region that have participated in the professional development programme Un Buen Comienzo (UBC) of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad.

The strategies applied by the early education programme Un Buen Comienzo of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad have had a positive impact on the classroom teams and thus on the pre-school and kindergarten children in Chilean municipal schools. This is the main conclusion reached by the research in the book "A Good Start for the children of Chile".

The document was presented this month by the Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, together with the Faculty of Education of the Universidad Diego Portales and CENTRE-UC of the Universidad Católica and describes the history, results, lessons and perspectives of the Foundation's Un Buen Comienzo (UBC) programme. It is a unique record in Chile, as there are few early education programmes that demonstrate positive impacts in key areas of development for vulnerable children.

"What the Foundation and the Good Start programme are doing is in line with what the government wants to achieve, quality programmes based on studies that support them. These results provide the basis for implementing this programme in public education," said María Angélica Balmaceda, Head of the Education Policy Division of the Undersecretariat for Pre-school Education, at the launch.

Ernesto Treviño, director of CENTRE-UC at the Catholic University and leader of the research that resulted in the book "A Good Start for the Children of Chile", described this study as "a unique record in Chile, as there are few early education programmes that demonstrate positive impacts in essential areas of development of children in vulnerable situations",

The positive results of the Good Start programme enabled children to achieve higher levels of language development by increasing their vocabulary, letter and word recognition, emergent writing and text comprehension. These improvements are reflected in the fact that by the end of kindergarten, children who received UBC strategies achieved language development one year ahead of their peers who did not participate in the initiative.

In addition, the children achieved higher levels of concentration and organisation in carrying out activities. They developed better skills in socialising with their peers, working cooperatively, supporting those with problems and building friendships.

"Ten years ago we began testing a model of professional development for teachers and principals in the search for improvements in pedagogical and leadership practices and, therefore, in children's learning. Today, after much learning and adjustments to the proposal, we have a solid model that has shown impact and goes beyond the classroom, involving all actors in the system," said Marcela Marzolo, executive director of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad.

The Good Start programme was designed jointly by representatives of civil society and academics from Harvard University in 2006 to contribute to Chilean municipal early education and has been evaluated since its inception by the Centro de Políticas Comparadas de Educación of the Universidad Diego Portales, later joined by the CIAE of the Universidad de Chile and the Centro UC para la Transformación Educativa of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Measuring system

This study used CLASS (Classroom Assessment Scoring System), an international observation instrument developed by the University of Virginia in the United States to measure the effectiveness of teacher-student interactions - which, according to studies, is primarily responsible for children's learning. CLASS measures three main areas: emotional support, classroom organisation and pedagogical support.

Successful results of "Un Buen Comienzo" presented at international education meeting

Posted on 20182020 by Herrera

At the "Annual ProLEER Meeting at Harvard", representatives of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad presented the good results of 10 years of work with pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children in Chilean municipal schools, which are reflected in a book that will be launched next week in our country: "A Good Start for the children of Chile".

Marcela Marzolo, Executive Director of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad, together with Andrea Rolla, Advisor to the Foundation for Harvard University, presented the history, the good results and the lessons learned from the early education programme "Buen Comienzo" at the annual meeting of Proleer at Harvard, which took place this week in Boston.

ProLEER (Professional Learning Network to Advance Early Education Reform) is an international network of researchers, academics, policy makers and programme implementers committed to improving educational practice and policy to raise the quality of early childhood learning. It was founded in 2009 by Harvard University students in collaboration with Professor Catherine Snow of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

At this meeting, representatives from the United States, the Netherlands, India, Pakistan and Latin America visited a public school in Boston, participated in conferences and shared knowledge and experiences related to education and the situation of education in the different countries represented. Andrea Rolla, Harvard advisor for Fundación Educacional Oportunidad and co-organiser of the event, said that "this is a very important initiative, because it allows us to share experiences, research, and public policies within the region, with Harvard, and internationally".

Within the framework of the presentations, Marcela Marzolo, Executive Director of the foundation together with Andrea Rolla, presented the book "A Good Start for the children of Chile", a document that describes the history, results, lessons and perspectives of the early education programme A Good Start (UBC), a unique record in Chile, as there are very few rigorous and systematic studies of early education programmes that demonstrate a positive impact on children's learning.

The Good Start programme was designed in 2007 to contribute to Chilean municipal early education and has been evaluated since its inception by the CPCE of the Diego Portales University and the CIAE of the University of Chile, demonstrating its impact on the learning of vulnerable children in early education.

Marcela Marzolo valued the opportunity to present the book and the excellent results of the programme at an international education meeting; "We are happy about the interest in our presentation on the Good Start programme, which only ratifies the international recognition that our work is receiving".

The book, presented at the Boston conference, will be launched in Chile next Tuesday, October 9th at 16:30 hrs. in the Auditorium of the Faculty of Law of the Universidad Diego Portales and will also be attended by the Undersecretary of Early Childhood Education, María José Castro, as well as a talk by Pedro Delgado, an expert in continuous improvement from the Institute from Healthcare Improvement, who will tell how the continuous improvement model was adapted in a unique and innovative way to this early childhood education programme in Chile.

40 schools from O'Higgins and Metropolitan regions met in 2nd UBC learning session

Jordi Longás: "It is well proven that the positive relationship between school and families points to success".

Headmasters and principals of 60 municipal schools in the VI Region are trained in sustainability.

Launch of the book "A Good Start for the children of Chile".

Successful results of "Un Buen Comienzo" presented at international education meeting

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