The Undersecretary for Pre-school Education, María José Castro, said after participating in the Learning Session that brought together kindergarten educators and technicians, management teams and Daem heads of the Improvement Network of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad's Un Buen Comienzo programme.

The activity brought together 13 communes, 60 schools and nearly 250 people around this Improvement Network that promotes actions aimed at the sustainability of good educational and leadership practices, as well as collaborative work between educational communities with a focus on the learning of children at the early childhood level.
"Children come first" is the government's motto for expressing its concern for early education, which was recalled by María José Castro, Undersecretary for Pre-school Education, who also recognised the Foundation's work in this area, "it is a great programme that works with communities, sponsors, directors, educators and assistants, so that the quality of learning comes directly to the classroom, through quality interactions, one of the programme's focuses".
With regard to this Improvement Network of the Good Start Programme and the results presented at the conference, the undersecretary pointed out that "we are certain that in education the best practices come from the learning communities, especially when there is accurate data that allows us to identify the difficulties and successful proposals and thus make the right decisions".
In this second Learning Session, successful experiences were shared between communes and schools, the results obtained in the first half of the year, in order to plan the second semester, all with a focus on sustaining the programme's strategies to generate quality learning.
The educator Mabel Leyton from the Amparo Rayo school in Quinta de Tilcoco, considers that these learning sessions "are important to interact with other educators by learning about the strengths and weaknesses of the network". Patricia Pérez, an educator who only learned about the programme this year at the Chimbarongo kindergarten, has a similar opinion: "It was a very intense but motivating day. The programme is incredible, it has very good results that are reflected in the children's learning".
The Fundación Educacional Oportunidad programme has been working for 7 years with schools in the VI region and 11 years in the metropolitan region, contributing to the improvement of the quality of early education, supporting school teams in the improvement of pedagogical and leadership practices so that children can achieve better socio-emotional and language development.
Since 2011, the Foundation has been working with the Continuous Improvement Methodology, which is based on "collaborative" work and the exchange of experiences between the schools that are part of the programme and the implementation of improvement cycles to test ideas (Plan, Do, Study and Adjust).
"I think it is a contribution, hopefully it will become state policy and all municipalities will be obliged to participate in this network, because at the moment it is voluntary. If we want to improve education in Chile, we must start with early education using the strategies of the Good Start programme," says Teresa Rojas, head of Daem in the commune of Codegua.
This year the programme is focused on providing tools for the sustainability of successful practices, as well as on strengthening this improvement network with a focus on early education, explains Marcela Marzolo, executive director of the Foundation, who also points out that "we are happy with this Learning Session that strengthens the work of the Improvement Network around early education. The communes that are part of this Network are tremendously committed to early education and generously share their achievements and challenges with their peers because they are convinced that the best way to advance quality in early education is to do it collaboratively".
This is the second and last session of the year for the continuous improvement work of Fundación Educacional Oportunidad's Un Buen Comienzo programme. During the rest of the year the schools will continue to meet by commune and peer-to-peer visits will take place to continue advancing quality.