Quality in education, means future

CMPC Foundation is celebrating 18 years of dedicating its work, fundamentally, to contribute to the quality of education in Chile, through the design and implementation of programs and methodologies that have shown positive results in more than 53 public schools and nurseries distributed in rural and urban areas of the center and south of the country.

“With satisfaction, we can affirm today that the establishments intervened have reached results above the national averages in the areas and levels at which our support is specialized,” says the President of the CMPC Foundation, Guillermo Turner.

And a prominent case is the school Luis Ambrosio Concha from Yerbas Buenas, located in the province of Linares in the Maule region, establishment that in the last measurement of the Simce – a learning evaluation that addresses the achievement of the contents and skills of the curriculum in force in different subjects and learning areas, and that is applied to all the students of the country that study at the evaluated grades – delivered in May 2017 by the Quality Agency of Education, exceeded its own previous results, the national average of the establishments of the same Socio-Economic Group (GSE for its acronym in Spanish) and the general national average.

Even though the establishment has a vulnerability index higher than 95% due to the fact that all of the parents of the students are seasonal agricultural workers who work only a few months a year and live in rural areas (some students live two hours away from the establishment), the school made history last month. According to the results of the evaluation, the 21 students of the fourth grade obtained an average of 322 points in Language and Communication and 330 points in Math, surpassing the national average: 269 and 261 respectively.

In addition, the school’s 2017 average compared to the national average of similar GSE establishments in both subjects was higher. In Language and Communication they obtained 72 more points, while in Mathematics 92.

Likewise, the achievement of the students was also reflected in their own improvement. According to previous results and the principal of the school, Alba Vielma, “the establishment always gained in average over 6 to 7 points, but last year we took off”. And that is because in the last measurement, the students obtained 44 more points in Language and 60 in Math, compared to the Simce of 2016.

What is the reason for this “takeoff”? “There are two things that have been successful in school: The first one is that we have strengthened the good coexistence between students and teachers. The second one, the support of CMPC Foundation, which thanks to their advice to teachers and parents, we have improved the tools of education”, says Vielma.

Since 2002, CMPC Foundation supports this school in the areas of Language and Math, and according to the organization’s Executive Director, Carolina Andueza, the key to success lies in the work of all the actors involved. “The Simce score of this school is the result of the committed and professional work of all the teachers, with the support and management of a directive team that puts the focus on the pedagogical theme and has learned to take advantage of the tools provided by CMPC Foundation. Today they have fulfilled their dream of being an effective school, understanding that the most vulnerable children deserve the best education”.

With these results and support, “the children already want to be doctors, policemen, etc.”, says the principal, reflecting that social vulnerability can be overcome with quality education.