What is Escuela Nueva?

Escuela Nueva is child-centered, community-based education led by teachers who are facilitators for innovative learning. Cost-effective and highly adaptable, Escuela Nueva works with—and for—millions of children around the world.

Escuela Nueva means "new school" in Spanish, and since 1975 Escuela Nueva educational programs have been making schools and schooling a new enterprise. Developed initially in Colombia in 1975, Escuela Nueva has been adopted by 14 countries, and its successes have inspired educational reforms in more than 35 countries.

Today, more than 5 million children benefit from the child-centered, community-based Escuela Nueva methodology.

In practice, Escuela Nueva responds directly and systematically to education challenges that arise in communities with poor educational infrastructure, inadequate resources, high teacher turnover, high repetition and drop out rates, and low academic achievement.

Escuela Nueva programs are based on three essential elements: innovative curriculum, effective teacher training, and community empowerment. Implemented together, these three ingredients enable teachers and administrators to make lasting improvements to the quality and effectiveness of basic education.

Escuela Nueva is education programming that works because it is practical, flexible, and user-friendly. When individual communities and whole countries adopt Escuela Nueva, they adapt its curriculum and methods to meet their own specific needs. As a result, Escuela Nueva is used by teachers in multi-grade classrooms, conventional grade schools, and unconventional educational settings.

Teaching the world by teaching the world's children. The Escuela Nueva model is successfully educating child refugees, cultural minorities, and children in both rural and marginalized urban schools, from Brazil, Panama, and Mexico to the Philippines, Guyana,   and Uganda.