Barranquilla Mayor's Office and the British Council form an alliance to award 920 scholarships to strengthen English learning

The Mayor's Office of Barranquilla reported that with the 'I am Bilingüe' program as a public government policy for the next 10 years, through the District Secretariat of Education, it made an alliance with the British Council, a British international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities.

This union has already been implemented with an integrated bilingual curriculum, which seeks to teach other areas of knowledge in the English language. It also includes updating and training in didactics for the teaching of English and the participation of teachers in the District.

With this, they will award 920 scholarships to strengthen the learning of English for high school and middle school students, called 'English without borders'. According to the local administration, the British Council approached the Jorge Nicolás Abello Technical District Educational Institution, the first bilingual public school in Colombia.

It is noteworthy that it is one of the first institutions to implement the integrated bilingual curriculum. “The objective is to strengthen the actions already implemented by the institution to teach the areas of knowledge in the English language and, subsequently, to implement it in the other official schools of the city,” said the mayor's office.

“We are happy to have such an important ally as the British Council in the implementation of our 'I am Bilingual programme' and that this is our partner, as our mayor Jaime Pumarejo says, to ensure that this project continues and is implemented in the long term. The most benefited are, without a doubt, the Barranquilla families, our children and young people,” said the Secretary of Education, Bibiana Rincón.

Likewise, the district explained that the intervention in FDI is Jermaine McDougald, an expert in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), which refers to integrated learning of content and foreign languages.

It should be noted that, information from the mayor's office revealed that, during the day, meetings were held with focus groups made up of teachers from each area, class observations, talks with administrative and teaching managers and with students to learn about the dynamics within each area and subsequently make their contributions to strengthen the institution's bilingualism project.

“It is key to use this campus as a model for closing education gaps and bringing this example to other institutions at the country level. T he fact that we have a quality bilingual education is important because it opens doors of opportunity anywhere in the world, generating employment, development and education,” said Jermaine.

For her part, Matilde Camargo, rector of the Jorge Nicolás Abello educational institution, pointed out that “today we find it wonderful to have the support of the District that will allow us to have the necessary improvements in our curriculum and this in turn will make us a model in bilingual teaching. Now we will know if we are doing well or if there are things to improve that will also contribute to the challenge of making Barranquilla a bilingual city.”

The local government said that “the 'I am Bilingüe' program is part of the city's development agenda, which began to be structured since 2020 as a medium-term challenge, with 121 official educational institutions in 2022, currently impacting more than 91,000 children and young people and 1,500 teachers.”

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