I would be remiss if I didn't write more about the public/private split in education in Colombia. Unlike the US where most students attend public school (roughly 90% of all students) and you can find people of all socioeconomic classes in public school, Colombia seems to show a wider gap between public and private school attendance based on socioeconomic class. I'm sure that an even wider gap is present in education between rural and urban schools but I was only able to view urban schools.
In one day we started at a public school which I wrote about in my last post, Colegio Codema, and ended the day in a private school. While we saw committed, great teachers at the public school, the resources available to them were minimal including technology and books. Additionally, even though bilingualism is an important agenda in Colombian education,very few students that I met could speak English well enough to have a conversation beyond a few words. Opportunities for speaking in English are very limited for the public school students.
At the end of the day, we visited a private all-girls Catholic school, Colegio del Rosario del Santo Domingo. What we experienced there had a very different feel.
We first met with a group of students who spoke English incredibly well. They answered our many questions about their school and about their interests in the future. One senior was heading to England in the fall for college and all of them, no matter their age, had specific careers in mind for their future. Chemical engineers, lawyers, and economists were some of the careers that they see in their futures. The private school students were so articulate, poised and together that they really impressed us. But what really stood out was the opportunities that they have had for travel, for learning English, and for exploring future career options in their lives. They have the skills, the education and the opportunities available to them that public school students do not seem to have in Colombia.