At a time when educational innovation is often associated with large urban centers and cutting-edge technologies, rural schools are emerging as spaces for pedagogical transformation. With an international perspective and a track record dedicated to identifying the best educational practices around the world, Alfredo Hernando, CEO and founder of Escuela 21, invites us to rethink the paradigms of where and how innovation in education takes place.
He did so on Friday at the III National Congress of Rural Schools, held in Teruel, with his presentation entitled “The innovation that rural schools bring to the world.”
Through his experience visiting pioneering schools around the world, Hernando has seen that many of the most creative, flexible, and student-centered initiatives are born precisely in rural contexts.
Far from being a limitation, these environments can become living laboratories for educational experimentation, where communities, contact with the environment, and the closeness between teachers and students create the ideal conditions for transformative learning.
In this interview, Alfredo Hernando tells us about his experience and the ideas he presented at the Teruel Socio-Cultural Center on Friday.
What are the main ideas or messages you want to convey with your presentation “The innovation that rural schoolsbring to the world”?
Above all, to explore what the most innovative international experiences in rural schools have in common. The main ideas to highlight are that right now, all over the world, there is a great deal of tension between urban and rural life, the idea that cities are growing rapidly but the quality of life is remaining in the villages, and that in order for there to be quality of life and population settlement, schools are needed.
Schools are becoming the beacon that is anchoring the population and making rural life possible. In addition, rural schools have a long tradition of innovation because they have been forced to educate students of all ages, at all times, mixing all kinds of subjects. And that is something that has now become part of everyday life in many other schools, as there is a process of ruralization of education underway.
In other words, schools want to be more like the ideal that rural schools once were, where children of different ages work in teams at different times. Mixing more, experimenting more, with more permeability from the environment.
“Schools are becoming the beacon that is anchoring the population.”
What do you consider to be the most valuable contribution of rural schools to educational innovation globally?
I think the most valuable, without a doubt, is the ability to work and plan vertically with children of different ages.
Another valuable contribution is the ability or permeability of rural schools to the environment, the connection with families, with everything that happens around them. And then another very important one, which becomes so obvious when you have children of different ages all mixed together at the same time: each one of them is unique and you are following a different process with each one. Because you can have a 6-year-old and a 12-year-old and, obviously, they are learning language in different ways.
And being so clear that each of them is going through a different process, even though they are together, is precisely the great challenge for schools today, which is the personalization of learning. We are talking about innovative experiences in rural schools.
Could you share a specific example of an innovative experience in an international rural school that has particularly impressed you?
Internationally, there is a very large network that started in Colombia called the Red de Escuela Nueva (New School Network), which was created precisely to provide assistance in rural areas, especially in coffee-growing communities. This network developed a whole model with very poorly qualified teachers, because that was another major challenge: the lack of qualified professionals to teach in very remote areas.
They developed protocols and a very successful way of working that was later extended to Thailand and areas of the jungle. The new school, the Lumiar school models in Brazil, which are also very well known, and a personalized tutoring model used in a network of schools in Mexico are proposals that have spread widely and are the subject of major international studies.
“Personalizing learning is the great challenge for schools today.”
How do you see the future of education in rural areas in the next 10 or 20 years?
There is a lot of tension.
Spain is experiencing a decline in birth rates, and for the first time in its history there are more school places than children. Therefore, there is a decline in the birth rate. There is a decline in school places, and it is very uneven. There are many areas where there are not enough desks and many other areas where there are too many. And there is a great deal of tension between maintaining rural schools and bringing many of these children together in large towns.
We don’t know what will happen; only time will tell. I hope that even if the number of students decreases, we will be able to maintain the teaching staff, which would be very good news. If we don’t eliminate teachers and maintain the staff, we will have a better teacher-student ratio.
What conditions are necessary for a rural school to implement innovative educational projects?
A clear and well-defined project. Accepted and developed with the teaching staff. But a teaching staff that has the ability, at least, to share the same educational project for more than one school year, so that there is continuity and some of the talent remains. A supportive management team and a city council, municipality, or political will in the rural area to support the project.
I believe that it is increasingly necessary to provide greater support and monitoring for teachers in rural schools, who, as we have seen at this conference, are many and have a specific reality and also need support and specific training.
“More than rural and more than village, the big word is community and belonging.”
What role do local communities play in the development and sustainability of these innovative experiences?
I believe that local communities provide a lot of support to keep classrooms running, but in the end, the truth is that the communities are the ones who benefit the most. Right now, one of the best things that can happen to any rural community is to keep a school open. Because it can guarantee that families will settle and stay there.
What can urban environments learn from the educational practices developed in rural schools?
A sense of belonging is important, as well as cohesion and the future of the area. Often, more than rural or village, the key words are community and belonging. To create a sense of community and belonging to an area, you have to experience childhood there.
“To create a sense of community and belonging to an area, you have to experience childhood there.”
From your experience visiting schools around the world, what common elements have you found in the most transformative rural schools?
Above all, a personalized learning path for each child, a capacity to plan, both horizontally, by age, and vertically, if you have children of the same age, and a greater capacity to experiment and link social sciences and natural sciences with the environment.
In addition, there is much more continuous assessment that is much closer to what children learn and to their families.
An interview of Juan Antonio Saura
