According to the World Bank, Bolivia has a school absence rate of approximately 5% for primary school children. However, when we look at the statistics of school absence in secondary school, this rate significantly increases to 20% and even higher for children in remote and rural areas of Bolivia. In addition, we know that there are not enough teachers in Bolivia and there are often large class sizes of more than 30 students in a class, which has negative impacts on their student outcomes. In more remote areas, there tends to be fewer and smaller schools with one class per grade and also lesser choices for accessing quality education. These significant gaps in Bolivia education context allow the Breteau Foundation to develop education opportunities for Bolivian children and improve the quality of education for them.

Proving Education Access in Viacha, Bolivia

Fundación Sariry has taken a leading role in changing the education of hundreds of students in Nueva Tilata, Viacha, in Bolivia. Viacha is a rural city located outside La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, and is part of the province of Ingavi.  Education in Viacha is limited, currently there is only one primary school and a secondary school that has recently opened where students can study until the third year, making it impossible for a lot of them to graduate from school and continue further studies. To address the lack of opportunities for learning in Viacha, Fundación Sariry has been committed to improving education for children ages 3 to 18 through their Mobile Education Programme which launched two years ago. 

Fundación Sariry’s Mobile Education Programme

The Mobile Education Programme started during the pandemic aiming to reduce school dropouts. Equipped with a mobile phone or a laptop and academic resources, the teachers visit students’ homes without devices or connectivity, providing the means for children to do their homework and continue their school year remotely. 

Stronger and new partnerships and enhanced pedagogical tools were required to continue delivering the programme. Sariry started a partnership with three key stakeholders; the non-profit organization Bolivia Kids who donated tablets, the local school who referred students and the university which provided interns from the Pedagogy and Psychopedagogy degrees. With more mobile devices at hand, Fundación Sariry recognized that they needed more expertise on how to best use and optimize the tablets for their classes and looked for potential partners specializing in Edtech for primary school education. 

The Breteau Foundation partnered with Fundación Sariry to curate and donate a selection of educational apps and software for their tablets, and train their educators on how best to use the apps, software and tablets to improve their pedagogical practices in the Mobile Education Programme.  The programme travels to children’s houses after school, usually between 14:30 and 17:00, and they are provided with additional support to catch up with their learning at school. 

With the support of the Breteau Foundation, the programme now is being replicated in a second community in Tilata, and aims to boost student’s performance at school, ensuring that particularly the children with learning difficulties are learning and developing their literacy, numeracy, critical thinking and creativity skills. The programme also gives the students the opportunity to explore new apps, software and technologies that many of them have not accessed before.