CAF helps MEDUCA evaluate the teacher training strategy under the Panamá Bilingüe program

In order to help expand the opportunities for children, young people and workers, it is important to start learning the English language in childhood and continue perfecting it during all stages of life. For that reason, since 2019 CAF has been funding the Ministry of Education’s Panamá Bilingüe program, which promotes English learning in children and young people, as well as the professional development of teachers, thus contributing to the national goal to make English a matter of public interest and a skill of strategic importance for the nation’s development.

In response to the new government’s request to gather information to help strengthen these strategies, CAF is providing technical aid in the form of a qualitative assessment of the technical suitability of the program for teacher training. Representatives of the international body MEDUCA met with Inter-American Dialogue specialists and education experts from Colombia, Peru and Chile, at CAF’s Panama office to analyze Panamá Bilingüe as compared with similar programs carried out at the regional and international level, in order to draw up a roadmap to strengthen teacher training.

CAF representative in Panama Lucía Meza said that her office recognizes the importance of being proficient in English, as it “increases labor mobility and improves workers’ incomes.” She also said that studies carried out in various Latin American countries show that mastery of the language is recognized as a requirement to increase exports and develop strategic sectors of Panama, including tourism and commercial and financial services.

Fernando Peñaherrera, head of the Northern Region Sustainable Development Projects department reiterated his institution’s commitment to bilingual education in the region’s countries, including Panama, where the bank loaned USD 125 million to Panamá Bilingüe. The program began in March 2019, and is structured in three key components for achieving this goal, namely, student skill development, teacher training and academic and institutional strengthening of all actors involved, which aim to design and deploy the best and most effective strategies for students and teachers to achieve the desirable proficiency in the language.

“The Panamá Bilingüe program is going through a transition in 2020,” Education Minister Maruja Gorday de Villalobos said. “In fact we are making efforts to promote English learning, cognizant that Panama is a transit nation, as well as a logistics, banking, maritime and technological hub. Gorday also said that her ministry plans to amend the current Panamá Bilingüe rules and regulations to implement a public policy to teach English as a second language to “achieve greater coverage.”

During the two-day workshop, CAF collaborated with Inter-American Dialogue, a regional and international policy think tank, which presented its platform of experts and analysts in strategic issues of the education sector, and which has led a regional exchange group on learning English as a second language and bilingual programs since 2016. The team developed two regional reports on the subject that include Panama.

In addition, the event featured a team of local researchers from PROED and the Center for Educational Research (CIEdu), two organizations that aim to expand the work capacity, implementing local actions and to ensure specific knowledge of the nation’s educational context.

The strategic workshop organized by CAF—development bank of Latin America—contributed to the definition of training actions for English teachers in Panama, addressing the priorities identified in a variety of international case studies. The event also furthered the collaboration of other countries that have made progress in this area and strengthened CAF’s mission in its educational agenda in supporting initiatives that foster social inclusion of Latin America’s most vulnerable groups and boost productivity.