Intercultural Bilingual Education Program for Better Performance in Schools The case of the Indigenous Children of the Amazon

This study describes the design and the ex-ante evaluation of an Intercultural Bilingual Education1 Program in the Amazon Region in Peru. The target beneficiaries are the non-Spanish-speaking children from three Amazon ethnic communities: the Awarunas, Ashaninkas and Shipibos-Conibos. They are a small minority; the poorest Peruvians with the lowest level of performance in reading comprehension and basic mathematics, and the lowest level of enrollment, schooling and transition rates. The program looks to improving the quality of service delivery for this community with bilingual curricula which would trigger the need for appropriate pedagogical bilingual teaching methods in classrooms, with ad hoc instructional materials and teachers with the required expertise and the capability to manage a bilingual setting and culture.2 At the end, the expected results from this quality improvement exercise are: an increase in enrollment, higher schooling (average of number grades reached), and reduction in dropout and repetition rates. The outcome of such bilingual programs, based on some international experiences points to an improvement in learning and performance levels in children.