Empowering Teachers | Inspiring Children | Transforming Communities
Our Story
In the beginning...
The roots of our story stretch back to 2001. Phil Hawkins, CEO and Founder of Aprender, visited the city of Vitoria (photo left), Brazil and saw, first hand, the challenges that colleagues faced in schools in areas of high deprivation.
Aprender began with a vision of a more equitable way to raise educational quality globally. By combining grassroots volunteers, a simple yet powerful improvement model, and respect for local context and culture, Aprender was born to make quality education and sustainable school improvement accessible worldwide.
Two are better than one
Things are better shared. Head of Technology at Heathside School in Surrey, Ben Cole, added his experience and expertise as he and Phil travelled to Brazil across several years, looking at project-based learning and inspiring teachers and students to get more actively involved in lessons.
Later, Ben and family moved to Brazil for a year, helping schools develop practical methods to bring learning alive.
Culture Foundations
2010 saw the cementing of a foundational partnership with Instituto Total, a Brazilian NGO committed to social transformation. Lead educator Josebene Lima (pictured here) led development of what would ultimately become our Apto school improvement model. Aprender and Total working together helped shape the culture of how we approach partnerships and change, valuing the teachers already working so hard, and empowering grassroots development.
Growth through partnership
A vital part of our growth strategy is to scale through partnerships. A key partner is PiXL founded by the late Sir John Rowling, and now led by Rachel Johnson, and their international arm, Partners in Education - International. They have been so supportive from the beginning of our project in Brazil, helping us stay connected with the latest in educational thinking. The late Martin Rainsford (pictured centre) and the international team helped shape strategy and bring their quality experience of working cross-culturally.
Younger the better
Aprender had the privilege of working alongside a specialist trainer in world-leading early years education as advocated by the HighScope organisation. Our understanding grew as to the key role that quality early years experiences play for young children. This approach evolved into our Apto Early Years model, which has been so transformative.
Kindness and Wisdom
Across the years, Aprender has benefited from a whole team of volunteers, be it serving on the Board of Trustees, trainers, facilitators, on the Aprender Team, and all of our wonderful partners.
We are forever grateful for their help, wisdom, kindness, and commitment to help children around the world have access to quality education.
The model that emerged
Three convictions shaped Apto. First, change is sustainable only when it is locally led: Aprender empowers, it does not impose. Second, the most powerful lever in any school is the quality of the adults in it, and that quality is built not by one-off training but by sustained coaching. Third, the way to reach scale without losing depth is to train the trainers: to build a cascade through which a small group of experienced coaches can change the work of hundreds of educators, and through them tens of thousands of children.
Where we are today
Today, Aprender is preparing to launch the Apto Fellowship, a community of experienced UK and global school leaders giving two hours a week to train in-country government education officers as Apto Coaches. Through the Fellowship, the cascade architecture that has always been the heart of Apto becomes a structured, scalable mechanism, and Aprender becomes the organisation it was always designed to be.
The next ten years are about reaching ten million children. Our story has always been about doing this kind of work.
Now we are building the infrastructure to do it at scale.
