Patabamba February 2013 Update
2013 will be an important year for the Patabamba Pre-University Academy. This year, the Alma
Foundation will not contract teachers and curriculums from outside institutions, but will
directly hire and implement the academy in coordination with the Patabamba Parents’
Association and its elected Patabamba Academy Committee. As decided in various meetings in
the community, this school year we will implement the Academy three days a week using
teachers hired directly by the Alma Foundation with approval from the Academy Committee, as
opposed to last year’s project which offered classes one day a week with contracted teachers
from the Raimondi Academy in Cusco.
The new schedule and directly hired teachers will better adapt the Academy to the scheduling
restrictions of the students, and is one step closer to implementing a full-time academy in
Patabamba. Like last year, the academy will be open to students in the third, fourth, and fifth
grades of secondary school as well as to former students who graduated secondary school
within the last year. The academy is open to students from all surrounding communities, and
we hope that the new schedule will increase the number of students from outside of
Patabamba. In addition, we hope to include the Municipality of Coya in the project this year, in
order to begin the process of passing the project off to local authorities in the future.
In other news, we look forward to seeing how former fifth grade students from last year’s
academy perform on their university entrance exams this March!
