The St Giles Educational Trust Begins Work in Peru

The St Giles Educational Trust has started to work partnership with Fe y Alegria Peru (www.feyalegria.org.pe) to help English language teachers in secondary schools in the Lima area to develop their teaching methodology as well as their own language skills.

Fe y Alegria is a network of community education organisations which now works across more than 20 countries in South/Latin America and parts of Africa. It opens schools in the most socially disadvantaged areas and the teachers within these are employed by the Ministry of Education. In 2014, the Peruvian government announced ambitious 5-year targets for bilingual education with English as the priority language but teacher training remains a huge challenge.

Mike Williams and Erica Lindley from St Giles Brighton are currently running a ‘pilot’ training programme in Lima for 20 of Fe y Alegria’s secondary school teachers. One of the teachers travelled for 16 hours from Arequipa to Lima as she was so keen to join the course! This is the first stage of the Trust’s work with Fe y Alegria and Mike and Erica are getting lots of opportunities to improve their Spanish!