The FARO MODEL is an institutional strengthening program designed by Instituto 512 to support quality education in the Dominican Republic. Since its implementation in 2021, the model has impacted 187 schools nationwide, with representation across the entire country and in each of the 18 educational regions.

The model was designed to strengthen educational leadership and management, in such a way that school management becomes the backbone of the design, decision-making, and implementation of continuous improvement within schools.

After receiving training in leadership and management, school leadership teams design their school improvement plan based on their students' academic results. This serves as the foundation for proper analysis, reflection, curricular adjustments, and the thoughtful design of instructional planning aimed at improving learning outcomes.

The steps following this design focus on:
(1) Ongoing teacher training, grounded in the principle of lifelong learning. The project provides professional development through in-person and online training, access to reading materials, community interaction and consultation, seminars, webinars, and conferences.
(2) Accompaniment, based on continuous support through information, ideas, new methodologies, and feedback to foster reflection and improvement.
(3) Provision of materials, to facilitate pedagogical management and enhance the capacity to respond effectively to the diverse needs of children in their learning process.
(4) Access to technological platforms for curriculum implementation, offering content, games, and review resources to prepare for both continuous and standardized assessments.
(5) Evaluation and monitoring, providing ongoing support to ensure student learning, measured annually through the official efficiency indicators of the national education system.

The cross-cutting pillars of the project are leadership and innovation, with a central focus on strengthening reading and writing processes throughout the entire school experience, from preschool through high school.

Within the FARO Model, we make a practical commitment based on the hypothesis that children with access to a reading culture, who develop proper reading comprehension and avoid delays that could impact learning poverty indicators, will acquire greater and deeper knowledge throughout their lives. This will contribute to their own learning, development, and well-being and consequently, to a better quality of life for themselves and their families. We center the core actions of pedagogical management around this shared paradigm, working closely with school leadership teams who commit to promoting a reading culture within their schools.

The FARO Model impacts 92,639 students, 4,947 teachers, and 1,521 school leadership team members at Dominican Republic with a commitment to indirectly support other schools in the surrounding communities that are not directly reached by the program.

This value-driven model is funded by two highly relevant private sector entities in the country. It stands as a clear demonstration of the private sector’s commitment to the improvement and strengthening of public education in the Dominican Republic.

FARO aims to demonstrate its effectiveness through tangible evidence, with the intention of enabling the Ministry of Education to scale the initiative to many more schools using public funds.

Keywords: Leadership, Accompaniment, reading culture, lifelong learning.