Escuela Técnica Roberto Rocca

Escuela Técnica Roberto Rocca, an independent secondary school in Campana, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, has been making waves by redesigning its learning spaces and processes to better prepare students for the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As a result of its innovative approach, students score on average up to 44% higher in maths than students in competing schools, and up to 37% higher in reading comprehension. Of its 154 graduates, 84% study a university degree.

Escuela Técnica Roberto Rocca’s innovative curriculum, learning space redesign, and student-centred, experiential teaching process is based on the understanding that the traditional approach to teaching does not work for everyone. In collaboration with Rosan Bosch Studio, the physical redesign was inspired by the High Tech-High school in California and schools in Barcelona, placing the student at the centre of the learning process and enhancing their autonomy.

The school implements Project Based Learning as the main methodology to make students work and learn. Also it created new ways of teaching that bring together different subjects based on real-life problems, questions, and situations. This approach of integrated subjects helps students to learn in a more connected way. Escuela Técnica Roberto Rocca understands that each student is unique and has different needs, interests, and abilities. Students and staff work together to design proposals and plans that take these differences into account and create solutions that are specific to each student. This helps students to grow and develop in a way that is effective, supportive, and more engaged.

In addition, Escuela Técnica Roberto Rocca believes in promoting equal opportunities, and therefore offers a system of scholarships that guarantees admission to school through effort, dedication, commitment, and merit, regardless of the family's socio-economic situation. By ensuring that every student has access to high-quality education, regardless of their background, the school is creating a more equitable society.

The school is part of the Roberto Rocca Technical Schools Network, founded by the Techint Group with the aim of developing quality education, especially technical, in communities where it is present with its industrial centres. Particularly, the Escuela Técnica Roberto Rocca from Campana, Buenos Aires Province, depends on Tenaris, one of the Group’s companies.

If Escuela Técnica Roberto Rocca were to win the World's Best School Prize for Innovation, it would use the prize to promote equal opportunities for quality technical education by spreading the success of its educational model and providing continuous training and support to educational institutions and professionals in the region. It would also open its facilities as a training centre in cutting-edge technologies, to enhance its training programmes for students from other secondary technical schools in the area.