According to Wikipedia’s definition, “micro” is a prefix in the International System of Units denoting a factor of 10⁻⁶ (one millionth). Commonly, the prefix means “very small.” What the multilingual digital encyclopedia does not explain, however, is that when the prefix is combined with “schools,” it can come to signify infinite possibilities and become enormous. Anyone who attended Thiago Almeida’s talk at the Administrators’ Forum on the third day ofBett Brasil2022 was able to fully grasp this concept.

According to the entrepreneur, founder, and executive director of Escola Hub, to understand the concept, one must first and foremost distinguish between a small school and a microschool. “The microschool movement is based on the idea of organizing itself differently and offering a different kind of learning experience. It’s ‘micro’ not because it’s small. It’s ‘micro’ because it’s lean, because it’s focused on using innovative teaching methods, on being more accessible, on reaching more people, and on being present in places where, perhaps, most schools don’t want to go because there isn’t enough demand to run a school for a thousand students,” he explained.

Escola Hub began as a project in 2018. The first school opened in Juiz de Fora, beginning its first academic year in February 2019 with classes for grades 1 through 5 of elementary school. By 2020, it had three campuses—the same year it launched its expansion project, opening ten more campuses—in Rio de Janeiro, Niterói, Curitiba, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Florianópolis. “We’re still learning about the challenges of this model. Each location has its own unique characteristics. There are places, for example, that require specific security measures that we didn’t encounter at our first locations. This requires careful management, and these are factors that must be taken into account,” explained the executive.

The panel “Management of Innovative Microschools” also featured Paulo Pinheiro de Senna Nogueira Batista, CEO and founder of Alicerce Educacional. With more than 80 locations throughout Brazil, Alicerce is a social impact company that brings the world’s most innovative and efficient educational concepts to Brazil. It rapidly develops the educational foundation of people of all ages and from all social backgrounds, having already impacted the lives of more than 10,000 students.

“In this model, the administrative manager at my school has to be a teacher at heart, and the teachers have to take on some administrative responsibilities as well. It’s a single team that takes a holistic view of the entire organization of that space, because everything there plays a role in learning. That’s the biggest challenge, which ties in with the cultural challenge Thiago mentioned,” explained Paulo Pinheiro.

Almeida defines the institution as a project-based school that fosters collaborative, investigative, and creative learning, focused on the development of social-emotional skills, and aims to instill in students intellectual autonomy, a truly solid foundation in critical thinking, an entrepreneurial mindset, and the ability to learn how to learn.

“In our view, 200 to 250 students is ideal. But there’s nothing stopping us from adopting a structure that accommodates perhaps four segments, bringing the total to 300 to 350 students. But you can treat them as separate units while ensuring a sense of teamwork. There are multiple challenges, ranging from teacher training to organizational and learning culture. It’s a school built on connections, and depending on how fast you grow, it becomes harder to build those connections,” said the founder of Escola HUB.

Founded in 2018, Alicerce bills itself as the fastest-growing education company in Brazil. According to its CEO, the institution’s mission is to provide high-quality, affordable education in areas where the government does not reach. That is why Paulo Pinheiro states that Alicerce was founded with a grand vision and, to that end, has followed best practices in corporate governance from the very beginning. This does not mean, however, that it does not face challenges.

“The main challenge is that a school with this mindset needs to align business management with learning management. In the traditional model of Brazilian schools, the division is between pedagogical and administrative functions, but this only works on a content-based approach. Because the pedagogical aspect is standardized, with a rigid curriculum, and when you adopt this micro-school organizational mindset, everything has to be integrated, because it’s all interconnected. “There isn’t a rigid, standardized curriculum that’s separate from the school’s organization,” summarized Alicerce’s CEO.