El Colegio Bilingüe José Max León

José Max León founded Colegio José Max León in 1954 with his own style that emerged as a role model of innovation in Colombian education.

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CRITICAL RESPONSIBILITY

It is the result of logical reasoning that requires knowledge, evidence and arguments, as well as the commitment with oneself and with the others. It is evidenced when making decisions and assuming consequences from the evaluation of realities, concepts and stances, in favor of the transformative construction of the environment.

Jose Max León inicios

History of Critical Responsibility

It was founded in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, by professor José Max León in 1954. The first generation of 17 graduates dates from 1957, in a time in which it was mainly governed by Catholic structures.

In the early years of the school, it was divided into two campuses: Primary, located in Calle 74 and Carrera 13; and High School, located on Calle 45. Around 1965, José Max León decided to relocate the school’s facilities, having an urban one for High School and another in the countryside for Primary.

For that reason, in 1970, the school received one of the most important awards: The “Condecoración Nuevos Libertadores”, in a unique category awarded by President Carlos Lleras Restrepo, which positioned our school as one of the best in the country.

When its founder, and first Principal, died in 1981, his daughters embraced the legacy of the educational mission that their father had given them and decided to continue working from a single location, this time in Cota, Cundinamarca in June 1991.

As a result, the school has received some awards such as:

  • The Colombian Ministry of Education recognized the school’s P.E.I. (Institutional Educational Project) as OUTSTANDING, because of its high standards, by means of Resolution number 2555 from July 27th, 1998.

 

  • The Council of Bogota also granted our school the “Orden Civil al Mérito José Acevedo y Gómez” at the “Cruz de Oro” grade in November 2004, acknowledging the P.E.I. as having been designed “considering fields such as Science, Environmental Care and Learning through practice”, and how “it has been materialized through [its] integral Farm.”

Imágenes de José Max León

In addition, the expansion of the bilingualism program horizons started to prove fruitful and, in 2009, a group of 12 students participated in the first exchange program in Canada. What a memorable experience! 

In 2016, the School decided, as one of its pedagogical strategies and institutional promotion, to create the publishing house “Editorial Colegio Bilingüe José Max León” with the purpose of publishing books of high literary interest, developing multidisciplinary and integration projects with cultural organizations that allow the visibility of initiatives made by teachers, students and other members of the educational community.

That same year, the School obtained the 4th-Level Quality Certification issued by the European Foundation for Quality Management EFQM.

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Finally, in 2019-2020, the first group of 9th grade students took part in the first version of the Academic and Cultural Immersion in New Zealand for a whole semester. Likewise, the same year, a group of 7th graders went to Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais in Brazil, prior to the implementation of Portuguese as a Foreign Language in the curriculum.

In 2020, the institution was certified as a Bilingual School by the Secretaría de Educación de Cundinamarca and continues strengthening the Academic and Cultural Immersion programs with Brazil and New Zealand, which allow us to keep fostering education beyond frontiers.

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