‘The butterfly Circus’: Targeting social inequalities through English teaching

In this article we present an experience that aimed at improving learning outcomes in English for students at a secondary school in Badia del Vallès. Different projects were implemented that followed Cooperative Learning strategies and a Project Based Learning approach during the 2017/18 and 2018/19 school years and we provide an overview of them. According to different indicators, more than half of the secondary school students in Badia del Vallès do not meet minimum curricular standards for English on completing compulsory schooling. The idea that impacting on the English competences of these students would contribute to more equitable futures for them led to the Let’s Go! socio-educational project being set up in 2016/17, including the Fundació Autònoma Solidària (UAB), English teachers and head teachers from Badia’s two secondary schools, members of the Badia del Vallès local council, representatives of the Catalan Education Department and researchers/teachers from the Research Group on Plurilingual Education and Teaching (GREIP, UAB). The experience we present in this article is an example of this collaborative work.