New public policy has brought about significant challenges for Colombian society. One of these challenges aims at making primary and high school education bilingual (Spanish-English). In the light of this, national competitiveness is expected to improve nationwide and worldwide, and significant efforts, economic, logistic and academic, are being made in order to reach these educational goals. This article describes the experience and the challenges ahead in the light of Plan Nacional de Bilingüismo PBN (the Spanish acronym for National Bilingualism Plan). The experience described involves the author´s intervention as an external academic assistant through institutional cooperation between the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas and Secretaría de Educación de Bogotá which provided support to two public schools in Bogota. Due to reasons of confidentiality, the two schools will be referred to as School A and School B respectively. It is expected that the experience analyzed will help readers understand problems not directly addressed by public policy, the realities and needs of public education in Colombia, and of course, the academic challenges which appear to be sociological in nature, going beyond purely linguistic concerns. Finally, suggestions are given about to encourage the academic community to expand their possibilities of carrying out research and how to understand the blind spots of local public policy.