BSGE Tech 8-3

All but a handful of the more than 900 students were believed trapped under the slabs of cement, bricks, tile and twisted cables.

Classes on board the Nauka school. Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRINThe monsoon season has not quite drawn to an end and just to prove it, the heavens open in an intense 15-minute downpour. The rain elicits more giggles from the children, who scamper for refuge under the trees lining the bank. Then a solar-powered boat with a sign "Nauka [Boat] School" suddenly appears on the horizon and slows down as it draws nearer to pull up beside the bank.The dripping children queue to get to their classes on board - a rainy day is not an excuse to play hooky in this part of the world. "Nauka schooley jaye khoob moja hoye [When we attend the boat school, we enjoy ourselves]," a giggling Shakila Khatoon, 9, said in Bengali, or Bangla, the national language."It's different from other schools – I really love the Bangla boi [book] – it teaches us things we see in our villages, helps us identify the birds, kinds of fishes, and tells us about river erosion."Women and older villagers watch the bobbing fishing boats from the bank while they wait patiently to catch the "health boat", the "library boat" or even the "agricultural extension boat", all due to arrive sometime that day.In a few weeks, some of the landless families in the region might even settle permanently on houseboats lashed together to form small floating villages, with a community boat in between.Architect-turned-activist Mohammed Rezwan is determined to prove that Bangladeshis can survive the climate change scenario, in which land steadily vanishes beneath relentlessly rising water, by staying afloat. "This is the future - various climate change forecast models have predicted that one-fifth of Bangladesh could be under water by 2050," he said.The impact of global warming will hit Bangladesh hard. Soaring global temperatures are increasing glacial melt in the Himalayan ranges, swelling the rivers that flow down from the mountains and across the Bangladeshi floodplain, the largest in the world, far beyond their capacity.The expanding volume of water is also causing higher sea levels to push inland. A rise above one metre, which could be reached in this century, means Bangladesh could lose 15 percent to 18 percent of its land area, turning 30 million people into "environmental refugees" by 2050, according to some estimates, says the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).Extreme weather events such as cyclones are also expected to become more frequent and intense as a result of global warming.Couldn't go to schoolRezwan grew up in the nearby village of Shidhulai and was often unable to go to school during monsoons, when the roads were flooded. "Schools would be closed for months," he commented. In 2007 more than 4,000 primary schools were closed, at least another 4,000 were affected and 44 were washed by river erosion, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported.

We have committed to building five schools in China

Malawi and Uganda Moving beyond user payments In the mid-1990s, Malawi replaced a system of user payments with free primary education. Although government spending on primary education rose sharply, quality declined as school enrollment surged by 60 percent (1 million new students), leading to overcrowding and a shortage of teachers. A delay in donor funding contributed to the country's failure to prepare adequately for increased enrollment. Teacher performance also appears to have deteriorated, because parents, relieved of the financial burden, felt less compelled to monitor the teachers. On the other hand, parents were still expected to contribute labor and materials to school construction and to buy school supplies and clothes; this, together with the opportunity cost of forgone child labor, left total costs high for some parents. The result was a rise in dropout rates. By 1999, the primary completion rate was only 50 percent. Gender biases persisted as well. Uganda moved most of the way toward free universal primary education in 1997, when it waived tuition for up to four children per household. Families remained responsible for school supplies and contributions to construction, as in Malawi, and had to purchase uniforms and pay final examination fees as well. Uganda did better than Malawi, however, in preparing for the influx of new students. The government doubled the share of recurrent government spending targeted to primary education and used external aid to train new teachers, build classrooms, and purchase teaching materials. Even so, educational quality has fallen, with high pupil-teacher and pupil-classroom ratios and inadequate materials, and net enrollment has declined, from 85 percent in 1997 to 77 percent in 2000. Gender biases are still reported, as in Malawi. The experiences of these two countries demonstrate that universal public education cannot be achieved simply by abolishing fees and opening classroom doors. Obstacles arise on both the demand and the supply sides. Education can still be costly for the poor, thus discouraging enrollment, especially when maintaining quality is a problem. Maintaining quality, in turn, is not just a matter of increasing spending; good planning, implementation, and monitoring are also necessary. Achieving the goal of universal school attendance in both countries will require measures to relieve poor parents of all education-related costs, perhaps through a system of income transfers.

Afghanistan has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world. In rural areas, where three-fourths of all Afghans live, 90% of the women and 63% of the men are illiterate. Nearly three-quarters of Afghans over the age of 15 cannot read or write. Under the Taliban, girls were not allowed to go to school and many boys received religious education in lieu of academics.