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More than 80,000 English language teachers in Vietnam's state schools are expected to be confident, intermediate-level users of English, and to pass a test to prove it, as part of an ambitious initiative by the ministry of education to ensure that all young people leaving school by 2020 have a good grasp of the language.

But the initiative is worrying many teachers, who are uncertain about their future if they fail to achieve grades in tests such as Ielts and Toefl."All teachers in primary school feel very nervous," said Nguyen Thi La, 29, an English teacher at Kim Dong Primary School in Hanoi."It's difficult for teachers to pass this exam, especially those in rural provinces. B2 is a high score.""All we know is that if we pass we are OK. If we don't we can still continue teaching, then take another test, then if we fail that, we don't know."

"No teachers will be sacked if they are not qualified because we already know most of them are not qualified. No teachers will be left behind and the government will take care of them. But if the teachers don't want to improve, then parents will reject them because only qualified teachers will be able to run new training programmes."

Rumbek — A one-month teacher training course organized by Save the Children in Rumbek, the capital of Lakes state in South Sudan, has been skipped by some of the teachers due to attend. At the start of the workshop on Wednesday at Riak-Dor primary school, only 45 of the 60 teachers expected to attend arrived for the first day of the training. The teachers are drawn from Rumbek East and Rumbek Central counties. Rumbek East county education director Abel Kook Thong threatened to withhold the February salaries of teachers who have not attended the training as a punishment. He said he was seeking permission to do so from the director general of Lakes state's education ministry.

He said the aim of the workshop is to "equip teachers with knowledge and skills" adding that the absent teachers are refusing to participate in efforts to fight against ignorance in the community. Kook encouraged the teachers attending the training saying teachers will play an important role in bringing development of South Sudan as a new nation.

In June South Sudan is expected to become independent after an overwhelming vote for secession in a referendum in January.

The upcoming workshop will attract over 1,200 teachers according to the list of schools and number of teachers provided by the Nasarawa State Ministry of Education to Teachers Without Borders Regional office in Abuja.

According to  TWB’s Africa Regional Coordinator, Dr. Raphael Ogar Oko, “the teaching mastery workshop program in Nasarawa State was initially designed to educate experienced teachers who will mentor beginning teachers and NYSC members deployed to serve in schools without the basic teaching qualification. After implementing the program in two areas, Karu and Uke, it was discovered that the teachers in schools needed the professional development workshops also in addition to the NYSC members that are being deployed to schools. Based on requests from teachers, school heads and proprietors of schools as well as the local education authority, TWB has decided to make the program open to all teachers in Nasarawa State as a demonstration of our commitment to teacher development and appreciation of the cordial relationship with the Nasarawa State Ministry of Education”.

The Teachers Without Borders Certificate of Teaching Mastery (CTM), which is recognized by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria as a teacher professional development course is a free, self-paced, peer- and mentor-supported teacher professional development program.

Ikotos, South Sudan-a scenic region that belies its tragic past. For the past two decades the area has been ravaged by conflict, disease and deprivation. Basic services are scarce with education facilities suffering from a desperate lack of trained teachers and teaching resources.

Education is vital to the recovery of a region. Education will enable Ikotos' youth to escape a life of poverty and lead prosperous lives.

UNICEF has launched an initiative to get children back to school but there is a significant and unaddressed gap in teacher training. Education was near nonexistent during the civil war and has been slow to recover. Schooling mostly takes place in temporary shacks or under trees with limited or no teaching resources. Only 67 out of 353 primary school teachers in the Ikotos region received any training at all. Not only are most of the teachers untrained but some of have not completed even primary school education. Few have access to basic teaching materials. Without sufficiently trained teachers, increasing the rate of school attendance will be ineffective. With 11,809 pupils in Ikotos needing education, this is a desperate situation and a severe block to Ikotos's recovery.

TWB and Tijuana Department of Education completed Technical Assistance Mission (Mexico) With the support of the Office of Education and Culture of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Program on Education for Democratic Values and Practices, Teachers Without Borders (TWB) and the Baja California Department of Education recently completed a Technical Assistance Mission focusing on Peace Education in Mexican schools. As a result of this program, TWB’s Peace Education program has been endorsed as an official teacher professional development program throughout the state of Baja California. In the coming months, the program will be scaled through a partnership between Teachers Without Borders and the Baja California Department of Education and will reach 12,000 state teachers and, initially, 1,500 schools in the city of Tijuana. The Department also plans to work with Teachers Without Borders to develop Peace Education as a middle school subject.

Intro to Peace Ed Part I: Core Concepts – Teachers Without Borders (TWB) and National Peace Academy (NPA), online (June 19 – July 17, 2012) For more information click on the link above.

Intro to Peace Ed Part 2: The Scope of Peace Education – Teachers Without Borders (TWB) and National Peace Academy (NPA) – online (July 24 – August 19, 2012) For more information click on the link above.

Lest history repeat itself, Ontario has laid the educational groundwork for a new generation of students who appreciate the perils of interest rates and debt, and know the real cost of borrowing money.The province’s Ministry of Education has released comprehensive teacher guidelines that identify places in the Grade 4 through 12 curriculum where financial literacy can be inserted into classes as varied as mathematics, computer science and native studies.

The increased funding has enabled the education ministry to implement a number of projects. The ministry distributed over sh8.8b to the Universal Secondary Education programme to purchase laboratory equipment.

The construction and renovation of 217 secondary schools countrywide started this year. The 217 schools are part of the 1,400 schools which will be repaired under a World Bank funded project. About 4,297 classrooms, 41 administration blocks, 144 libraries, 405 science rooms and 71 staff quarters are to be constructed.

In a bid to improve quality, the P6 and P7 curriculum was reviewed. The new upper primary curriculum is to focus on "what a child can gain from a lesson, other than what a teacher can complete in a syllabus". Illustrations like graphs and tables have been simplified.

More than half of primary school teachers in Mali are without a basic teaching qualification and the competences required to deliver quality education, according to a new study commissioned by EI and Oxfam Novib.

This study has used the national Competence Profile for primary teachers, developed by the Quality Educators for All project partners in Mali, as a benchmark for assessing the professional needs of community teachers. The Quality Educators for All project is a joint initiative between EI and Oxfam Novib. It aims to help governments meet their obligation to provide quality education for all by improving teacher quality through pre- and in-service training and continuing professional development, mainly focusing on unqualified and under qualified teachers in both formal and non-formal education.

The union and other stakeholders in Mali are determined to continue supporting the professionalisation of community teachers through training and advocacy, supported by a media campaign. The government of Mali has begun to transform some of the community schools into municipal schools, thanks to intensive advocacy by SNEC and the Education for All coalition!

In her job as a teacher-training co-ordinator in Huíla province, 43-year-old nun, Sister Cecília Kuyela witnesses school overcrowding every day. Primary School 200, which serves the poor area of João de Almeida, has 7,348 pupils for 138 teachers and eight permanent classrooms. At peak periods, classes are held in the street. But that is the least of Sister Cecília's worries.

In his office in the provincial capital, Lubango, director of education Américo Chicote, 48, describes a "crisis'' that seems without end. "Our biggest challenge is to get children into school but then we have to find people to teach them. In Huíla province we have about 700,000 children of school age and 19,000 people teaching them. At the end of the war we had 200 schools. We now have 1,714 schools but we are still teaching 40% of our pupils under trees, and the school-age population is growing at a rate of 3% per year. Results are suffering. There are 171 days in the school year but there are not 171 days of good weather. We just have to do our best.''

According to Unicef, less than 10% of five-year-olds have access to preschool. Only 76% of children between six and 11 are in primary school. Overall, more than 1 million six- to 17-year-olds are out of school.

I hope that following this meeting and the Declaration of Paramaribo, Member States and the Governments that you represent will not only endorse the vision that you have agreed upon, but also will translate that into a working plan to put money behind those plans, to execute those plans,” the OAS official added. He also tanked national representatives on the support they provide to the OAS on these issues.

Minister Sapoen said that the meeting was “a very fruitful exchange of information, experiences and practices”. “Don’t let these agreements stay in words. We are currently in the years of writing words, let the coming years be the years of doing,” he added.

The Surinamese Minister was elected at the meeting to Chair the Inter-American Committee on Education (CIE, by its Spanish acronym), succeeding Ecuadorian Minister Gloria Vidal. Also elected were Costa Rica and Paraguay, both as Vice Chairs.

All the 45 government-aided primary teachers colleges in the country have closed due to lack of funds to meet their operational costs less than a month after the term opened. Students were sent home on Monday and some who had remained at the institutions left yesterday. "We have no option," said Mr John Arinaitwe, the Principals Association of Uganda (PAU) chairman. "We have sent the students home to avert possible strikes because they are apparently doing nothing here."

Government pays a unit cost of Shs1,800 daily for each student in a college. The money covers the students' meals, medical care and stationery.

A senior principal, who preferred anonymity to speak freely about their predicament, said the government has for a long time been releasing money in instalments, making the institutions accumulate debts. "We have too many debts and the suppliers can no longer give us things on credit," he said. "If you give me money in halves, do you want me to teach half of the syllabus or you want me to teach half of the term?

In Rwanda, children with disabilities typically face discrimination and are excluded from school and community life. Silas Ngayaboshya, a local programme manager for Handicap International (HI), says that "many families hide their kids at home because having a disability is a shameful thing for the child and the family, as it's considered to be a punishment from God".

Rwanda's ministry of education says that 10% of young people have disabilities, while the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2010 concludes that the number of disabled children at school is likely to be small. A few attend their local mainstream school, though most go to special schools and centres in urban areas, too far for most Rwandans and mainly for children with visual or hearing impairments.

Despite these shortcomings, Rwanda's education system overall is considered to be one of the most progressive in Africa. The government recently introduced free compulsory education for the first nine years of school for all Rwandan children (this initiative is expected to increase to 12 years from next year). According to Unicef, Rwanda now has one of the highest primary school enrolment rates in Africa (95% of boys and 97% of girls in 2009). 

This is a war zone. Families in the sprawling camp have lost everything – everything that is except a drive to get their kids an education. In the midst of the most abject poverty, parents have come together to build makeshift classrooms, hire a teacher, and buy a blackboard. Many of the kids work in the afternoon, selling charcoal to pay the $1 fee charged every term. “Being in school is fun – and people with an education can have a better life. I’ll be a doctor,” says David Ichange, aged 12.

If every girl in sub-Saharan Africa had a secondary education, it would cut under-five deaths by around 1.8 million. The reason: educated mothers are empowered to demand better health and nutrition provision.

Education in conflict-affected states is getting spectacularly short shrift. Humanitarian aid could play a vital role in keeping open opportunities for schooling in communities displaced by violence. Yet education receives just 2% of humanitarian aid – and no sector receives a smaller share of the emergency aid requested in emergency appeals.

More than a third of students who start teacher training are still not working in state schools six months after courses finish, it was revealed. Figures show just 62 per cent of students end up in state education as others either drop out of courses, shun the teaching profession altogether or get jobs in private schools. It comes despite the fact that graduates are eligible for Government bursaries of up to £9,000 a year to train as school teachers in England.

Out of 39,103 students who started training that year, just 71.5 per cent were in teaching six months after courses finished. Around 11 per cent failed to complete courses on time and a further 17.4 per cent were not in teaching, although some may have secured jobs after the six-month cut-off.

“We know that we need to improve retention rates - that’s why we are reforming initial teacher training so that more time is spent in the classroom with a focus on the core skills a teacher needs, and ensuring there’s a better link between training and employment,” a spokesman said.

n many ways, Ceibal can, and perhaps should, be seen not so much as an education project, but as a larger societal transformation project (of the sort often associated with e-government initiatives), with the education system as the primary and initial dissemination vector.

Under Plan Ceibal (earlier blog post here), Uruguay is the first country in the world to ensure that all primary school students (or at least those in public schools) have their own personal laptop.  For free.  (The program is being extended to high schools, and, under a different financial scheme, to private schools as well).  Ceibal is about more than just 'free laptops for kids', however.  There is a complementary educational television channel. Schools serve as centers for free community wi-fi, and free connectivity has been introduced in hundreds of municipal centers around the country as well.  There are free local training programs for parents and community members on how to use the equipment.  Visiting Uruguay last week, I was struck by how many references there were to 'one laptop per teacher' (and not just 'one laptop per child', which has been the rallying cry for a larger international initiative and movement). 

There is no doubt about the numbers (over 380,000) in Uruguay -- the laptops are not sitting in boxes under an awning at the Ministry of Education collecting dust.  You see them everywhere you see school children.

ISLAMABAD - Nokia and UNESCO Islamabad have launched “Mobile Learning Project for Teacher’s Professional Development” on Thursday as formal collaboration took place in the presence of senior government officials, Nokia and UNESCO representatives.

In Pakistan, through the project, Nokia will help UNESCO to enable the delivery of high- quality educational materials to teachers who lack training and resources.

Nokia developed the Nokia Education Delivery programme to allow using a mobile phone to access and download videos and other educational materials from a constantly updated education library