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A new policy was announced on Tuesday which will make it easier for bright students from poor families to join prestigious public secondary schools.

A new policy was announced on Tuesday which will make it easier for bright students from poor families to join prestigious public secondary schools.

Out the 4,517 Form One vacancies in the 18 national schools, 3,293 will be reserved for candidates from public schools. The other 1,224 places will go to best performing boys and girls from private schools.

With the goal of changing teaching and learning in its classrooms, Singapore's Nanyang Girl's High School has replaced its textbooks with iPad tablet computers.

"We found that it was a very good personal learning device, extremely mobile, light weight and it is easy to use. I think if you talk to the girls you will realize that they practically don't need training. I think if anything, the joke is the teachers probably taking a little bit longer time in getting used to it. So it seemed to be a device that was just the thing that we were looking for and we were glad that it came out and so we grabbed the opportunity to use it."

According Singapore’s Ministry of Education, there’s only one primary school and three secondary schools in the country that are giving the iPads a try.

“You can’t compare what we have now with how it used to be. Now we have good space for the children to learn, we have classrooms and furniture, toilets and hand-washing facilities.” says Mr. Odol. There are now 305 children – 234 of them girls – enrolled at the small school. It runs two shifts, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, to accommodate the increasing number of students. The effect has been startling. “Children are learning better now. We have a better environment and enrolment has doubled because children prefer to spend their time in school,” says Mr. Odol.

Although the incentive he receives is not much, Mr. Odol says that he will keep teaching in his community. “I want to continue to teach these children, my children,” he says. “I hope that the children I teach will grow up to know how to help themselves and their families.”

UNICEF is constructing classrooms, training teachers, supplying learning and teaching materials and school uniforms, and distributing vouchers to families to ensure that children are released to spend time in school instead of working to support their families. UNICEF is also providing financial incentives for teachers.

Associated Press= TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Boys and girls chanted slogans against Moammar Gadhafi and teachers hanged an effigy of the fugitive leader Saturday as many Libyan children started their first school year without the "brother leader" dictating the curriculum. Euphoria filled the halls, but teachers admitted a lot needed to be done to overhaul an educational system where a main goal for nearly 42 years was to instill adoration of Gadhafi and what he touted as the greatest system of rule in the world — the "Jamahiriya," a utopian "rule by the masses" that in reality boiled down to rule by Gadhafi.

Not all facilities in Tripoli opened their doors, and school officials urged patience, saying it will take time to build a new curriculum and provide new equipment after years of strict control by Gadhafi's regime. "I believe the National Transitional Council will give us new books, computers and tapes," said headmistress Moofidha Nashnoush as she rushed through the halls hanging up new flags and hugging her colleagues. "We need to help the children forget the Gadhafi era and start fresh."

The school opening is part of attempts by the National Transitional Council, once the leadership of the rebellion and now closest thing to a government in the North African nation, to restore a sense of normalcy despite continued fighting in three southern and central areas that remain loyal to Gadhafi.

At 16 years old, Babar Ali must be the youngest headmaster in the world. He's a teenager who is in charge of teaching hundreds of students in his family's backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village.

Murshidabad in West Bengal

Raj Govinda school is government-run so it is free, all Babar Ali has to pay for is his uniform, his books and the rickshaw ride to get there. But still that means his family has to find around 1,800 rupees a year ($40, £25) to send him to school. In this part of West Bengal that is a lot of money. Many poor families simply can't afford to send their children to school, even when it is free.

Noreen was 13 when she came home from school to be told that she was getting married. "I was scared, and sad I wouldn't be going to school anymore." A studious child, she wanted to become a teacher to bring 'glory' to her family.

Black schoolboys can choose to perform poorly to avoid undermining their masculinity, the head of the Jamaican Teachers' Association has said. Adolph Cameron said that in Jamaica, where homophobia was a big issue, school success was often seen as feminine or "gay". He was concerned the same cultural attitude was affecting African-Caribbean male students in the UK.

He noted that in Jamaica boys were at least 10 percentage points behind girls in national tests. Misplaced views about masculinity needed to be tackled in schools.

In an interview with the BBC News website, Mr Cameron said: "That notion of masculinity says that if as a male you aspire to perform highly it means you are feminine, even to the extent of saying you are gay. "But in the context of Jamaica, which is so homophobic, male students don't want to be categorised in that way so that they would deliberately underperform in order that they are not."

Nancy Walters, the chief of school feeding policy at WFP, told a New York forum on hunger that the programmes have many benefits beyond the immediate goal of ensuring children do not go hungry. They help children stay in class, reduce levels of diseases and other health problems, empower girls, lift education standards and free many youngsters from having to work.

Some 66 million schoolchildren in dozens of countries currently receive meals through the programmes, and Ms. Walters said WFP would continue to fund and implement them with the help of its current partners.

"We have seen the impact of fortified biscuits on anaemia levels in Bangladesh, for example. We know about the impacts in terms of gender, social protection, stability, income transfer, freed parental labour, combating child labour impacts and how school feeding can be a platform to local production, nutrition, hygiene and HIV information." She also emphasized their value to efforts to reach the social and economic targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have a target date of 2015.

“I want to have my school back, but one that is safer and won’t collapse if there is another earthquake,” she says. “Too many children died, and children are not supposed to die.”

Ideas for improving securityYouth facilitator Emmanuela, 21, is from Jacmel, one of the cities worst affected by the earthquake. She explains how the children’s drawing are being used as a tool for developing proposals. Some of the children suggest projects to clean up the trash in camps for the displaced, while others want to band together to improve security where lighting isn’t adequate for girls to feel safe at night.Josette, 14, suggests that giving children flashlights is a good way to protect them from gender-based violence.

“The entire reconstruction of Haiti is not something that is possible in just a few months or a few years,” says Widmark, 17, from Cap Haitien. “The reconstruction will happen in the future, but the children need to be educated first.”

It brings the salary of the lowest paid teacher in public schools to Sh13,700 a month while the highest paid teacher will get Sh120,270 minus allowances.But some teachers said the pay increase was far below the rise in cost of living.

Mary Rasul of Mama Ngina Girls Secondary in Mombasa, said she would only believe they would get a pay rise when she sees the money. “This can be mere public relations. Let’s wait and see if it will be reflected in our payslips,” she said.

Each classroom consists of 18 to 20 kids and is named after a child killed in the war. Children paint various forms of the rebels' star-and-crescent flag. The girls learn to stitch small pillows as gifts to families who lost relatives in the fighting. Scrawled on a blackboard in Arabic is "Free Libya, out with Gadhafi."But mainly, Saffar said, the school is a way for the children to play, meet their friends and act their age."Our goal was to allow the children to express their emotions about what they have just gone through," said Saffar. "They are allowed to run free in the playground, sing, play, draw — whatever helps them to forget."

Teachers at Ras Mouftah said the children's behavior reflects what they have been through: They are rougher with each other, and new words have crept into their vocabulary — Kalashnikov, mortar, rape."Instead of cartoons they are now watching the news. They can even distinguish the types of rockets that fly overhead," said Fatma Tuweilab, a volunteer at the school.