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Themba Dlamini

Nedbank Bursary Programme - Closing Date 30 April 2013 - Phuzemthonjeni - 1 views

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    Nedbank Bursary Programme - Closing Date 30 April 2013
Teachers Without Borders

Canada News: Ontario to increase teacher training to two years - thestar.com - 0 views

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    Teacher training in Ontario will be bumped up to two years starting in 2014, says the provincial government. The Liberals, who promised the move during the 2011 election campaign, began consultations with education groups on Wednesday about the change. Three to four additional sessions are planned for April and May. Teachers typically earn a four-year undergraduate degree and then spend another year at university completing their bachelor of education. (Ten of the 13 universities with education programs also offer the degrees concurrently so students can complete the two at the same time.) The Liberals have said more training is needed given the challenges and increasing demands teachers face. The expanded program, the details of which have yet to be finalized, will include more practical, in-class training for new teachers.
Teachers Without Borders

http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20120326001047 - 0 views

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    North Korean authorities plan to supply school uniforms to the country's students by April 15, marking the centenary of the birth of late founding leader Kim Il-sung, a pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan said Monday.
Teachers Without Borders

Are schools ready for English? | The Japan Times Online - 0 views

  • While many parents and other Japanese welcome the government's move to provide English education at an early age, some experts are concerned that most teachers are being forced to venture into uncharted waters with little preparation. In addition, devoting just one period a week to English won't be near enough to nurture children's language ability.
  • Japan has lagged behind its neighboring countries in introducing English lessons at an early age, and its impact is obvious in various statistics.
  • TOEFL data for 2004-2005 put Japan next to last in Asia, with an average score of only 191 points — just one point higher than North Korea. Afghanistan exceeded Japan by seven points, while Singapore had the top score at 254.
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  • Education ministry officials stressed that the new English lessons, Gaikokugo Katsudo (Foreign Language Activities), will be different from English lessons at the junior high level, and students won't be drilled on comprehensive grammar rules or vocabulary.
  • The goal of the new program is to help children experience and understand other languages and cultures, motivate them to actively communicate with foreigners and become familiar with the sounds and basic expressions of another language, the ministry says.
  • According to a survey last July and August by the think tank Benesse Educational Research and Development Center on 4,709 elementary school teachers nationwide, 68.1 percent of classroom teachers said they don't have much confidence or they have no confidence in teaching English.
  • The teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said one of his colleagues told him he was afraid of giving lessons with his broken English, while another pointed out the possibility that this will merely cause children to dislike English.
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    Come April, English classes will become mandatory for fifth- and sixth-graders, but a 29-year-old elementary school teacher in Tokyo has heard the concerns of her overwhelmed colleagues, especially the older ones, who have neither taught the language nor studied it since their university years decades ago.
Teachers Without Borders

Nepal, South Africa and Venezuela to receive UN prize for boosting education - 0 views

  • Three institutions from Nepal, South Africa and Venezuela will be recognized for supporting and improving teachers’ effectiveness in developing countries, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced today. The Rato Bangala Foundation, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Schools Enrichment Centre, and the Banco del Libro will be awarded the UNESCO-Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize for Outstanding Practice and Performance in Enhancing the Effectiveness of Teachers during a ceremony in Dubai in April. The three institutions will be recognized for their outstanding work in the education field in developing countries or within marginalized or disadvantaged communities, UNESCO said in a news release.
Teachers Without Borders

Dying in Haiti: Aids and the Earthquake - 0 views

  • With more than a million people taking refuge in temporary shelters, they are at greater risk of violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, Sidibé said. "Programmes are urgently needed to reduce vulnerabilities to HIV and ensure protection."
  • As Haiti experiences a critical interruption of HIV services and programmes, stepped up support is vital for the country to allow it to regain momentum towards reaching universal access goals for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.
  • Haiti’s annual AIDS budget was $132 million prior to the earthquake, and UNAIDS believes that a further $70 million will be necessary to meet the country’s immediate response needs over the next six months.The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that about 285 000 houses had been damaged or destroyed in the earthquake, and government and humanitarian organisations, as well as engineers, are working to register the displaced and plan relocation sites for those who cannot return to their homes.
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  • The UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) and its partners are setting up provisional schoolrooms in Port-au-Prince and other areas, as schools destroyed in the quake are being rebuilt.
  • Haiti’s educational system, said Marc Vergara of the agency, virtually ceased to function in affected areas, leaving about 2.5 million children out of school after the earthquake.Together with the ministry of education, Unicef is helping to establish more than 150 tent schools to get children back to school before April.With more than half of school-age children not attending classes prior to the quake, the agency’s goal is to "build back better" to create conditions to allow many young Haitians to attend school for the first time.
Teachers Without Borders

With Haitian Schools in Ruins, Children in Limbo - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, only about half of Haiti’s school-age children were enrolled in classes, a glaring symbol of the nation’s poverty.
  • more than 3,000 school buildings in the earthquake zone had been destroyed or damaged. Hundreds of teachers and thousands of students were killed, and officials are questioning the safety of the remaining buildings after violent aftershocks in recent weeks, making the goal of Haitian education officials to reopen many schools by April 1 seem increasingly remote.
  • Children staying in the camps face trials beyond laboring in the streets. Health workers in the camps are reporting a rising number of young rape victims, including girls as young as 12. Alison Thompson, an Australian nurse and documentary director who volunteers at a tent clinic on the grounds of the Pétionville Club, said she had cared for a 14-year-old girl who was raped recently in the camp. “The entire structure of the lives of these children has been upended, and now they’re dealing with the predators living next to them,” Ms. Thompson said.
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  • Officials declared schools open in unaffected areas as of Feb. 1; some students have trickled into those schools, but many have not, say education specialists. Here in the capital, symbols of the devastated education system lie scattered throughout the city. Metal scavengers are still picking through the wrecked Collège du Canapé-Vert, where as many as 300 students studying to become teachers died in the earthquake.
  • Only about 20 percent of schools were public, with the rest highly expensive for the poor. Even in public schools, poor families struggled to pay for uniforms, textbooks and supplies. While other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean spend about 5 percent of their gross domestic product on education, Haiti was spending just 2 percent, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
  • “The quality of education was very low, with about a third of teachers having nine years of education at best,” Mr. Cabral said in an interview here, after a recent meeting with Haitian officials in an attempt to come up with a plan to reopen schools. Mr. Cabral said the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that Haiti needed $2 billion over the next five years to rebuild its education system.
  • Children make up about 45 percent of Haiti’s population
Teachers Without Borders

UNICEF - At a glance: Haiti - Field Diary: Camp's children excited about going back to ... - 0 views

  • PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 31 March, 2010 – You only have to mention the word 'school' and a sparkle comes into Taïma Celestin's dark brown eyes. It's not hard to understand why. The scheduled reopening of Haiti's schools on 5 April will be the first real opportunity for this confident 10-year-old to leave what is today her home – a tiny lean-to covered with a blue tarpaulin in a former sports ground in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince.
  • During the day, Taïma joins several hundred other children for informal classes run by volunteer teachers inside two large white tents that were provided by UNICEF along with 'School-in-a-box' kits full of learning materials, and a recreation kit.The classes are noisy but good-natured. They pause briefly to allow members of a local non-governmental organization to distribute fruit juice and snacks to the children.
  • It may be part of the healing process that has led children in the camp to invent their own name for the earthquake. "When we talk about it among ourselves, we call it 'Monsieur Gudoo-Gudoo'," Taïma says, shaking her arms in rhythm to the words, "because that was the noise it made."
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  • "I used to find children having panic attacks at night," says Dr. Bertrand. "But since the classes started, I haven't seen kids nearly so distressed."
  • For Taïma, as for many children, the prospect of going back to school is exciting. "It'll be a great day for me, especially the math and French classes," she says, referring to her favourite subjects.
  • "When I get to school," she says, "I will also find out which of my friends are alive, and which ones are dead."
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Burundi: Fortified Rice for 15,000 School-Children - 0 views

  • Bujumbura — Burundi is set to benefit from a rice fortification technology that will not only be the first in Africa but will also help check malnutrition in children through school-feeding programmes. International organizations PATH and World Vision will introduce Ultra Rice, made from rice flour and enriched with micronutrients, including iron, zinc and folic acid, to about 15,000 children from April.
  • According to Neilson, the project will impact "on the attendance and retention of primary-school students. In addition, the students continue to receive nutrition education through the government health and education programmes." Rice is not a staple food in Burundi, however. A parent in the capital, Bujumbura, who declined to be named, said: "In our home villages, we eat rice only on special occasions, like Christmas or during other ceremonies. This will be interesting for children to get it at school on a daily basis; we hope its taste won't be too different from the normal rice."
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    Bujumbura - Burundi is set to benefit from a rice fortification technology that will not only be the first in Africa but will also help check malnutrition in children through school-feeding programmes.
Teachers Without Borders

In Battle to Save Chinese, It's Test vs. Test - China Real Time Report - WSJ - 0 views

  • Chinese students’ obsession with learning English is apparent. Chinese cities are littered with billboards and fliers for teaching institutes, and the demand for native-speaking teachers and tutors seems endless. For many, the TOEFL, or Test of English as a Foreign Language, ranks second only to the infamous gaokao college entrance exam as a driver of candle-burning study habits. Worried that this preoccupation with English is contributing to a decline in native language skills, officials at the Ministry of Education are now trying to get students to return to their linguistic roots. How? By introducing another test.
  • The test comes amid worrying signs of declining language proficiency in China. More than 30% of students failed a ministry-sponsored test administered last year to evaluate Beijing college students’ language skills, according to Xinhua. Many language instructors and others worry that young people in China are neglecting their mother tongue as technological advances like cellphones and computers have greatly reduced the need to hand-write Chinese characters — of which there are tens of thousands.
  • “In recent years, more and more Chinese people are paying attention to foreign-language studies while neglecting to polish their native language,” Dai Jiagan, director of the authority overseeing the exam, told Xinhua. “And many newly coined, nonstandard Internet phrases are confusing their Chinese.” There are around 300 million Chinese people learning English, China’s premier Wen Jiabao boasted in a 2009 speech. Last year, ETS, the creator of the TOEFL, said it saw a 30% increase year-to-year in the number of Chinese test takers.
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  • McKinsey & Co. estimates that China’s foreign-language business is worth $2.1 billion annually
Cara Whitehead

April: Easter - 0 views

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    Free games, resources, and printables using an Easter themed word list
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