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Education is a key ingredient of the political crisis facing Arab states. Superficially, the education profile of the region is starting to resemble that of East Asia. The past two decades have witnessed dramatic advances in primary and secondary school enrollment, with a step-increase in tertiary education. Many governments have increased public spending on education. The 7% of GDP that Tunisia invests in the sector puts the country near the top of the global league table for financial effort.

In Egypt, the education group most likely to be unemployed is university level and above, followed by post-secondary. Around one quarter of the country’s male university graduates are unemployed, and almost half of its female graduates.

For all the expansion of access and investment in education, the Arab states have some of the world’s worst performing education systems. The problems start early. In this year’s Global Monitoring Report we carry a table showing the distribution of performance across different countries in reading test scores at grade 4. In Kuwait, Qatar and Morocco, over 90% of students scored below the lowest benchmark, indicating that they lacked even basic comprehension.  In fact, these countries held the bottom three positions in a group of 37 countries covered.

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.

But such focus on the university and its graduates shouldn’t be a surprise. After three decades of war, the country's most talented professionals have fled, leaving behind a nation where 72 percent of the people are now illiterate and the number of universities may not even reach 50.

“For a master's degree, yes, it’s tempting to go overseas. But for living, it’s not. Once you’ve got an education, it seems like this is where people need you most,” says Sulieman Hedayat, one of 32 students who graduated on Thursday.

AUAF opened its doors in 2006, and everyone from prominent Afghan businessmen to institutions like USAID have invested tens of millions of dollars in the hopes of minting a university that produces students who can help rebuild Afghanistan.

Kenya: Learning theatre to promote peace and understanding among Somali communitiesOverview IREX Europe, in partnership with the Kenyan-based NGO Somali Aid Foundation (SAF), is implementing a project aimed at disenfranchised youth which uses theatre as a vehicle for youth to express their views and frustrations on key issues including poverty, lack of access to education and gender issues, among others. The project targets the Somali youth population in the Nairobi suburb of Eastleigh and in the refugee camp of Hagadera. The theatre technique used is Drama for Conflict Transformation (DCT), which promotes understanding and tolerance in different societies. IREX Europe and its partners have successfully implemented the methodology in Somaliland, Indonesia and Central Asia.

KABUL, 12 September 2011 (IRIN) - Despite billions of dollars in aid and government funding over the past decade, Afghanistan still has about four million school-age children out of school, officials say. "Overall our biggest challenge is our operating budget, which is not enough to cover the salaries of our teachers... and of the roughly 14,000 primary and secondary schools in the country, some 7,000 lack buildings, forcing children to study in the open, under trees or in tents," Education Ministry spokesman Aman Iman said.

"My class is very close to the main road - in a tent. Sometimes even stray dogs get in," Khan told IRIN. "Passing cars blow dust into our tent, which gets into our clothes, hair and even notebooks. I really do not want to go to school, but what can I do? My family is forcing me to go."

Currently, only eight million of the 12 million school-age children are in school, according to the Education Ministry.

On a wet Wednesday evening in Seoul, six government employees gather at the office to prepare for a late-night patrol. The mission is as simple as it is counterintuitive: to find children who are studying after 10 p.m. And stop them. In South Korea, it has come to this. To reduce the country's addiction to private, after-hours tutoring academies (called hagwons), the authorities have begun enforcing a curfew — even paying citizens bounties to turn in violators.

South Korea's hagwon crackdown is one part of a larger quest to tame the country's culture of educational masochism. At the national and local levels, politicians are changing school testing and university admissions policies to reduce student stress and reward softer qualities like creativity. "One-size-fits-all, government-led uniform curriculums and an education system that is locked only onto the college-entrance examination are not acceptable," President Lee Myung-bak vowed at his inauguration in 2008.

There are more private instructors in South Korea than there are schoolteachers, and the most popular of them make millions of dollars a year from online and in-person classes. When Singapore's Education Minister was asked last year about his nation's reliance on private tutoring, he found one reason for hope: "We're not as bad as the Koreans."

A pilot project will be launched later this year in the southern province of Sindh as Pakistan looks to further strengthen ties with its giant neighbour. While Islamabad and Washington continue to eye each other warily – and a planned visit by President Barack Obama has been postponed - 2011 has already been declared the year of "Pak-China Friendship". The country's cricketing authorities have even considered playing Test matches in China while touring sides avoid Pakistan for fear of terrorist attack. Now, education authorities in Sindh say they plan to make Mandarin compulsory in schools from Class 6 (10- and 11-year-olds). "Our trade, educational and other relations are growing with China everyday and now it is necessary for our younger generation to have command over their language," said Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq¸ senior provincial education minister, as he unveiled the policy.

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.