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The following excerpts are from Allen Mendler's forthcoming ASCD book When Teaching Gets Tough: Smart Ways to Reclaim Your Game. Are there days when you feel overwhelmed by some combination of unruly or poorly motivated students, parents who either give you a hard time or simply aren't to be found, and never-ending classroom distractions? Do you feel frustrated by burdensome meetings that accomplish little but eat up a ton of time? Are you getting tired pleading and scavenging for basic school supplies?

South Africa's education and finance ministers are being taken to court over poor standards at state schools. The BBC's Karen Allen investigates the education crisis and why some parents in Eastern Cape province are opting to send their children to private schools despite the cost. "We are not a flashy family - I'm just an ordinary kid," says Simanye Zondani, 17, as he pores over his maths homework in the subdued light of his home. Since his parents died, his aunt has given up her smart "bachelorette" flat in Queenstown and opted instead for a house in the township. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers [and] science teachers” End Quote Khumzi Madikane Head teacher at Nonkqubela Secondary It means she can now just about afford the £700 ($1,100) to send her nephew to private school. Five thousand children, most of them from black families on modest incomes, are switching to independent schools annually. The quality varies, but in Gauteng province alone, South Africa's economic hub, more than 100 new schools have applied for registration in the past year. It is a response to a sense of failure in the state sector, argues Peter Bosman, the principal of Getahead High School, the low-cost private school which Simanye attends. "Parents want consistency and quality," he says - not with a sense of schadenfreude but resignation.

The irony is that significant numbers of parents who send their children to private schools are themselves teachers in the state sector.

"We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers, science teachers and when staff look at our facilities they decide not to come here," head teacher Khumzi Madikane laments.

November 2011 - According to new analysis by the Global Monitoring Report team, while global spending on basic education increased from 2008 to 2009, to reach US$5.6 billion, it is still vastly insufficient for the 67 million children who are still out of school.

BULILIMA, Zimbabwe, 7 December 2011 – After completing the fourth grade at the top of her class, 13-year-old Ellen Mbedzi was forced to drop out of Mafeha Primary School in Bulilima, a district in south-western Zimbabwe. Her unemployed father did not see the value of spending the family’s limited resources on a girl.

Ellen became a recipient of the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) programme, a school grant programme that helps disadvantaged children stay in school, or, in Ellen’s case, return to the classroom. Her school also received support from the Education Transition Fund (ETF), which provided textbooks in four core subjects – math, English, environmental sciences and a local language – to every student in the school.

ETF, an innovative partnership of the government, UNICEF and the international donor community, offers large-scale support to the education sector, and provides much-needed resources and textbooks to every primary school. So far, 15 million textbooks were distributed around the country, and an additional distribution of 7 million is planned.

HARARE, 7 November 2011 (IRIN) - Poverty, abuse and cultural practices are preventing a third of Zimbabwean girls from attending primary school and 67 percent from attending secondary school, denying them a basic education, according to a recent study which found alarming dropout rates for girls. ''Sexual harassment and abuse by even school teachers and parents, cultural issues, lack of school fees, early marriage, parental commitments and early pregnancies are some of the contributing factors to the dropout by the girl child,'' said the authors of "Because I am a Girl" by Plan International, a nonprofit organisation that works to alleviate child poverty.

According to the Plan International report, the long distances that children in rural areas have to travel to reach school, and the burden that girl children face because they often have to assume the responsibilities of being head of the household after the death of their parents, are other factors contributing to the high dropout rate for girls.

A 2005 government programme of forced evictions, known as Operation Murambatsvina (Drive out Trash), which uprooted some 700,000 people from urban areas across the country, compounded the difficulties of accessing education for girls from affected households. Amnesty International, in its report ''Left Behind: The Impact of Zimbabwe's Forced Evictions on the Right to Education'' released in October 2011, documents the ways in which the evictions disrupted the primary and secondary education of an estimated 222,000 children.

Educational inclusion relates to all children accessing and meaningfully participating in quality education, in ways that are responsive to their individual needs. The terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘inclusive education’ are often used in relation to children with disabilities and/or special needs and emerged partly out of debates to reduce their segregation from mainstream schooling.In recent years, these terms have been used by the Education for All (EFA) movement in relation to all children who are marginalised and excluded from basic education, not just in terms of initial access to schooling, but access to rights within schooling processes. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) identifies inclusion as “…a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion within and from education.”

According to UNESCO, inclusion “…involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and strategies, with a common vision which covers all children of the appropriate age range and a conviction that it is the responsibility of the regular system to educate all children.”  

While life for many women in the country remains difficult, today Herat’s Gowarshad High School – named for the powerful Timurid queen who founded the city – is full of confident young girls who are well aware of their rights.

“If a woman is educated, she can effectively participate in society and transfer her knowledge to her children,” said Fariba, the school’s volleyball captain. “A society must not be led by men only.”

the Bangladeshi non-governmental organization BRAC runs a community-based school where girls who have not been able to enter the formal education system can get a basic education. There girls are tutored for two years, at which point they are prepared to join the formal school system at the fourth-grade level.

Ms. Fanilievna added that Kyrgyzstan’s schools are planning to include peace and tolerance education in response to the recent strife. The first month of school will be dedicated to Peace and Reconciliation, and UNICEF has cooperated with The Ministry of Education to finalize the peace-building lessons which will be integrated in the regular curriculum.

As the head teacher speaks, several female principals from other Osh schools come to the distribution point at Lomonosov to pick up their School-in-a-Box kits – bundles of basic education supplies designed for up to 80 students in an emergency setting – which were delivered by UNICEF to some 277 schools in Osh and Jalal Abad provinces.

“All the rest of my life depends on my education, and you find your best friends at school,” she said. “Schools also have a great peace-building potential as they are uniting students from different backgrounds.“For instance, at Lomonosov School we have 14 ethnicities,” Nazbiyke added. “We communicate and stay friends. Our hope is that this, in turn, will influence our parents and the community.”Nazbiyke knows that her parents are aware of the major role schools play in bringing peace back to the communities. The vital effect of school starting, of teachers and students coming together, resounds through Osh. It is bringing a sense of normalcy to a province that desperately needs it.

Enrolment at primary schools nationwide has leapt from 59% in 2000 to 95.4% today, putting the impoverished country well on course to achieve the second millennium development goal (MDG) of primary school education for all by 2015.

half of pupils will fail to qualify for secondary school, with 3,000 girls a year dropping out due to pregnancy.

The progress has come with a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Enrolment has grown so fast in Tanzania that the school system is creaking with overcrowded classrooms, shortages of books, teachers and toilets, and reports of corporal punishment being used to keep order. In short, it seems that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.

Kigali — It was reported yesterday that the over 3,000 classrooms for the Nine-Year Basic Education (9-YBE) program have been completed. This was made possible by the manner in which the Rwandan people responded to the call. Ordinary citizens as well as corporate organizations contributed tremendously and this must be commended.

The mobilization, and fundraising activities carried out by the Ministry of Education, and government at large, were truly inspirational and visionary. Indeed this is the spirit that should characterise all Rwandans in whatever they choose to do for the development of the country. Most institutions of learning in the country, are witnessing increased enrolment of students. This means that more infrastructure is necessary.

Abuja — In a dramatic and ground-breaking decision, the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice in Abuja has declared that all Nigerians are entitled to education as a legal and human right. The court said that the right to education can be enforced before the court and dismissed all objections brought by the Federal Government, through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), that education is "a mere directive policy of the government and not a legal entitlement of the citizens."

Despite a decade-old commitment by world leaders to tackle the crisis, some 8.8 million children still die annually before they reach the age of 5. Nearly all of these needless deaths are easily preventable at little cost. Consider that number, 8.8 million. That is more than all Canadians aged 19 or younger. And that's how many young children die every year. It works out to 24,000 children per day. Seventeen per minute. Or 400 school bus loads every day, 365 days a year. All dead.At the same time, 500,000 mothers die annually in childbirth or from other pregnancy-related causes. In other words, simply being pregnant can kill you, depending on where you live. As the mother of a nearly 2-year-old child, I am reminded daily how fortunate I am to live in Canada. It is unimaginable to me that my child could die, as 1 million do every year, from the lack of a $10 bed net to protect him from malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Diarrhea kills 1.5 million children annually. It is easily treated. So is malaria. Also, child blindness, too common in the developing world, can be prevented by just two vitamin A pills per year. Total cost: 4 cents. Better nutrition and safer birth conditions would annually save the lives of several hundred thousand pregnant women. Ten years ago, the nations of the world pledged to reduce hunger and death from a lack of basic health care. In one of their UN Millennium Development Goals, leaders committed to reduce maternal mortality rates by three-quarters and child mortality rates by two-thirds within 15 years. But, sadly, neither will be achieved by that target date, just five years away, unless donor countries like Canada reinvigorate the initiative.

Today, the world spends $49 billion (U.S.) on pet food every year. If half of that amount were added to current annual spending on maternal and child health, the child death rate could be cut nearly in half.

Indeed, there is consensus that no strategy for poverty reduction and development can ignore humanity's need for water and sanitation.

While there are specific MDGs relating to water and sanitation, it is an indisputable fact that the achievement of all other MDGs are dependent on access to clean water and improved sanitation facilities.

At Ashaiman alone, 2,015 children, each bearing a plastic drinking cup, formed a 2,015-people queue to remind duty bearers of the 2015 deadline for the meeting of the MDGs on water and sanitation.