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Teachers said kids know how to Google, but they can't distinguish good information from the fake stuff. They can use Facebook, but they don't know how to protect their personal information. They can watch YouTube, but they don't use it to learn new things.

Meanwhile, teachers from schools that let them integrate technology into the class on their own terms reported successful outcomes.

The state media recently reported that in the Mekong Delta's Ben Tre province, of 700 teachers who had been tested, only 61 reached the required score. In Hue, in central Vietnam, one in five scored B2 or higher when 500 primary and secondary teachers were screened with tests tailored by the British Council.

"B2 is achievable enough. The teachers I know want to improve their English but want their salaries to be higher so that they can have an incentive to try harder to meet the standard," said Tran Thi Qua, a teacher trainer from the education department in Hue.

A new languages-focused curriculum delivered by retrained teachers should be in place in 70% of grade-three classes by 2015, according to ministry plans, and available nationwide by 2019. English teaching hours are set to double and maths will be taught in a foreign language in 30% of high schools in major cities by 2015.

"The government needs to fund courses to help improve the quality of the teachers, and pay them more money, but I think if teachers don't want to improve, then they should change jobs," she said.

Rebecca Hales, a former senior ELT development manager at British Council Vietnam, said: "The ministry is taking a phased approach, which is commendable, but there are issues with supply and demand. They don't have the trained primary English teachers. The targets are completely unachievable at the moment."

"The teacher trainers we trained up are now at the mercy of the individual education departments. There's no evidence at this stage of a large-scale teacher training plan," Hales said.

"There are many challenges. We are dealing with everything, from training, salaries and policy, to promotion, how to train [teachers] then keep them in the system. I'm not sure if [Project 2020] will be successful. Other countries have spent billions on English language teaching in the private sector but still governments have been very unhappy with the outcomes."

Ransacked Schools in the area were closed for several months in late 2008 and early 2009 when fighting between rebel soldiers in the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP - now a political party) and the DRC army brought chaos to North Kivu. Children were forcibly recruited from schools by militia groups and the army and students and teachers were shot and abducted, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Schools were ransacked and many were occupied by either soldiers or IDPs.

After the war, he said 120 fewer pupils returned to classes. At Kasasa, CNDP soldiers occupied the school for several weeks, taking books and causing damage. Some pupils were killed during the fighting, and Nkunda said others were traumatized. "Of course the war has had an effect," he said. "Imagine going to school after your parents have been killed." Getting displaced children back in school is a priority for international agencies including the Norwegian Refugee Council.

"Education is extremely important to the future of Congo," said Mondlane. "With large numbers of displaced children it is extremely important to invest in education in this humanitarian crisis." "Bad government" Kasasa student Shirambere Tibari Menya, 22, lost four years of his schooling to war. Most recently, he fled to Uganda during the fighting in 2008 and is now close to finishing secondary school. But one obstacle remains - a one-off series of final exams which all DRC pupils must take before graduation. Tibari is confident he will pass and would like to go on to study medicine but says his family does not have the $12 he must pay to take the tests. "I don't accept that I'm going to lose another year, but you can see that we are studying in bad conditions," he said. "For our parents the main activity is to go to the fields, but they are raped and attacked so we have the problem of food and no money. "I blame the government. We are in a bad country with a bad government."

Since formal education often leads to future job prospects, a culture of teaching peace ought to offer dynamic examples of careers with a conscience, or choosing a vocation which utilizes their unique gifts and talents and which is ecologically sound, morally upright and globally-minded. Giving evidence that peace is a viable and tangible career option can open doors and broaden students' perspectives.

Science teachers can teach peace by promoting environmental awareness and ecological thinking. Foreign language teachers can read and/or translate primary-source texts from the target language which detail experiences in personal, local, national and global peacemaking efforts. Physics classes can learn about the subatomic exchange of matter and energy which binds all humans to one another. Themes of peace and justice can be infused in every content subject so that peace is pervasive in the curriculum.

A comprehensive global network of educators promoting peace will create waves of new teachers who are motivated to teach peace

Rwanda has accordingly embarked on building the English language teaching capacity of all primary and secondary school teachers by organising and conducting English language training.

However, Rwanda's remuneration of teachers is not far better than Uganda's. According to an article published in the New Times, Rwanda's daily newspaper, last year, primary teachers in public institutions earn between Frw20,000 (about sh73,666) to Frw62,000 (about sh228,365) per month depending on their experience.

Until October 2008, education in Rwanda was dispensed in a mixture of its three official languages: local Kinyarwanda; French, which is spoken mainly by educated elite; and English, which was added in 1994.

Outside major towns, a vast majority speak only Kinyarwanda. Part of the government's rationale for the switch was that it intended to join the Commonwealth club of mainly former British colonies, which it did in late 2009.

The goal is to reduce the teacher-student ratio from 74 to 45 students per teacher. Though headteachers commended the government's effort to equip schools with the basic teaching materials like books, they noted that lack of computers and the insufficient lab materials for practical lessons hamper the success of the programme.

Electricity also remains a challenge especially for schools and students in rural areas. This has a great impact on students' performance.

The lack of facilities meant that many classes met under trees, and books and teaching materials arrived months late, if at all. Despite increases in the education budget, spending per student, already low, declined by about 25 per cent and contributed to the decline in quality. As a result nearly 300,000 students dropped out during the first year, and high dropout rates continue to this day.

Overall, reports the UN study, only about 20 per cent of boys and girls successfully complete eight years of primary education in Malawi. This is largely a function of the country's deep poverty, the researchers say, and the lack of resources, such as nutrition programmes, to help poor children remain in school.

The abolition of school fees is a precondition for getting large numbers of poor children into school, but it must be accompanied by strong public and political support, sound planning and reform, and increased financing.

fter systems adjust to the surge in enrolment, they argue, resources must be directed at improving quality and meeting the needs of the very poor, those in distant rural areas and children with disabilities. The analysts say that a particular focus should be girls, who face a range of obstacles to attending and staying in school, including cultural attitudes that devalue education for women. Improved sanitation and facilities and better safety and security conditions can make it easier to keep girls in school.

In Tehran, Iran’s capital, Dr. Bilham has calculated that one million people could die in a predicted quake similar in intensity to the one in Haiti, which the Haitian government estimates killed 230,000. (Some Iranian geologists have pressed their government for decades to move the capital because of the nest of surrounding geologic faults.)

Ali Agaoglu, a Turkish developer ranked 468th last year on the Forbes list of billionaires, described how in the 1970s, salty sea sand and scrap iron were routinely used in buildings made of reinforced concrete. “At that time, this was the best material,” he said, according to a translation of the interview. “Not just us, but all companies were doing the same thing. If an earthquake occurs in Istanbul, not even the army will be able to get in.”

Istanbul stands out among threatened cities in developing countries because it is trying to get ahead of the risk. A first step was an earthquake master plan drawn up for the city and the federal government by Dr. Erdik’s team and researchers at three other Turkish universities in 2006. Such a plan is a rarity outside of rich cities like Tokyo and Los Angeles.Carrying out its long list of recommendations has proved more challenging, given that the biggest source of political pressure in Istanbul, as with most crowded cities, is not an impending earthquake but traffic, crime, jobs and other real-time troubles.Nonetheless, with the urgency amplified by the lessons from Haiti’s devastation, Istanbul is doing what it can to gird for its own disaster.

But a push is also coming from the bottom, as nonprofit groups, recognizing the limits of centralized planning, train dozens of teams of volunteers in poor districts and outfit them with radios, crowbars and first-aid kits so they can dig into the wreckage when their neighborhoods are shaken.

Under a program financed with more than $800 million in loans from the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, and more in the pipeline from other international sources, Turkey is in the early stages of bolstering hundreds of the most vulnerable schools in Istanbul, along with important public buildings and more than 50 hospitals. With about half of the nearly 700 schools assessed as high priorities retrofitted or replaced so far, progress is too slow to suit many Turkish engineers and geologists tracking the threat. But in districts where the work has been done or is under way — those closest to the Marmara Sea and the fault — students, parents and teachers express a sense of relief tempered by the knowledge that renovations only cut the odds of calamity.

“I hope it’s enough,” said Serkan Erdogan, an English teacher at the Bakirkoy Cumhuriyet primary school close to the Marmara coast, where $315,000 was spent to add reinforced walls, jackets of fresh concrete and steel rebar around old columns and to make adjustments as simple as changing classroom doors to open outward, easing evacuations. “The improvements are great, but the building may still collapse,” he said. “We have to learn how to live with that risk. The children need to know what they should do.”In a fifth-grade classroom, the student training that goes with the structural repairs was evident as Nazan Sati, a social worker, asked the 11-year-olds what they would do if an earthquake struck right at that moment. At first a forest of hands shot toward the ceiling. Ms. Sati quickly told them to show, not tell. In a mad, giggling scramble, the students dove beneath their desks. But the threat for children, and their parents, also lies outside the school walls, in mile upon mile of neighborhoods filled with structures called gecekondu, meaning “landed overnight,” because they were constructed seemingly instantly as hundreds of thousands of migrants from rural regions flowed into the city seeking work in the past decade or two.

For close to 15 years, national examinations in Uganda were synonymous with late deliveries and leaking of question papers, missing papers, and cheating. However, this year's examinations have arguably been the best organised. The examinations body hired over 7,000 scouts on top of thousands of invigilators and supervisers, who ensured the exercise's success. However, cases of candidates sitting using candles at night and late deliveries of examination material were reported in some examination centres.

New pledges for 2011 The Government has issued several pledges that it says will be implemented come next year. The pledges include the following: The number of government sponsored students in public universities to increase from 4,000 to 6,000. Free A' level education, which is to cost over sh85b next financial year Rolling out the long-waited tuition loan scheme for privately sponsored university students Construct and renovate more teachers houses, classrooms, science laboratories and latrines About 20,000 teachers will get jobs in the Government over the next five years Government to offer housing loans to teachers who have taught for about 20 years.

Poor quality in UPE schools UPE has led school enrollment to soar from two million pupils in 1997 to almost 8 million today. However, it came with other challenges which include lack of lunch for pupils, low pay for teachers, inadequate accommodation, laxity in school inspections and teacher absenteeism.

e National Council for Higher Education closed Lugazi University over alleged failure to meet the minimum standards in the last four years of its operation.

For over two weeks, lectures were suspended at Kampala International University this year when students rioted, protesting a new rule subjecting them to fines if they delay to pay tuition fees.

The report's research claims that far fewer of the 2.4 million girls enrolled in school are actually in the classroom. In 2009 approximately 22% – around 446,682 – of female students were considered long-term absentees.

While 2,281 schools have been built in the past two years, data from the Afghan Ministry of Education shows that 47% still have no actual building. A lack of investment in female teachers is proving a significant obstacle to girls attending school.

In the past years schools and girl students have been targeted by anti-government forces or other extremist groups, prompting teachers to leave their jobs and parents to keep their children out the classroom. In 2009 there were 50 attacks on schools across Afghanistan every month.

The median (or middle-performing) student in Algeria, Egypt and Syria scores below the low-benchmark; in Tunisia they score just above. In other words, half of the students in each country have gone through eight years of school to arrive at a level that leaves them with no working knowledge of basic math. In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, over 80% of students fall below the low benchmark. The median student in both performs at around the same level as their counterpart in Ghana and El Salvador – and Qatar is the worst performing country covered in the survey.

Why are education systems in the Middle East and North Africa performing so badly? In many countries, teachers are poorly trained – and teaching is regarded as a low-status, last-resort source of employment for entrants to the civil service. There is an emphasis on rote learning, rather than solving problems and developing more flexible skills. And education systems are geared towards a public sector job market that is shrinking, and for entry to post-secondary education. Most don’t make it. And those who do emerge with skills that are largely irrelevant to the needs of employers.

Moreover, many Arab youth view their education systems not as a source of learning and opportunity, but as a vehicle through which autocratic rulers seek to limit critical thinking, undermine freedom of speech and reinforce their political control.

To a large extent, the protest movement across the Arab States has been led by educated youth and adults frustrated by political autocracy and limited economic opportunity. This has deflected attention from an education crisis facing low-income households in primary education – and from the needs of adolescents and youth emerging from school systems with just a few years of sub-standard education.

The Arab states have an unfinished agenda on basic education.  They still have 6 million primary school age children out of school – around 16% of the world’s total. Despite the vast gap in wealth between the two countries, Saudi Arabia has a lower primary school enrolment rate than Zambia. The Arab world also has some very large gender disparities: in Yemen, primary school enrolment rates are 79% for boys, but just 66% for girls.

Consider the case of Egypt. On average, someone aged 17-22 years old in the country has had around nine years of education. That’s roughly what might be anticipated on the basis of the country’s income. Scratch the surface, though, and you get a different picture: around 12% of Egyptians have had less than two years of education.

High dropout rates from primary and lower secondary school are symptomatic of parental poverty, poor quality education, and a sustained failure on the part of the Egyptian government to tackle the underlying causes of inequality. Adolescents from poor backgrounds entering labor markets without a secondary education are carrying a one-way ticket to a life of poverty, insecurity and marginalization.

The political crisis sweeping Arab states is the product of many years of political failure. The aspirations and hopes of young people – who are increasingly connected to each other and the outside world through the Internet – are colliding with an atrophied political system governed by complacent, self-interested elites who are disconnected from the population.

Studies have shown reduced levels of aggression in schools that use the program. Kids are more attuned to each other's feelings and they police each other. But bullying prevention is just a side benefit. The core purpose is breaking that cycle.