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But the increase in school attendance is only a start. Despite the surge in enrolment, almost half of the 72 million children out of school worldwide in 2007 lived in sub-Saharan Africa.

The UN's MDG Monitor website, which tracks progress towards the goals, estimates that school fees and other mandatory charges, such as uniform costs and dues for parent-teacher associations, consume an average 25 per cent of poor families' household budgets in Africa. But except for the costly fees often assessed on parents in wealthy districts, the sums collected are too small to dramatically improve the quality of learning.

Malawi primary school: The abolition of school fees greatly increased school enrolment, but without sufficient teachers or adequate funding, educational quality suffered.

Despite the huge increase in students, the number of teachers in Kenyan primary schools has increased slowly amidst government concerns that hiring large numbers of unqualified teachers would lower instructional quality and increase costs. By reassigning teachers from overstaffed areas to understaffed districts and running some schools in double shifts, Kenya kept its national pupil-to-teacher ratio from rising beyond 40 to 1 in 2004. Ratios were much higher in some provinces, however.

The government also managed to reach its target of one textbook for every three students in most subjects - an improvement in many poorly performing, largely rural districts that were not given priority for teachers and supplies before 2003

They see themselves as a bridge between school and home and an important part of the effort to raise student achievement.

For example, only 6 percent of teachers surveyed said graduating all students with a high school diploma was one of the most important goals of schools and teaching, while 71 percent said one of the most important goals was to prepare all students for careers in the 21st century.

Fewer were in favor of having common academic tests in every state, which would presumably be based on the common standards, but more than half said common tests were a good idea.

But instead of yearly tests, they want to see formative, ongoing assessments in class to help them understand how much their students are learning over time.

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.

The main hypothesis of this study is that theoretical knowledge about violence and nonviolence is not enough to motivate teachers to become peace educators. They need further support, either in their personal or professional lives, to pick up this new curricular area.

Lantieri and Patti say that coaching and practice are key components in whether or not teachers used the peace education material in which they received training:

to mentor their development as peace educators.

district-wide support

peace education should not just be an add on used by a few teachers, but rather should involve all levels of the school.

teacher training

A supportive administration

rganization siz

specific characteristics of the program, school-based factors and community support.

Much training in peace education comes from outside consultants and is limited. As a result educators are not trained in conflict resolution as extensively as they are in subject areas, so that they may feel insecure about pursuing it in their classes.

if the participants in this study find that peace education provides immediate benefits, they are more likely to incorporate into their educational practices.

he presence of a supportive administrator is the most important ingredient in whether a particular innovation gets adopted

personal friendships and kinship ties provide support for these individuals to become peace educators.

One course alone will not begin to make a peace educator.

From these responses it can be concluded that knowledge of subject matter is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for peace education curriculum reforms. Professional educators also need personal and professional support for a world view that embraces peace in the midst of a violent culture that glamorizes violence.

Family support, feelings of urgency, and professional factors like administrative support and positive school climate help teachers deal with the overwhelming nature of this subject matter

How can school leaders provide a climate that supports the use of peace education curricula?

The impact of peace education upon students is very hard to assess because students could take years to transfer learning about nonviolence into positive peaceful behaviors. Because of the complex factors that influence human behavior, it is almost impossible to demonstrate that a teacher's activities result in a specific behavior on the part of a student. What this study does show is that teachers feel they benefit from learning about peace strategies and that incorporating peace education reforms has positive benefits for professional educators struggling to deal with problems of violence.

For Gor and 60 other girls, the establishment of the Women's Institute for Secondary Education and Research (WISER) two years ago has helped them obtain an education that was otherwise only a dream.

"We try to help the girls by teaching them how to think and reason for themselves, not what to think; the focus is to produce holistic Kenyans," Oyugi said. “To the girls, I say: ‘whatever women do, they must do it twice as [hard as] a man to be thought they are half as good, they must work hard’.”

According to a 2010 report by the Nyanza Education Women's Initiative, girls in the province have in recent years fared badly compared with boys in national examinations. The report says poverty, sexual abuse, lack of motivation and the absence of role models were some of the factors affecting girls' performance in school

Yet the top 20 percent of state schools - which largely correspond to historically white schools and charge fees to compensate for insufficient public funding - enjoy adequate facilities and attract the best teachers.

When seen in regional context, South Africa grossly under-performs, given that it has more qualified teachers, lower pupil-to-teacher-ratios and better access to resources," the report on the study noted.

many teachers had received an inferior education as a result of apartheid's "Bantu" education system, which was deliberately designed to disadvantage black learners and only ended in 1994 when a new democratic government came into power.

"The focus needs to be on teachers' development," said Cembi. "We've had changes in the curriculum since the new [post-apartheid] era, but we find not much focus on training teachers."

n recent years, SADTU has called for the reopening of training colleges because the shortage of teachers has meant that some schools in poor and rural areas have had to hire individuals who do not meet the official requirement of holding a teaching diploma.

Her view was backed up by the Stellenbosch study, which identified the lack of regular and meaningful student assessments and feedback to parents as another major weakness in the education system.

The researchers found that the job prospects of school leavers were determined not only by the number of years of education attained, but the quality of that education.

The onus on the teacher is high, and many teachers are still learning the ropes.“In the first year, teachers found it quite cumbersome. Even now, teachers are learning the system,” said Mansoor Ali Khan, general secretary, Management of Independent CBSE Schools’ Association and secretary, Delhi Public School (DPS).

DPS conducts a five-day workshop each year, so that teachers understand the system better and new staff can be oriented to it. Experts are also brought in to address teachers.

Menon draws attention to the fundamental concern: “What is important is that teachers are able to diagnose learning difficulties in a child. This is not merely a question of assigning a mark or grade. The whole concept of CCE would be defeated if teachers cannot identify which child has understood the concept taught, and which hasn’t.”