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Africa’s educational systems are suffering from growing pains.  More students than ever are enrolling in school, but the supply of teachers and infrastructure have not kept up with demand. Educators say about 80 percent of African students are completing primary school -- thanks in part to the push to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. They call for universal primary education by the 2015. John Daniel, the president and CEO of the intergovernmental organization the Commonwealth of Learning, says success is bringing more challenges. SCOPESecondary school students at KwaMhlanga High School in Mpumalanga, South Africa. “The African countries achieved in 10 years what it took many developed countries 100 years to do two centuries ago," he said, "and they don’t have many resources left over to do secondary.”

“Girls who have secondary education … have on average worldwide one-point-eight fewer children than girls who don’t," he said. "That’s a difference of two or three billion to the population of the world by 2050. There is [one educational researcher, Joel Cohen] who says therefore girls’ education is best way of stopping population growth and climate change.”

The Commonwealth of Learning proposes open schools, using new technologies and new ways to meet the needs of school aged children, drop-outs, mothers who want to learn at home and working adults. He said the schools cut costs and save time by using new technologies, including cell phones. Secondary school curricula can be created and shared among schools without costly intellectual property rights.

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.

One result is that they deliberately decided to complement the delivery of the devices with extensive engagement with local stakeholder groups, did a lot of capacity building with teachers and trainers, and tried to help align what they were doing with what was happening in the formal education system.

hat said, there are very real concerns in some quarters that e-book initiatives from the 'West', however well-intentioned, are potentially an important tool contributing to a subtle form of, for lack of a better term, cultural imperialism. Worldreader is apparently working on a platform for African authors and publishers to be able to distribute their works electronically, so that it will be easier for students to read books from local authors, consistent with the learning goals of local school systems.  While not downplaying the difficulties of getting large educational publishers to make their content available digitally for use by students in Africa, this desire to help promote digital marketplaces for African reading materials is perhaps the most ambitious aspect to the Worldreader initiative.

When they went back and asked, "what if content was digitized and made available at $1/book?", many people suddenly got very interested. 

Cultural barriers continue to deny disabled children access to schools, but progress on inclusive education is finally gathering

The strict hierarchy of Thai society means the drive for inclusive education needs strong commitment from both politicians and school leaders. In the past decade, there has been significant political progress in moves to implement a system that ensures children with disabilities have access to mainstream schools. However, with cultural barriers and resistance from some headteachers, the journey towards fully inclusive education has only just begun.

Some headteachers Lennon spoke to were amenable to the concept of inclusive education, but didn't feel they had the resources or training to implement it effectively. Others, with decades of experience of working in special schools, felt this institutional model was more suitable.

In Bihar, one of India's poorest and most populous states, half of the women and a quarter of the men are illiterate, and about 90% of its 104 million inhabitants live in rural areas. Life here is particularly difficult for girls, and one of the greatest hindrances to their development is the simple journey to school. For many, the trip is long, expensive and dangerous.But here, in rural Bihar, we recently saw that a two-wheeled solution to the problem has been found.Three years ago the state's new chief minister Nitish Kumar adopted a "gender agenda" and set about redressing his state's endemic gender imbalances in an attempt to boost development in one of India's most backward states. His vision was to bring a sense of independence and purpose to his state's young women, and the flagship initiative of this agenda is the Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojna, a project that gives schoolgirls 2,000 rupees (about £25) to purchase a bicycle.

871,000 schoolgirls have taken to the saddle as a result of the scheme. The number of girls dropping out of school has fallen and the number of girls enrolling has risen from 160,000 in 2006-2007 to 490,000 now.

Girls like Pinki Kumari (15), a student from the high school in Desari, previously had 14km round trip each day. When she got back home, she would have to help her mother with daily chores. "At the end of the day, it became tiring and attending school became a ritual. I hardly got any time to study,"

Syrian army and security officers have detained and tortured children with impunity during the past year, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 12 cases of children detained under inhumane conditions and tortured, as well as children shot while in their homes or on the street. Human Rights Watch has also documented government use of schools as detention centres, military bases or barracks, and sniper posts, as well as the arrest of children from schools.

“Children have not been spared the horror of Syria’s crackdown,” said Lois Whitman, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Syrian security forces have killed, arrested, and tortured children in their homes, their schools, or on the streets. In many cases, security forces have targeted children just as they have targeted adults.”

Some of the arrests took place in schools. “Nazih” (not her real name), a 17-year-old girl from Tal Kalakh, told Human Rights Watch that in May 2011, security forces entered her school and arrested all the boys in her class, after questioning them about the anti-regime slogans painted on the school walls.

"Why are you going to school? Education is useless for a girl." Forty-five-year old Bibi Gul wasn't happy that her young daughter, Nisa, had chosen to attend school. It meant the 9-year-old was busy most of the time doing her homework.

Even when public schools are available, parents often don't want their daughters to walk long distances unaccompanied to reach them. By bringing schools close to home—and, in certain communities, creating classes specifically for girls—CRS ensured that thousands of girls would be able to learn.

Nisa was especially happy when a tin box of storybooks arrived. CRS provides the schools we support with "libraries in a box" so that students can take home books to read. "After this, every day I would bring a storybook and I would read it for my sisters and brothers," remembers Nisa. But her mother still wasn't happy about her studies.

UNICEF, the UN children's agency, reports that the abolition of school fees has had the intended effect of vastly increasing access to education. The number of primary students in Kenya has increased by nearly 2 million.

Encouragingly, the dropout rate, an important measurement of affordability and educational quality, has also fallen. The share of students completing primary school jumped from 62.8 per cent in 2002, the last year fees were charged, to 76.2 per cent two years later as fewer poor children were forced out for nonpayment.

the lifting of fees in Kenya and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa has proved to be a giant step forward for access to education by millions of the region's poor. It has helped Africa make progress towards its goal of finding a place in school for all its children. GA_googleFillSlot( "AllAfrica_Story_InsetB" ); var ACE_AR = {site: '768910', size: '180150'}; Over the last 15 years a number of other countries, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique, have also experienced explosive growth in primary school enrolment following the elimination of fees. The UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that between 2000 and 2007 overall primary school enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa rose by 42 per cent - the greatest rate of increase in the world. As a result, the percentage of African children in primary school increased from 58 to 74 per cent. A few African countries, including Botswana, Cape Verde, Togo and Mauritius, could achieve universal primary enrolment by 2015

Malawi struggles to cope GA_googleFillSlot( "AllAfrica_Story_InsetB" ); GA_googleCreateDomIframe('google_ads_div_AllAfrica_Story_InsetB' ,'AllAfrica_Story_InsetB'); Other countries have been less successful. Malawi eliminated its school fees in 1994. But with less than half of Kenya's gross domestic product per person and fewer financial and human resources to draw on, it still faces difficult challenges in providing universal primary education.

As in many other African countries, notes the UN study, "the adoption of universal primary education was triggered by political demands rather than by rational planning processes." Although Malawi had lifted some fees for Standards 1 and 2 and waived primary education fees for girls prior to 1994, the decision to eliminate all fees coincided with the return of multiparty elections that year. The focus, the researchers found, was on increasing enrolment. "Very little attention was paid to quality issues."

One immediate response was to hire 20,000 new teachers, almost all of whom were secondary school graduates who were given only two weeks of training. Plans to provide on-the-job training failed to materialize. Instructional quality declined sharply as the pupil-teacher ratio climbed to 70 to 1.

Ikotos, South Sudan-a scenic region that belies its tragic past. For the past two decades the area has been ravaged by conflict, disease and deprivation. Basic services are scarce with education facilities suffering from a desperate lack of trained teachers and teaching resources.

Education is vital to the recovery of a region. Education will enable Ikotos' youth to escape a life of poverty and lead prosperous lives.

UNICEF has launched an initiative to get children back to school but there is a significant and unaddressed gap in teacher training. Education was near nonexistent during the civil war and has been slow to recover. Schooling mostly takes place in temporary shacks or under trees with limited or no teaching resources. Only 67 out of 353 primary school teachers in the Ikotos region received any training at all. Not only are most of the teachers untrained but some of have not completed even primary school education. Few have access to basic teaching materials. Without sufficiently trained teachers, increasing the rate of school attendance will be ineffective. With 11,809 pupils in Ikotos needing education, this is a desperate situation and a severe block to Ikotos's recovery.

According to a February study by the Inter-American Development Bank, the cost of physical damage from Haiti’s earthquake ranges from $8 billion to $13 billion. It says, “there are few events of such ferocity as the Haiti 2010 earthquake.”

The study looks at natural disasters over the past 40 years and concludes that the death toll, per capita, of Haiti’s earthquake is four times, or more, higher than any other disaster in this time period.

The Partners In Health agency estimates some 1.3 million people were left without shelter by the earthquake. The majority of those people still do not have adequate emergency shelter nor access to potable water, food and medical attention.

Children and school buildings are increasingly becoming targets in conflicts across the world, warns Save the Children as one of the key findings of a report published today.

The organisation finds that the risks of violence to schoolchildren in conflict-blighted areas are on the rise as schools are increasingly used as symbolic, easy targets by armed groups. These risks to children will continue to grow unless the international community takes urgent action to protect them from attack.

The report - The Future is Now - points out that civilians now make up more than 90% of casualties in the world's conflicts and about half of those are children. It warns that education is under attack by armed militias, criminal groups and even governments through the bombing of schools and is threatened by military interference in humanitarian work - all of which put children's lives in danger.

Children and education systems are often on the front line of violent conflict. Of the world’s 72 million children who don’t attend school, about one-third live in only 20 conflict-affected countries.

The report will also explore the role of inappropriate education in fostering conflict and explore ways that education can be a force for peace, social cohesion and human dignity.

Save the Children, which in 2006 launched its campaign Rewrite the Future to get children in conflict-affected countries into school, released a report this month called The Future is Now, which points out that “civilians now make up more than 90% of casualties in the world’s conflicts and about half of those are children.”

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."

GANVIE, Benin, 16 December 2010 – In the past two months, Benin has experienced some of its worst floods since the 1960s. And now, students in the flood zone are returning to school under harsh conditions.

"In this classroom, we have children from two classrooms. Each of them had already around 90 children before the floods, " explains David Houngbadji, the Ganvie school's director. "Now in this very room, we teach a class of 185 children. We don't even have the benches to seat them all."

Most of the floodwaters have now receded and the United Nations, along with the government of Benin, is putting in place a long-term response to the crisis. Yet 105,000 school children across Benin are still unable to attend school on a regular basis. In some places, the classrooms are still unreachable.

The educationist was speaking at a ceremony to award certificates to teachers who had attended an in-service training with Teachers without Borders (TWB). The US organisation supports teachers worldwide with professional development opportunities.

In the TWB course, teachers learn how they can enlighten learners and the society on MDGs to fast-track their achievement."One chooses an MDG to focus on. They either teach it in their schools/community or contribute to an existing initiative that focuses on the MDG," said Mr Mathias Osimbo, a representative of teachers without borders.

Osimbo said the course, taught free to teachers at primary and secondary schools, aims at increasing the impact of teachers in society."It makes teachers to be instruments of change beyond the classroom border by working with communities," he said.Michael Ndung’u, a beneficiary of the program says that the course has helped him enrich his teaching skills."It makes one move from being a passive disseminator of information to an active collaborator and inquirer," he notes.Besides MDGs, teachers also train in effective classroom management methods and teaching multi-cultured learners.Members of the organisation are also offered a platform where teachers can interact with others across the world and share experiences.

Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, today condemned the demolition of homes, and partial demolition of a school, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on 12 January in the Bedouin herding community of Dkaika, in the West Bank. He said: "I condemn this demolition in the strongest terms. Fifty people have been made homeless, including 30 children, many of whom were about to take an exam when the bulldozers arrived to destroy part of their school. Instead of sitting down to their exam, the children faced the traumatic scene of watching their homes and classroom be demolished. This is unacceptable.

Since yesterday, 15 children have been attending classes outdoors. UNRWA has given the community emergency food parcels, mattresses and blankets, and will be granting cash assistance to cover expenses related to the lost homes. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) handed out tents and kitchen sets to the affected families.

Forced displacement disrupts livelihoods, sharply reduces living standards, and limits access to basic services, such as water, education and health care. In most cases, demolitions affect families and communities that already live close to or below the poverty line.

A total of 1 493 schoolgirls dropped out of school last year because they fell pregnant. Furthermore, a total of 31 teachers "were recorded to have been responsible for some pregnancies". This shocking revelation was made by Education Minister Abraham Iyambo during his New Year's address yesterday.

According to him, "current measures to punish those who impregnate learners must be revised urgently and strengthened immediately. We have no excuse to wait. Management must attend to this." Iyambo promised that all the bad apples will be eradicated this year. He said 2011 will be "a year of recommitment, better education outcomes, mass drive and mobilisation".

Iyambo emphasised that "education is not an asset if it is not quality education". He said: "We need a serious inventory to pinpoint possible misfits ... before they become a system. We need urgent transformation of our education system from the bottom to the top."

Education has long been held up as a shining example of reconstruction in Afghanistan. Donors have ploughed approximately $1.9bn into rebuilding the Afghan education system since 2001. The Back to School campaign, launched in 2002 as a joint Afghan government/UN Initiative, was labelled an "inspiration" and the flagship of reconstruction and development efforts in Afghanistan.

The achievements of the Back to School campaign were undeniably impressive. In just the past two years, 2,281 schools have been built across the country. Around 5,000 Afghan girls were enrolled in school in 2001. Now there are 2.4 million, a staggering 480-fold increase.

Now, according to the report, Afghanistan's education system is sliding backwards and becoming crippled by poverty, increasing insecurity and a lack of investment in infrastructure and trained staff.