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TUNIS, 9 February 2011 – He says he’s 16, but he looks 14, if he is a day. I met him at the fish market in central Tunis, on a weekday, at a time when he should have been in school. Hamza left school two years ago. He says the school principal kicked him out, for no valid reason. According to recent data, 98 per cent of children of primary-school age in Tunisia are entering primary school. Thousands of them, however, drop out every year, although education is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 16. In 2009, an estimated 69,000 children left school.

“I would like to sign up for a vocational training class,” he says. “I would still work at the market on my days off so that I can make some money. But I would really like to learn a skill.”

Until Hamza really turns 16, the minimum legal age for work, he will not be able to fulfill his wish. The principal at his former school will not give him the school certificate necessary to sign up for vocational training classes.

N'dele, 21 February 2011 (IRIN) - With literacy and school-enrolment rates among the lowest in the world, the continuing fighting between local rebel groups is putting even more pressure on CAR’s fragile education system.  Years of displacement have caused the collapse of school attendance. Destroyed or looted facilities are still being rebuilt and the recruitment of teachers in areas affected by violence in the North is extremely difficult, leaving humanitarian aid organizations battling to providing basic education.

“I decided to stay in the village anyway. I was trying to keep regular lessons with the children in school though the situation was so fragile a lot of people had left. Many of them never came back.

“Since I left I haven’t been under contract with the government any more. However, I decided to carry on with teaching in rural areas, even though I am not paid for it. Teaching is my passion but now to earn some money I have to cultivate people’s land.”

Decades of political violence in northern Central African Republic have caused widespread destruction and displacement. The educational sector has been badly affected by a dire shortage of teachers and adequate physical infrastructure. For thousands of children, classes take place not in solid buildings of brick, but in rudimentary “bush schools”.

“Needs are huge and funds insufficient. More appropriate infrastructure as well as qualified teachers are needed. Because of difficulties in the conflict-affected areas of the North, disparities in terms of access and quality are deepening,” Farid Boubekeur, chief education officer with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in CAR, told IRIN.

For about 200 pupils of the primary school Ecole Ouande, in the Linguiri Village of the M'Brès Sub-Prefecture in the northeast of the country, lessons are conducted under a big tree with five pupils sharing each wooden desk.

Picture a mother, hunching over a field with a Medieval-style hoe in hand, spending day after day tilling the soil under a beating hot sun - only to retire home to care for her family without electricity or running water.This is not a 12th century image, but a typical working day for scores of rural women in today's developing world, where lack of access to education and technology has forced many to resort to traditional and often painful methods of livelihood.

Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF), a pan- African network bringing together individuals and organisations from 23 countries, is among the key regional groups tackling this issue head on. WILDAF believes lack of knowledge about education rights, specifically among young girls, is one of the main reasons forcing rural people to endure lives of agricultural hardship.

"We want to teach them how to develop projects, from tilling the ground to seeding, all the way through to packaging at an international level so the food will be accepted by everybody in other countries," she said. Agu cited a project where female farmers of moringa – a nutritious African plant – were able to increase the efficiency and ease of production, through simple modern conveniences.

In many ways, Kenya is an example of an African success story in education. According to the 2011 EFA Global Monitoring Report, growth in the number of children attending school has accelerated, the gender gap has narrowed and it is one of the few countries in the region expected to achieve the Education for All goal of halving adult illiteracy by 2015. Efforts are being made to ensure education quality does not suffer as the number entering school expands. The Kenyan government should be commended for its efforts in all of these areas.

Despite this progress, one marginalized group has remained beyond the radar: displaced people. Kenya is host to some of the largest refugee populations on the continent. The government is unable to stretch its limited resources to support their education, and education is not seen as a priority by international agencies in humanitarian situations – just 2% of humanitarian aid overall is allocated to education. This is part of the hidden crisis documented in the 2011 Global Monitoring Report.

Speaking of the Dadaab camps in northeastern Kenya, home to some refugees for as long as for 20 years, Mohamed Elmi noted: “Dadaab suffers from overcrowded classrooms, insufficient trained teachers, and too few opportunities for secondary-age students.”

HYDERABAD: State schools will see a role reversal in their classrooms soon. Starting this academic year, students will be asked to evaluate the performance of teachers.

The evaluation sheet will have questions on teachers ranging from their teaching skills to their attendance and also whether they are approachable. It will also evaluate the approach adopted by the teachers in class, especially towards students who are poor performers.

Officials said that the teachers will be evaluated on a ten point scale. "We thought of a new evaluation process as the department felt that teachers should be accountable to students. The process will be introduced in classes V to X and we are even thinking of extending it to junior colleges that fall under the school education department," said a senior official.

LHASA, July 18 (Xinhua) -- The government is planning to raise the higher education gross enrollment rate in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region to 30 percent in less than five years, meaning that three out of every 10 Tibetan students will enter college by 2015, local officials said Monday as Vice President Xi Jinping inspected Tibet University.

More than 31,000 students, mostly ethnic Tibetans, currently study in Tibet's six universities and junior colleges. Of them, 718 are pursuing post-graduate degrees. In addition, many students from Tibet are studying in universities outside the region, officials said.

Tibet's first modern primary school opened in Lhasa in 1952; the first secondary school opened four years later with significant government investment. In the 1970s, Tubdain Kaizhub attended a county-level high school near Lhasa, where courses were mainly taught in Tibetan. He managed to pick up Mandarin Chinese, the most widely-used language in China, from his neighbors in a military compound.

Students from the Bandakidini Primary School on their way to their exams in Gayéri, the provincial capital of Burkina Faso and twelve miles away from their village, were a sight to see. They were riding on new bicycles, provided to them through the Ambassadors' Girls' Scholarship Program (AGSP), which is funded by USAID.

Transportation has long been a barrier to children attending school and accessing testing centers. When AGSP first started at this school in the village of Bandikidini, there were only 53 students.

In Bandikidini, the responsibility of transporting students to the testing centers falls on the community. Means of transportation are limited, as are supervisors to travel with the students. The Certificat d'etudes primaries (CEP) exams fall during the growing season, normally just around the time when there is enough rain to start planting the fields.

"Going to school should not be a luxury, especially for the children in Dadaab. On the opposite, this is a powerful way to make their lives safer," emphasizes Stephen Gwynne-Vaughan, country director for CARE Kenya. "If children are left idle in the camps, they are most vulnerable to abuse, drugs and other threats."

When attending classes, children do not only learn how to read and write, but also build up their self-confidence by learning about their rights, good hygiene practices and other matters related to life in the camps. While schools are closed during the month of August, CARE has started an accelerated learning program for newly-arrived children, many of whom have never been to school before. In the first two days of the program, 1,100 children were admitted to class and are now getting up to speed to participate in regular school programs after the break. However, once classes resume in September, the schools' capacity to provide quality primary education for the growing number of children may be an impossible task.

CARE currently manages five regular schools in Dagahaley camp, reaching more than 15,100 children. Adults from the refugee population are trained as teachers and receive teaching material. Many of those teachers have been living in Dadaab since their early childhood themselves and were educated in the camps before becoming educators themselves.

SANTIAGO, Chile — Violence erupted on the streets of Chile’s capital and other cities Tuesday as tens of thousands of students staged another protest demanding changes in public education.

Five days after a banned march ended in nearly 900 arrests, students and teachers marched peacefully in Santiago and elsewhere in Chile on Tuesday, calling for the government to increase spending on schooling and provide “free and equal” public education.As in previous demonstrations, protesters danced, sang, wore costumes and waved signs. But then groups of masked protesters split off and tried to break through police barricades blocking the way to the presidential palace.

High school and university students have refused to attend class, taken over schools and staged demonstrations to press their demand for fundamental changes in how Chile finances public education.

Fleeing from drought or violence leaves children with a legacy that doesn’t always make them good students, says Kaissa. “They are not used to rules,” he says. “They come to school today, but maybe they don’t come tomorrow.” To prove his point, only the most serious students attended school on the first day of term. It would take the rest of the week for the others to take their place in class.

OSH PROVINCE, Kyrgyzstan, 1 September 2011 – Hundreds of children from Shark village have settled down in the new Tolstoy School following a year-long journey. After the civil strife that struck Osh Province in June 2010, when their school was burned down, they studied in tents. Then, when winter came, they shared classrooms of the hospitable Sharipov School nearby. Now, they finally they have come back to their home village to attend a newly built school.

“I had to convene parents six times before they were convinced that it would be safe to let their children go to Sharipov School,” said Tolstoy School director Muradil Moidinov. “UNICEF supported minibuses, which went from house to house to collect children in the mornings and bring them back after school.” Mr. Moidinov promised the students and parents that a new school would be built. He refused to let the children be dispersed among other Osh schools. “It would have been impossible. The nearest schools are so far away. We are very thankful to UNICEF for all the great support they provided,” he said.

The new Tolstoy School’s opening was long-awaited in a community that has seen its share of hostility between people of different ethnic backgrounds. For their part, students still remember the old school warmly. “It was like home” said Muazam Mamadjanova, 15. To make the new building more like home, children have brought in pots of flowers to adorn the windowsills. They are also planting flowers in the beds near the school entrance. In autumn, they plan to plant trees as well.

Despite recent economic development, Angola remains a society deeply scarred by the still-recent civil war. The conflict caused massive internal displacement and refugee outflows, along with the collapse or destruction of key agricultural, health, education and transportation infrastructures, limiting the government’s ability to provide basic public services. This has resulted in a series of barriers to children enrolling and remaining in school.

Children living in emergencies or post-conflict contexts are often excluded from schooling or start school late. Their educational progress suffers and they lack the necessary tools for learning, leading them to drop out of school.

Many of today’s adolescents in Angola were born during the prolonged civil war and missed several years of schooling or never had the opportunity to attend primary school at all. These youth often do not fit in the primary school setting, and classrooms are already crowded with much younger children.

ADEN, Yemen, 15 September 2011 – It is the fourth day of Ramadan in Aden, a port city in the south of Yemen, and the temperature has reached over 40 degrees centigrade. Although it is summer holiday, the yard of Belqis School in Aden is full of children. Some play under the sun, while others attend educational sessions in a tent organized by UNICEF. The children are from families displaced by fighting in the restive region of Abyan between government troops and militants suspected of links to al-Qaeda.

Classrooms that once were filled with desks and chairs have now become makeshift homes, with some rooms accommodating up to 24 people.

“The sound of the aircraft is still in my ears day and night,” she said. “There were heavy steps coming closer and closer to our door and then suddenly my father opened the door and a guy wearing a military uniform asked us to leave.” Amani added sadly, “I still remember my mother crying, refusing to leave.”

“We arrived at school at 7:30 a.m. as we always do on a school day. At exactly 8:30 we could hear shooting coming from the direction of a neighbouring village,” recalls Pafait Guei, a 14-year-old boy in sixth grade, who usually attends Beoua village primary school in western Côte d’Ivoire.

Pafait and his friends have not been in school since that day, on 17 March. Côte d’Ivoire has been through political crisis and violence following disputed presidential elections last year. Although the political deadlock has been resolved with the new President, Alassane Outtara, sworn in, there is still a tremendous push required to restore the volatile situation in the country.

UNICEF, with the support of the Government of Côte d’Ivoire and its partners, has been targeting one million children for the national ‘Back to School’ campaign in the 10 most vulnerable regions in the western and southern parts of the country.

A total of 129 Senor High School girls, from the three Northern Regions, are to benefit from a GHc 74,000 scholarship scheme to guard against school drop-out. The World Food Programme and the Ghana Health Service Girls Project seek to support the less privileged girls, who attained the aggregate 06 to 16 in the 2010 Basic Education Certificate Examination.

As part of the programme she said, girls who attended school of a minimum of 85 percent of the month were rewarded with a take-home food package of cereal, vegetable oil and iodized salt.

"We at WFP are proud of the success of the girl child education programmes, but we are equally wary of challenges, including inadequate classroom, high teacher pupil ration, floods and drought, which could slow down the nation's quest to achieve MDG two," he said.

WAJIR, Kenya, 26 September – 2011 – In a futile attempt to save the last of the goats, Ali Yusef Omar, 16, and one of his younger sisters had no other option but to feed the ravenous animals handfuls of shredded-up cardboard boxes they had scavenged from the local town. Kept in a make-shift pen made of thorn bushes, only three remain out of a herd that had once numbered two hundred. “Of course these goats are going to die,” said the boy with a resigned shrug of his shoulders. “You think they’re going to survive on boxes?” Burdened with the adult responsibility of providing for his mother and five half brothers and sisters, Ali was sent to town to attend high school, with the hope that it would lead to a job that could support his family. When the rains dwindled, however, so have his chances of remaining in school.

Trying to get an education had already been a struggle – now it’s a monumental challenge. Sharing a simple hut made of branches and straw with the rest of the family, Ali is forced to do his homework by flashlight.