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Education experts are warning that the absorption of poor academic performers for training as teachers is a recipe for disaster for Uganda's future.

Our analysis of scores of prospective new entrants at Primary Teachers' Colleges across the country reveals that most of those admitted obtained low grades in the 2010 O-level examinations, raising questions about their academic competence.

"It is a challenge. I would think that teaching should take the cream of the students but people don't want to join because the profession is looked at as an area for low [academic] performers," said Ms Margaret Rwabushaija, the Uganda National Teachers' Union (UNATU) chairperson.

As the tsunami hit her school in Sendai, kindergarten teacher Junko Kamada stood in the window of a second story hall to block the children from seeing the destruction caused by the 1.5-meter wave. Amid dirt-caked chairs, soiled books and damaged equipment, Kamada, 60, is preparing to bring the students back to the school, about a mile inland from the coast. The children will also need counseling to deal with the trauma they have experienced, psychologists say.

Schools resumed two days ago in northeastern Japan, the epicenter of the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake. Classes --some held in homes and makeshift spaces -- are providing a safe place for children to reunite with friends and a semblance of familiarity amid the nation’s worst disaster since World War II.

While adolescents attuned to the reality of death may act out their trauma, younger ones find it harder to articulate their distress, she said. People who suffer psychological ailments such as depression in childhood are 10 to 20 times more likely than others to experience those problems in adulthood, according to a 2010 study in the journal Social Science & Medicine. Affected individuals tend to leave school earlier and earn about 20 percent less over their lifetime, the authors found.

With millions of children out of school and one-fifth of teachers playing truant, Pakistan faces an "education emergency" that costs the economic equivalent of its flood disaster every year, a new campaign has warned.

One in 10 of the world's out-of-school children live in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that last year spent just 2% of GDP on education.

The number of children absent from primary school – seven million – is roughly equivalent to the population of its second largest city, Lahore.Half of the population is illiterate and progress is painfully slow – at present rates the government will not deliver universal education in Balochistan, the largest province, until 2100.

UNESCO is launching a Teacher Education Course on Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development (CCESD) in late 2011

In a nutshell, the course is designed to give teachers confidence in facilitating  CCESD inside and outside the classroom so that they can help young people understand the causes and consequences of climate change, bring about changes in attitudes and behaviors to reduce the severity of future climate change, and build resilience  in the face of climate change that are already present.

First, it helps teachers to understand the causes, dynamics and impacts of climate change through a holistic lens. Second, teachers are exposed to a range of pedagogical approaches that they can use in their own school environment. This includes engagement in whole school and school-in-community approaches. Third, teachers can develop their capacities to facilitate students’ community based learning.  Fourth, teachers can develop future oriented and transformative capacities in facilitating climate change mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction learning..    

GARISSA, Kenya, 12 September 2011 – Dekha Mohamed Noor, 15, has not seen her family for more than a month. At the end of July, after schools closed for the August holidays, they sent her to live with a relative in Garissa, a bustling commercial hub 165 km west of her home village, Modogashe. The drought in north-eastern Kenya and much of the Horn of Africa had decimated their livestock, throwing the family into a desperate scramble for survival.

These new arrivals are placing enormous strains on local resources in host communities. Abdinoor Hussein, head teacher at Dekha’s new school in Garissa, Yathrib Primary School, says class sizes have ballooned from 50 to an average of 92 pupils, and the school’s 10 teachers are having a hard time coping with the surge

This week, with schools across Kenya reopening for the new term, Dekha joins thousands of other children from drought-affected areas who will not be returning to their former schools because they have migrated to other, better-off districts.

UNESCO staff in Gaza recruited Souktel to create an SMS alert/survey system that warns parents and their children of any danger happening near local schools. The service forms a key part of UNESCO’s Crisis and Disaster Risk Reduction project, which aims to ensure that schools are secure community spaces.

"In conflict zones, when it's not safe to leave your house to get information, mobile phones can bridge the gap and keep everyone connected," says Souktel co-founder Jacob Korenblum. "This basic technology allows aid workers, educators and local families to stay in contact at all times." 

Here’s how it works: At each school, principals and teachers are given password-protected access to a web interface, where they can send SMS alerts to all parents’ mobile phones. In an emergency, they could write, "Attack near school today, please keep your children at home." Once the violence has ended, another message could go out saying, "Shelling has stopped; please come to school this morning."