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The assessment, which was carried out last week, indicates that with the movement of an estimated 200,000 school-age children who have migrated to urban areas or across the border due to hunger, the gross primary school enrolment of 30% could plummet even further.  This is likely to be compounded by an acute shortage of teachers and an increase in demand for education services in areas where influxes of internally displaced people have been the greatest, such as in Mogadishu. 

"Education is a critical component of any emergency response," said Rozanne Chorlton, UNICEF Somalia Representative.  "Schools can provide a place for children to come to learn, as well as access health care and other vital services. Providing learning opportunities in safe environments is critical to a child’s survival and development and for the longer term stability and growth of the country."

Already, most of 10,000 teachers across the southern and central regions are dependent on incentives paid through the support of Education Cluster partners. Results indicate that in Lower and Middle Juba as well as Bay regions, up to 50 percent of teachers may not return to the classroom when schools reopen. 

Founded in 1988, the People's Decade of Human Rights Education (PDHRE-International) is a non-profit, international service organization that works directly and indirectly with its network of affiliates — primarily women's and social justice organizations — to develop and advance pedagogies for human rights education relevant to people's daily lives in the context of their struggles for social and economic justice and democracy. PDHRE's members include experienced educators, human rights experts, United Nations officials, and world renowned advocates and activists who collaborate to conceive, initiate, facilitate, and service projects on education in human rights for social and economic transformation. The organization is dedicated to publishing and disseminating demand-driven human rights training manuals and teaching materials, and otherwise servicing grassroots and community groups engaged in a creative, contextualized process of human rights learning, reflection, and action. PDHRE views human rights as a value system capable of strengthening democratic communities and nations through its emphasis on accountability, reciprocity, and people's equal and informed participation in the decisions that affect their lives. PDHRE was pivotal in lobbying the United Nations to found a Decade for Human Rights Education and in drafting and lobbying for various resolutions by the World Conference on Human Rights, the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Commission, the UN Treaty Bodies, and the Fourth World Conference on Women.

WESTERN EQUATORIA, South Sudan, 27 October 2011 – Access to education is one of the key priorities for the government of the world’s newest nation, South Sudan. Seventy per cent of children aged 6 to 17 have never set foot in a classroom. The completion rate in primary schools is only 21 per cent, one of the lowest in the world.

Baya Primary School in Western Equatoria has become the envy of other schools in the state. The school is successfully using its own child clubs, not only to increase girls’ enrolment but also encourage dropouts to join the Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP).

UNICEF and the Ministry of General Education and Instruction have been providing supplies such as school bags, notebooks, training, learning and essential teaching materials to support the initiative in South Sudan.

Educational inclusion relates to all children accessing and meaningfully participating in quality education, in ways that are responsive to their individual needs. The terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘inclusive education’ are often used in relation to children with disabilities and/or special needs and emerged partly out of debates to reduce their segregation from mainstream schooling.In recent years, these terms have been used by the Education for All (EFA) movement in relation to all children who are marginalised and excluded from basic education, not just in terms of initial access to schooling, but access to rights within schooling processes. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) identifies inclusion as “…a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion within and from education.”

According to UNESCO, inclusion “…involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and strategies, with a common vision which covers all children of the appropriate age range and a conviction that it is the responsibility of the regular system to educate all children.”  

Teaching peace also places importance on the process of education, i.e. the structure of the classroom, shared power between teacher and student, and a cooperative, co-creative learning process where factors like race, religion, background and learning ability are honored as swaths of fabric in a colorful cultural quil

he case of the Program Pendidikan Damai , a peace education program specifically designed for the province of Aceh, Indonesia, is a good example of a culture of teaching peace. In response to the pandemic brutal war between the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian military which has caught tens of thousands of civilians in the crossfire, local educators solicited the advice of international non-governmental organizations in creating a curriculum rooted in principles of nonviolence. The curriculum incorporates tenets of Islamic teaching as well as Acehnese culture, and is thus aptly relevant to the students who, frustrated with the level of violence in their cities and countrysides, decided to participate in workshops and trainings to learn how they can be agents of positive change in their communities. The local schools have adopted the curriculum and have begun teaching the lessons during school hours.

teaching peace gives students the tools to constructively deal with the problems they encounter on both a personal and global level, and it helps them understand their responsibility for elevating the collective human experience.

Quakes are commonplace in Chile; since 1906 and counting this most recent earthquake, Chile has experienced 28 earthquakes [es]—without counting the smaller in magnitude but still frequent seismic activity that is often felt around the country. The three biggest earthquakes that many Chileans can still remember left 30,000 dead in 1939, 3,000 in 1960, and 177 in 1985.

The Chilean government, society, and people should be praised for their readiness in dealing with such a catastrophic natural disaster…as of this writing, Chile has still not appealed for international help even though the death toll has topped 300.

I was impressed with the buildings since most of them where built under strict codes to remain standing during seismic movements. Chileans say that every decade there was a strong earthquake that left the city “la escoba” (like a broom) . That means, the earthquakes turned cities into disaster zones.

n many ways, Ceibal can, and perhaps should, be seen not so much as an education project, but as a larger societal transformation project (of the sort often associated with e-government initiatives), with the education system as the primary and initial dissemination vector.

Under Plan Ceibal (earlier blog post here), Uruguay is the first country in the world to ensure that all primary school students (or at least those in public schools) have their own personal laptop.  For free.  (The program is being extended to high schools, and, under a different financial scheme, to private schools as well).  Ceibal is about more than just 'free laptops for kids', however.  There is a complementary educational television channel. Schools serve as centers for free community wi-fi, and free connectivity has been introduced in hundreds of municipal centers around the country as well.  There are free local training programs for parents and community members on how to use the equipment.  Visiting Uruguay last week, I was struck by how many references there were to 'one laptop per teacher' (and not just 'one laptop per child', which has been the rallying cry for a larger international initiative and movement). 

There is no doubt about the numbers (over 380,000) in Uruguay -- the laptops are not sitting in boxes under an awning at the Ministry of Education collecting dust.  You see them everywhere you see school children.

This paper considers how mobile phones have been taken up by citizens to create new forms of expression and power. The specific focus is the use of mobile phones in community development, with examples including the Grameenphone, agriculture and markets, the Filipino diasporic community, HIV/AIDS healthcare, and mobile phones in activism and as media. It is argued that mobile phones form a contact zone between traditional concepts of community and citizen media, on the one hand, and emerging movements in citizenship, democracy, governance, and development, on the other hand.

Pope denounces 'atrocious' Nigeria bloodshed AMINU ABUBAKAR March 11, 2010 - 12:44AM Ads by GoogleCAFM/CMMS FacilitiesDeskWeb-based integrated CAFM/CMMSMaintenance, Asset & Space mgmtwww.manageengine.com/FacilitiesDesk Pope Benedict XVI denounced the "atrocious" bloodshed in Nigeria on Wednesday after a massacre of Christian villagers, as police said 49 people would be charged over the killings. As new gunfire added to the tensions around the flashpoint city of Jos, the pope added his voice to a chorus of international revulsion over the weekend slaughter which police say left 109 people dead but the state information commissioner said left more than 500 dead.

"Violence does not resolve conflicts but only increases the tragic consequences," he added. The three-hour killing spree in the early hours of Sunday was the latest wave of sectarian violence to engulf the Jos region where several hundred people were killed in Muslim-Christian clashes in January. The security forces have faced heavy criticism over their failure to intervene to stop the latest killings at a time when a curfew was meant to be in force.

Jang told reporters he had alerted Nigeria's army commander about reports of movement around the area and had been told that troops would be heading there. "Three hours or so later, I was woken by a call that they (armed gangs) had started burning the village and people were being hacked to death. "I tried to locate the commanders, I couldn?t get any of them on the telephone."

2. Education for peace

272. Governments, non-governmental organizations, women's groups and the mass media should encourage women to engage in efforts to promote education for peace in the family, neighbourhood and community. Special attention should be given to the contribution of women's grass-roots organizations. The multiple skills and talents of women artists, journalists, writers, educators and civic leaders can contribute to promoting ideas of peace if encouraged, facilitated and supported.

273. Special attention should be given to the education of children for life in peace within an atmosphere of understanding, dialogue and respect for others. In this respect, suitable concrete action should be taken to discourage the provision of children and young persons with games and publications and other media promoting the notion of favouring war, aggression, cruelty, excessive desire for power and other forms of violence, within the broad processes of the reparation of society for life in peace.

goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of all humanity

the status of women has advanced in some important respects in the past decade but that progress has been uneven, inequalities between women and men have persisted and major obstacles remain, with serious consequences for the well-being of all people

Women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace

TEHRAN - Iran is overhauling its education system to rid it of Western influence, the latest attempt by the government to fortify Islamic values and counter the clout of the country's increasingly secularized middle class. Starting in September, all Iranian high school students will be introduced to new courses such as "political training" and "living skills" that will warn against "perverted political movements" and encourage girls to marry at an early age, Education Ministry officials say.

Many students, professors and parents fear that the plans will undermine Iran's traditionally high academic standards. The three years of academic and curricular purges that followed the revolution, they say, stalled the intellectual development of Iranian youths.

The reshaping of the education system, from primary schools to universities, is next on the cabinet's list. The Education Ministry's plan, titled "The Program for Fundamental Evolution in Education and Training," envisages schools becoming "neighborhood cultural bases" where teachers will provide "life" guidance, assisted by selected clerics and members of the paramilitary Basij force.

KARACHI: Idealism need not fight capitalism because they can work in harmony, is the message of Khadija Bakhtiar, whose ‘Teach for Pakistan’ project aims to place 40 teachers in 20 under-resourced primary and secondary schools in Karachi this year and the next.

Bakhtiar was inspired by fellow students who had worked with Teach for America, a programme that tries to end educational inequity by sending top university graduates to teach in poor neighbourhoods for two years.

Unesco’s senior national specialist for education, Arshad Saeed Khan, has said that the average Pakistani spends a mere 5.7 years in school.

Education is a key ingredient of the political crisis facing Arab states. Superficially, the education profile of the region is starting to resemble that of East Asia. The past two decades have witnessed dramatic advances in primary and secondary school enrollment, with a step-increase in tertiary education. Many governments have increased public spending on education. The 7% of GDP that Tunisia invests in the sector puts the country near the top of the global league table for financial effort.

In Egypt, the education group most likely to be unemployed is university level and above, followed by post-secondary. Around one quarter of the country’s male university graduates are unemployed, and almost half of its female graduates.

For all the expansion of access and investment in education, the Arab states have some of the world’s worst performing education systems. The problems start early. In this year’s Global Monitoring Report we carry a table showing the distribution of performance across different countries in reading test scores at grade 4. In Kuwait, Qatar and Morocco, over 90% of students scored below the lowest benchmark, indicating that they lacked even basic comprehension.  In fact, these countries held the bottom three positions in a group of 37 countries covered.