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Risk of sexual violence, limited access to education, and health issues such as HIV/AIDS and forced female genital mutilation/cutting are just a few of the obstacles adolescent girls face in developing countries, yet these girls are the key to the future and the eradication of poverty, stress experts at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

Children "face grave vulnerabilities and grave challenges as they make the transition towards adulthood," he added. The U.N. Adolescent Girls Task Force, which organised a panel on the issue Friday, is comprised of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the children's agency UNICEF, the newly-launched U.N. Women, and several other U.N. entities.

In countries where the majority of the population is extremely young, such as Malawi, investing and empowering adolescents through education is critical to the country's development. The median age in Malawi 17 years old, and 73.6 percent of the population is below the age of 29, noted Janet Zeenat Karim, head of the Malawi delegation to the U.N.

Full-day kindergarten may be having a negative effect on the learning and personal development of some children, according to new research.Early results from a pilot study focusing on two classrooms in southwestern Ontario revealed that teachers in a regular school setting were often caught in the tension that exists between meeting curriculum expectations and teaching to student interests.

"There is an emphasis on standardization like never before . . . that is being pushed down on young children," said lead researcher Rachel Heydon. "This is something that is being created that doesn't exist elsewhere."Heydon said the findings can't be generalized to every full-day kindergarten classroom, but the results do raise questions about whether the practice will help children in the long-term.She said that standardized tests in Grade 3 created a "washback effect" that pushed aside student interests and development in favour of academic goals.

The Ontario government believes that the program has merit, saying in a release this week that students who have early success in schools are "more likely to go on to post-secondary education and training and gain the skills they need to succeed in the global economy."

A year after the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system has been implemented, and two years since the introduction of the new grading system in schools affiliated to the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE), teachers appear to be groping in the dark. There are vast variations in the manner in which the system is being implemented.

Though the approach, when it was first introduced, was touted as being child-centric, many teachers feel that its implementation is not practical, given the reality of large class sizes in many schools.

“It is a very detailed system of evaluation, and teachers are ill-equipped to do it. It’s too idealistic,” remarked Raman.

"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.

ACAPULCO, Mexico — The message is delivered by a phone call to the office of one school, a sheaf of photocopied papers dropped off at another, a banner hung outside a third.

The demand is the same: teachers have until Oct. 1 to start handing over half of their pay. If they do not, they risk their lives. Extortion is a booming industry in Mexico, with reported cases having almost tripled since 2004. To some analysts, it is an unintended consequence of the government’s strategy in the drug war: as the large cartels splinter, armies of street-level thugs schooled in threats and violence have brought their skills to new enterprises. But the threat to teachers here in this tarnished tourist resort has taken the practice to a new level. Since the anonymous threats began last month, when students returned to classes after summer break, hundreds of schools have shut down.

“We are all scared,” said a high school drawing teacher who would give her name only as Noemi. “We are targets because we have a salary that is a bit more stable than the rest.”

In Rwanda, children with disabilities typically face discrimination and are excluded from school and community life. Silas Ngayaboshya, a local programme manager for Handicap International (HI), says that "many families hide their kids at home because having a disability is a shameful thing for the child and the family, as it's considered to be a punishment from God".

Rwanda's ministry of education says that 10% of young people have disabilities, while the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2010 concludes that the number of disabled children at school is likely to be small. A few attend their local mainstream school, though most go to special schools and centres in urban areas, too far for most Rwandans and mainly for children with visual or hearing impairments.

Despite these shortcomings, Rwanda's education system overall is considered to be one of the most progressive in Africa. The government recently introduced free compulsory education for the first nine years of school for all Rwandan children (this initiative is expected to increase to 12 years from next year). According to Unicef, Rwanda now has one of the highest primary school enrolment rates in Africa (95% of boys and 97% of girls in 2009). 

"I'm not OK," she says, still smiling as if she's talking about the weather. "Of course I'm not. But I have another son." Naganuma's other son, eight-year-old Koto, is missing. Koto was at Ishinomaki Okawa Elementary School the day the tsunami hit. The 108 students, as they'd practiced before, evacuated when the earthquake struck, says Naganuma.

The students had no idea the tsunami was coming. Out of the 108, 77 are presumed dead or missing. Koto is among the missing, his body still not recovered. "Ran saw the tsunami," says Naganuma. "His brother is not coming home. So I think he understands. I can see he's pretending to be happy, so we don't worry about him."

From blanket to blanket, families recount their own losses. But it's the deaths of all the children at the elementary school that pains this community most. At the elementary school, young fathers dig with shovels alongside rescuers. The school is a shell, its inside gutted by the force of the tsunami.

First, investing in adolescent girls benefits everyone. When they flourish, their families and communities flourish as well. The benefits will go a long way in a girl’s lifetime, and for generations to come.

As One UN, we will support national development efforts to invest in adolescent girls’ rights, health, education, protection, livelihoods. We can no longer afford to exclude the millions of adolescent girls left behind. They are central to the MDGs and we must make them visible in national action plans and budgets. We must improve our data systems to track the change we aspire to see in their lives.

This is because investing in adolescent girls is both the best and smartest investment a country can make. Educated, healthy and skilled, she will be an active citizen in her community. She will become a mother when she is ready and invest in her future children’s health and education. She will be able to contribute fully to her society and break the cycle of poverty, one girl at a time.

The UK performs poorly in an international league table showing how many disadvantaged pupils succeed "against the odds" at school. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has studied how pupils from poor backgrounds can succeed academically.

It says that "self-confidence" is a key factor in whether such pupils succeed. The UK comes behind Mexico and Tunisia in the table - with the top places taken by Asian countries.

The study from the international economic organisation looks at whether there is an inevitable link between disadvantaged backgrounds and a cycle of poor school results and limited job prospects.

The previous wave of reforms in Shanghai had focused on professionalising education and disseminating good practice through a system of empowered and networked schools. Those established the capacity of the education system to attracted the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms and the most capable school leaders to the most disadvantaged schools. The new reforms are now intended to produce innovative approaches to pedagogy and personalised learning experiences.

The aim is to offer a more flexible curriculum while avoiding the pitfalls that are familiar to students and teachers in the West.

This investment, and the ways in which students expressed themselves and discussed their ideas about their education, were very different from what I had seen and heard in Chinese schools before. What is evident now is that the Chinese system is well beyond playing catch-up with world-class standards; quite simply, China is designing its own educational future.