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Gordon Brown calls for new global education fund « World Education Blog - 0 views

  • Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, a co-convenor of the High Level Panel on Education, released a report this week calling for the establishment of an independent global fund for education, to raise the $16 billion needed each year to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015
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    Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, a co-convenor of the High Level Panel on Education, released a report this week calling for the establishment of an independent global fund for education, to raise the $16 billion needed each year to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015.
Teachers Without Borders

Ontario forges stimulus plan to boost financial literacy in teens - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

  • Lest history repeat itself, Ontario has laid the educational groundwork for a new generation of students who appreciate the perils of interest rates and debt, and know the real cost of borrowing money.The province’s Ministry of Education has released comprehensive teacher guidelines that identify places in the Grade 4 through 12 curriculum where financial literacy can be inserted into classes as varied as mathematics, computer science and native studies.
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    Lest history repeat itself, Ontario has laid the educational groundwork for a new generation of students who appreciate the perils of interest rates and debt, and know the real cost of borrowing money. The province's Ministry of Education has released comprehensive teacher guidelines that identify places in the Grade 4 through 12 curriculum where financial literacy can be inserted into classes as varied as mathematics, computer science and native studies.
Teachers Without Borders

NCEA: Canterbury Pupils Excel Despite Earthquakes | Stuff.co.nz - 0 views

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    Christchurch's earthquake-displaced secondary schools overcame a disruptive year to achieve better academic results than in 2010. Thousands of pupils at a number of the city's schools spent most of last year sharing sites after earthquake damage forced them from their schools. There had been fears pupils' academic results would be tarnished by the upheaval of having less teaching time each day and travelling to another school site, often across town. However, statistics released by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority show the displaced schools accomplished even better National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) results last year than they did in 2010.
Teachers Without Borders

Launch of World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education - 0 views

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    To mark International Women's Day, UNESCO and the UIS have jointly released the World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education, which includes over 120 maps, charts and tables featuring a wide range of sex-disaggregated indicators.   The vivid presentation of information and analysis calls attention to persistent gender disparities and the need for greater focus on girls' education as a human right.   The atlas illustrates the educational pathways of girls and boys and the changes in gender disparities over time. It hones in on the gender impact of critical factors such as national wealth, geographic location, investment in education, and fields of study.     The data show that: Although access to education remains a challenge in many countries, girls enrolled in primary school tend to outperform boys. Dropout rates are higher for boys than girls in 63% of countries with data. Countries with high proportions of girls enrolled in secondary education have more women teaching primary education than men. Women are the majority of tertiary students in two-thirds of countries with available data. However, men continue to dominate the highest levels of study, accounting for 56% of PhD graduates and 71% of researchers.
Teachers Without Borders

Students slow to apply for teacher training | Education | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

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    Fewer students are applying to become teachers since the government began to reduce bursaries for those with 2:2 degrees and turn away applicants with thirds. Applications to teacher training courses are down by 15% on last year, after the number of bursaries was also cut back for those applying to teach non-priority subjects. But research shows more students want to join the profession. Over 80% of final-year students think teaching is a high-status career choice, according to research released today by the Teaching Agency, while a separate survey shows schools and universities are the second most popular type of employer
Teachers Without Borders

Panel Releases Proposal to Set U.S. Standards for Education - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • a panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents released a set of proposed common academic standards on Wednesday. The standards, posted on the panel’s web site, lay out the panel’s vision of what American public school students should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation.
  • If a majority of states were to adopt them over the next few months, which experts said was a growing possibility, the new standards would replace the nation’s motley current checkerboard of locally written standards, which vary greatly in content and sophistication. And adoption of the new standards would set off a vast new effort to rewrite textbooks and standardized tests.
  • The Obama Administration quickly endorsed the effort. Under the Department of Education’s Race to the Top initiative, in which states are competing for a share of $4 billion in school improvement money, states can earn 40 points of the possible 500 for participating in the common effort and adopting the new standards.
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  • The proposed standards outline concepts to be learned, but do not lay down a specific curriculum. In English, for instance, they do not prescribe individual works of literature, but instead offer a list of texts “illustrating the quality, complexity and range” of student reading that would be appropriate for various grades. The middle school list includes “Little Women” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” as well as works of nonfiction like “Letter on Thomas Jefferson” by John Adams. The 11th grade nonfiction list includes Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” and President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Teachers Without Borders

Jiang Xueqin: The Test Chinese Schools Still Fail - WSJ.com - 1 views

  • It's ironic that just as the world is appreciating the strengths of China's education system, Chinese are waking up to its weaknesses. These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests. For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy.
  • So China has no problem producing mid-level accountants, computer programmers and technocrats. But what about the entrepreneurs and innovators needed to run a 21st century global economy? China's most promising students still must go abroad to develop their managerial drive and creativity, and there they have to unlearn the test-centric approach to knowledge that was drilled into them.
  • Both multinationals and Chinese companies have the same complaints about China's university graduates: They cannot work independently, lack the social skills to work in a team and are too arrogant to learn new skills. In 2005, the consulting firm McKinsey released a report saying that China's current education system will hinder its economic development.
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  • Even Shanghai educators admit they're merely producing competent mediocrity.
  • This year the Chinese government released a 10-year plan including greater experimentation. China Central Television's main evening news program recently reported on Peking University High School's curricular reforms to promote individuality and diversity.
  • Shanghai's stellar results on PISA are a symptom of the problem. Tests are less relevant to concrete life and work skills than the ability to write a coherent essay, which requires being able to identify a problem, break it down to its constituent parts, analyze it from multiple angles and assemble a solution in a succinct manner to communicate across cultures and time. These "critical thinking" skills are what Chinese students need to learn if they are to become globally competitive.
  • One way we'll know we're succeeding in changing China's schools is when those PISA scores come down.
Teachers Without Borders

China to offer compulsory education to 95 percent of girls - 0 views

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    BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- An official document released on Monday pledged that the government will endeavor to provide compulsory education to 95 percent of Chinese girls over the next ten years. The Outline for the Development of Chinese Women (2011-2020) issued by the State Council, or China's cabinet, said that the government will continue to promote equal opportunity for nine years of free schooling for all children, but especially for girls, who are more likely to drop out.
Teachers Without Borders

Nepal, South Africa and Venezuela to receive UN prize for boosting education - 0 views

  • Three institutions from Nepal, South Africa and Venezuela will be recognized for supporting and improving teachers’ effectiveness in developing countries, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced today. The Rato Bangala Foundation, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Schools Enrichment Centre, and the Banco del Libro will be awarded the UNESCO-Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize for Outstanding Practice and Performance in Enhancing the Effectiveness of Teachers during a ceremony in Dubai in April. The three institutions will be recognized for their outstanding work in the education field in developing countries or within marginalized or disadvantaged communities, UNESCO said in a news release.
Tiffany Hoefer

Classroom Management Strategies: Top 10 Rules, Organization Plans - 1 views

  • These lessons may be freely copied and used in a classroom but they remain the copyrighted property of the author.
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    Site offers middle school and high school teachers ideas to help with class syllabus, class policy, parent-teacher communication, and other. Provides many classroom management strategies for grading policies, class rules, classroom procedures, late work, substitutes, managing groups, establishing a safe classroom environment, and so much more. Nice depth of material.
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    note highlight regarding free use - is completely free to use, but copyrighted to owner. owner does not release under cc license
Teachers Without Borders

Netherlands provides US$10 million for UNICEF Education Programme in Zambia |... - 0 views

  • LUSAKA, Zambia, 16 January 2012 (UNICEF) – The Government of the Netherlands is supporting the UNICEF education programme in Zambia with US$10 million (50 trillion Zambian kwacha) with a focus on the most vulnerable children in the country. “The overall goal of the programme is to contribute to the national targets of improving children’s access to equitable quality education, in line with the Millennium Development Goals and the Sixth National Development Plan. If we are to expect Zambia’s children and adolescents to be able to develop, learn, and participate in a protective and enabling environment, it is our duty and responsibility as a partner country to double our efforts in providing the required support to help us reap these desired results,,” said His Excellency Ambassador Harry Molenaar of the Royal Netherlands Embassy during a signing ceremony in Lusaka.
Teachers Without Borders

Children severely tortured in detention centers / schools used as detention centers - 1 views

  • 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.
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  • Ala’a,” a 16-year-old boy from Tal Kalakh, told Human Rights Watch that Syrian security forces detained him for eight months, starting in May 2011, after he participated in and read political poetry at demonstrations. He was released in late January 2012 after his father bribed a prison guard with 25,000 Syrian pounds (US$436). During his detention he was held in seven different detention centres, as well as the Homs Central Prison. Ala’a told Human Rights Watch that at the Military Security branch in Homs: When they started interrogating me, they asked me how many protests I had been to, and I said “none.” Then they took me in handcuffs to another cell and cuffed my left hand to the ceiling. They left me hanging there for about seven hours, with about one-and-a-half to two centimetres between me and the floor – I was standing on my toes. While I was hanging there, they beat me for about two hours with cables and shocked me with cattle prods. Then they threw water on the ground and poured water on me from above. They added an electric current, and I felt the shock. I felt like I was going to die. They did this three times. Then I told them, “I will confess everything, anything you want.” 
  • A number of adult detainees and security force members who had defected and who were interviewed by Human Rights Watch confirmed the presence and torture of child detainees in facilities across Syria. “Samih,” a former adult detainee held in a political security facility in Latakia, told Human Rights Watch that children were subjected to worse treatment than adults, including sexual abuse, because they were children.
  • The government has used schools as detention centres, sniper posts, and military bases or barracks. “Marwan,” from the Insha’at neighborhood in Homs, and other Homs residents told Human Rights Watch that the army attacked Bahithet Al-Badiyah school on Brazil Street on November 4, and that military security forces then turned the school into a detention centre. Local activists also told Human Rights Watch that military security turned Al-Ba’ath elementary school in Joubar, another Homs neighborhood, into a military base and detention center in late December.
  • Children also told Human Rights Watch that their schools closed in 2011 due to violence, or that it was no longer safe for them to go to school. “Mohammed,” a 10-year-old boy from Homs, said, “I went to school for only one day [this year]. The teachers just gave us the books and told us not to come back. The road to school was not safe because of snipers.”
  • “Schools across Syria are closed because it’s too dangerous for students to attend, or because the military thinks schools are better used as detention centres than educational establishments,” said Whitman. “How long will Syrian children pay the price for the violence around them?” 
Teachers Without Borders

IRIN Africa | ZIMBABWE: Thousands of girls forced out of education | Zimbabwe | Childre... - 0 views

  • HARARE, 7 November 2011 (IRIN) - Poverty, abuse and cultural practices are preventing a third of Zimbabwean girls from attending primary school and 67 percent from attending secondary school, denying them a basic education, according to a recent study which found alarming dropout rates for girls. ''Sexual harassment and abuse by even school teachers and parents, cultural issues, lack of school fees, early marriage, parental commitments and early pregnancies are some of the contributing factors to the dropout by the girl child,'' said the authors of "Because I am a Girl" by Plan International, a nonprofit organisation that works to alleviate child poverty.
  • According to the Plan International report, the long distances that children in rural areas have to travel to reach school, and the burden that girl children face because they often have to assume the responsibilities of being head of the household after the death of their parents, are other factors contributing to the high dropout rate for girls.
  • A 2005 government programme of forced evictions, known as Operation Murambatsvina (Drive out Trash), which uprooted some 700,000 people from urban areas across the country, compounded the difficulties of accessing education for girls from affected households. Amnesty International, in its report ''Left Behind: The Impact of Zimbabwe's Forced Evictions on the Right to Education'' released in October 2011, documents the ways in which the evictions disrupted the primary and secondary education of an estimated 222,000 children.
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  • The Amnesty International report notes that many girls at Hopley became sex workers, entered relationships with older men, or married at a young age after eviction from their homes, and the government's failure to support them to re-enrol in school.
  • Zimbabwe's education system, once considered a model for other African countries, has been steadily declining over the last decade due to the economic crisis. Many schools lack text books and other supplies.
Teachers Without Borders

IRIN Africa | DRC: Millions miss out on basic education | DRC | Children | Education - 0 views

  • KINSHASA, 14 November 2011 (IRIN) - Access to basic education in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains poor, with up to seven million children across the vast country out of school - despite a 2010 government decision to make primary education free.
  • It said 25 percent of the primary school-aged children and 60 percent of adolescents were not enrolled in classes.
  • "Even with the announcement of free primary education, parents, many of whom are unemployed and have little means of sustaining themselves, are bearing most of the costs involved in educating their children because of delays in releasing the funds for free education," Ornelie Lelo, communications officer for an education NGO in the capital, SOS Kinshasa, told IRIN.
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  • Education officials have expressed concern over the severe shortage of teachers in public schools. In primary school, the national average is one teacher for 37 pupils, according to the national statistics, but in marginalized or rural areas, there can be more than 100 pupils per class.
  • "Many of the public schools in existence are in deplorable conditions; no blackboards in many of them; in some, children sit on the floor due to lack of desks, and the most worrying concern is encroachment on school land by individuals, many of whom are connected politically," Lelo said. "One can find a pharmacy, restaurant or even bar right in the middle of a school compound - it looks like all open spaces in schools are up for grabs.
  • Tshimbalanga said the average monthly salary for a primary school teacher was $35-40 and since the teachers' salaries are often several months in arrears, parents were forced to chip in. "Generally, teachers, like other Congolese workers, survive on very little, some even less than $1 a day, yet the cost of education is borne by parents, sometimes even up to 65 percent of the total cost," Tshimbalanga said. "In rural areas, some teachers supplement their earnings by working as casual labourers on farms; those in urban areas end up begging for money from their pupils' parents just to survive." To improve the quality of education, Tshimbalanga said, the government had to pay teachers properly. He said the teachers’ union entered into an agreement in 2004 with the government for teachers to be paid a minimum of $208 monthly but six years later, this has not been implemented.
Teachers Without Borders

The bullying gender gap: Girls more likely to be targets - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

  • New research suggests that females such as Ms. Lee may be particularly vulnerable to bullying from other females, even as rates of male bullying decline. It’s a troubling finding that highlights where parents, educators and policy makers may need to focus their efforts to counter the effects of school-related bullying.
  • A comprehensive report released last month by researchers from the Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and Mental Health found that while overall rates of bullying have remained relatively stable in recent years, some significant gender disparities have emerged.
  • The study found that nearly one-third, or 29 per cent, of students reported being bullied since the start of the school year.
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  • The report, called the Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, has been conducted every two years since 1977, making it the longest continuing survey of young people in Canada and one of the longest in the world. Nearly 9,300 students in Grades 7 to 12 from 181 different Ontario schools participated in the most recent survey, which was conducted from October, 2010, to June, 2011.
  • Online or cyber-bullying was also much more common among females, with 28 per cent of girls reporting being targeted by cyber-bullying compared to just 15 per cent of boys.
  • The overall rates haven’t really changed since 2003, the first year CAMH monitored bullying at school. But the survey found that females are more likely to be bullied. Thirty-one per cent of adolescent girls reported being victimized in the most recent survey, compared to 26 per cent for boys.
  • This raises several questions: Do boys get along better than girls? Have programs aimed at curbing bullying failed to reach girls?
  • “The problem is girls do it all underneath the surface,” said Haley Higdon, a facilitator with the SNAP for Schools program.The SNAP (Stop Now and Plan) model is designed to help reach children with behavioural problems or other issues. As a facilitator, Ms. Higdon works in classrooms in the Toronto District School Board. Often, the behavioural problems she encounters stem from bullying.
  • With boys, bullying is typically much easier to detect because male bullies often resort to physical measures, such as fighting. With girls, the behaviour can be much more subtle, making it more difficult for teachers to detect.
  • Bullying can take on many forms. It’s not just one child pushing another in the schoolyard – it is any aggressive or unwanted behaviour that involves a real or perceived imbalance in power, according to StopBullying.gov, a U.S. government website.
Teachers Without Borders

IRIN Global | Girls fare worse in disasters | Global | Aid Policy | Conflict | Disaster... - 0 views

  • During disasters, girls fare worse than the rest of the population, according to a new report released on 11 October by child rights NGO Plan International. “Men, women, boys and girls experience disasters in different ways. Pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities will be exacerbated in disasters and will affect girls and women more,” said Plan International regional director Gezahegn Kebede at an event for the launch of the report.
  • “In emergencies, given their gender, age, and humanitarian status [girls] experience triple disadvantage,” said Kebede. However, education can be a powerful mitigating tool, and can significantly improve their livelihoods.
  • The report entitled The State of the World’s Girls 2013: In Double Jeopardy: Adolescent Girls and Disasters argues that a combination of political, economic, social and cultural attitudes can lead to discrimination of girls during disasters.
Teachers Without Borders

BBC News - Teachers 'lack violence training' - 0 views

  • Nearly half of new teachers do not feel properly equipped to deal with violence in the classroom, a survey suggests.Figures released to BBC Breakfast suggest two-thirds of newly qualified teachers have received no clear guidance on restraining violent pupils.
  • Schools minister Vernon Coaker said the government backed the proportionate use of force. He said: "We know that we live in the real world, we know that sometimes teachers will be faced with difficult situations."
  • The union's Sharon Liburd said: "These violent confrontations can erupt very very quickly, they [teachers] need to be clear about what sort of steps they can take to try to stop the situation from escalating, if they have to physically intervene and how in fact they do that."
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  • "It should be the case that, rather than teachers having to demonstrate the force that was used was reasonable and proportionate, the automatic assumption should be that you trust the teacher's judgement," he said. "And that they feel empowered to use whatever force they consider to be appropriate in order to pull apart pupils who are misbehaving, and if anyone has a complaint, then the onus of proof is on the complainant, not on the teacher to defend themselves."
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