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Education International - France: Unions oppose government plan to test pupils from pre... - 0 views

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    EI's French affiliates, SE-UNSA and SNUIPP, have condemned a government plan to ask teachers to test children as young as five on their behaviour and learning abilities. The government is seeking to classify pupils into one of the three categories: nothing to report, risk, and high risk. Children's evaluation would be based on four skills: behaviour at school, language, mobility, and phonology (awareness of individual sounds). According to the Education Ministry, this evaluation will be an 'identification tool' for pre-school students who 'show signs that they pose a risk to learning.' It is supposed to 'identify each student's needs in preparation for primary school.'
Teachers Without Borders

Ivory Coast violence keeps children out of school - UN - AlertNet - 0 views

  • DAKAR (AlertNet) - Some 800,000 children in Ivory Coast have missed out on school since the outbreak of violence following last year's disputed presidential election. In the western regions of Moyen Cavally and 18 Montagnes, where fresh fighting erupted on Tuesday, some 180,000 children are losing out on their education and most teachers have been absent since November. "We know from experience that when children’s education is disrupted in a situation like this, they are less likely to go back to school once the crisis is over," said Guy Cave, Ivory Coast country director for Save the Children.
  • Nearly 45,000 of those who have fled their homes have sought safety in Liberia. But aid groups say the thousands of children who have crossed into Liberia cannot attend school there because of language and curriculum differences.   
  • Simmering political tensions among secondary and college students supporting different sides in the deadlock have led to fights. About 4,000 students have seen their books, schoolbags and other study materials destroyed by fellow students.
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  • Teachers in some areas have been encouraged not to attend their classes in protest at the post-electoral crisis. Others have abandoned their posts out of fear for their safety, the agency said.
Teachers Without Borders

UNICEF - Kyrgyzstan - Over a year later, children return to rebuilt school in post-conf... - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • “I am afraid that in two or three years, we won’t have enough space for all the children,” he said. “I plan to have another building built in the backyard.” Students also hope for additional opportunities for extra-curricular activities and, in particular, languages courses.
Teachers Without Borders

In Zimbabwe, school grants provide equal learning opportunities to girls | Ba... - 0 views

  • BULILIMA, Zimbabwe, 7 December 2011 – After completing the fourth grade at the top of her class, 13-year-old Ellen Mbedzi was forced to drop out of Mafeha Primary School in Bulilima, a district in south-western Zimbabwe. Her unemployed father did not see the value of spending the family’s limited resources on a girl.
  • Ellen became a recipient of the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) programme, a school grant programme that helps disadvantaged children stay in school, or, in Ellen’s case, return to the classroom. Her school also received support from the Education Transition Fund (ETF), which provided textbooks in four core subjects – math, English, environmental sciences and a local language – to every student in the school.
  • ETF, an innovative partnership of the government, UNICEF and the international donor community, offers large-scale support to the education sector, and provides much-needed resources and textbooks to every primary school. So far, 15 million textbooks were distributed around the country, and an additional distribution of 7 million is planned.
Teachers Without Borders

Unique education programmes brighten the future for Afghanistan's young women... - 0 views

  • While life for many women in the country remains difficult, today Herat’s Gowarshad High School – named for the powerful Timurid queen who founded the city – is full of confident young girls who are well aware of their rights.
  • “If a woman is educated, she can effectively participate in society and transfer her knowledge to her children,” said Fariba, the school’s volleyball captain. “A society must not be led by men only.”
  • the Bangladeshi non-governmental organization BRAC runs a community-based school where girls who have not been able to enter the formal education system can get a basic education. There girls are tutored for two years, at which point they are prepared to join the formal school system at the fourth-grade level.
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  • UNICEF provides BRAC schools with educational materials, including recorded episodes of a Dari-language version of its ‘Meena’ cartoon series, a successful advocacy and teaching tool developed in South Asia. Like other viewers of the cartoon programme, girls at the BRAC school are fond of Meena, a spirited nine-year-old girl who braves the world tackling issues that affect children just like themselves.
  • BRAC currently supports over 2,500 community-based schools in Afghanistan, with some 84,500 students – mainly girls – enrolled.
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English or Konkani: Goa debates on what to use in schools - Times Of India - 0 views

  • PANAJI: Lawmakers and parents in Goa are debating whether English or mother tongue Konkani should be the medium of instruction (MOI) in schools up to Class 8.
  • "The poor are sending their children to English medium schools because they believe that English will propel them to excel in their studies. Why, even the Chinese are learning English. Parents whose students are studying in (English medium) schools run by the Archdiocese (Church) are agitated. Why is the government disbursing grants only to Konkani/Marathi schools?" Godinho said.
  • As per the education department's policy, schools with English as MOI - which includes several privately-run educational institutions and other schools run by the church in Goa - are not entitled to government funding.
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  • "Is Konkani only for the poor to study? Let the parents be given the choice (of deciding which MOI to choose)," Godinho said, with legislators from the ruling Congress backing his demand.
Teachers Without Borders

Rwanda makes gains in all-inclusive education | Society | Guardian Weekly - 0 views

  • 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). 
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  • Currently, the ministry of education and Unicef fund 54 "child-friendly" schools across Rwanda, which also provide "best-practice" examples to other schools in their cluster areas. A 2009 Unicef report on the initiative indicates that they have assisted 7,500 disabled children. The government is aiming to expand the programme to 400 schools nationwide by 2012, and has also adopted it as the basic standard for all Rwanda's primary schools.
  • Ngayaboshya, who worked with Claude, says that his inclusion plan also involved preparing the teachers and the other children at his school through measures such as pinning up Claude's picture in the classroom, talking in class about how disability can occur, inviting the class to contribute ideas that could help to include him, and encouraging Claude's father to visit the school and show teachers simple measures to assist his son.
  • It took weeks to integrate Claude into school life, but he now gets good grades and is making friends. And he walks over a kilometre every day on his crutches to go to school. Although it is a long way he doesn't mind the journey, and is excited about the classroom. 
  • Undoubtedly there are complex challenges for disabled learners in Rwanda. These include the lack of awareness among families that children with disabilities can attend school; poverty (poor families might need their children to support them with looking after animals, fetching water or firewood); the effects of the genocide in 1994, including the massacre of thousands of teachers that has reduced their numbers (the pupil-teacher ratio in Rwanda is as high as 60:1 according to HI); and the burden placed on resources by a curriculum shift from French to English as the official language of instruction.
Teachers Without Borders

AFP: Taliban bus attack kills four boys in Pakistan - 0 views

  • PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Taliban ambushed a Pakistani school bus on Tuesday, killing four boys and the driver in a hail of bullets and rocket fire on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, police said.The children studied at an elite English-language school of a type reviled by hardline Islamist militants who oppose what they see as Western-imported, secular education.Two seven-year-old girls on the bus were also wounded, officials said.
  • Police said the bus was taking children home at the end of the school day, which in Pakistan finishes in the early afternoon.Senior police official Kalam Khan said from the scene that four boys were killed along with the bus driver."The gunmen were waiting for the bus in fields and attacked when it came close. They fired a rocket and then fired bullets on the van," he said.
  • Shoaib Khan, a 15-year-old student wounded in the attack, said gunmen first opened fire on one side of the road, then waited for pupils to start fleeing before widening the attack.
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