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Four times a year, 80 children from a remote village in the Pamir mountains set off on a school run that would make most parents blanch, scaling 1000ft-high cliffs and fording swollen rivers to get to class.

"There is only one way to get to the village, and you have to climb up in the mountains," said Su Qin, the head teacher at Taxkorgan Town boarding school, where the children study. "The village is completely cut off. The roads only take you further away," she added.

The most dangerous part of the route is a path, which narrows to just a few inches wide, that has been cut into a cliff face some 1,000ft above the valley beneath. Without safety harnesses, the teachers gingerly shepherd their charges along.

Of the 72 million children out of school [down from 115 million in 2006], 39 million live in conflict-affected countries, according to The Future is Now report, published on 11 May by the Save the Children Alliance.

In Liberia, 73 percent are out of school, and in Somalia 81 percent have no access to education. In Afghanistan’s Uruzgan, Helmand and Badges provinces, 80 percent are in the same boat. “Without urgent action to help these hardest-to-reach children, Millennium Development Goal Two – that all children get a full course of primary schooling by 2015 – will not be met,” the report warned.

In Southern Sudan, only 14 percent of the children attended school during two decades of conflict that ended in 2005, according to the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF. In Angola, at least two million have enrolled in school but 1.2 million are still out, yet only 54 percent complete primary school. Similarly in Iraq, 22 percent of school-going age children failed to attend school in 2007. A study by the education ministry and UNICEF, found that 77 percent of these were female.

"Why are you going to school? Education is useless for a girl." Forty-five-year old Bibi Gul wasn't happy that her young daughter, Nisa, had chosen to attend school. It meant the 9-year-old was busy most of the time doing her homework.

Even when public schools are available, parents often don't want their daughters to walk long distances unaccompanied to reach them. By bringing schools close to home—and, in certain communities, creating classes specifically for girls—CRS ensured that thousands of girls would be able to learn.

Nisa was especially happy when a tin box of storybooks arrived. CRS provides the schools we support with "libraries in a box" so that students can take home books to read. "After this, every day I would bring a storybook and I would read it for my sisters and brothers," remembers Nisa. But her mother still wasn't happy about her studies.

Best Practices in Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities: Applications for Program Design in the Europe & Eurasia Region

Enrolment at primary schools nationwide has leapt from 59% in 2000 to 95.4% today, putting the impoverished country well on course to achieve the second millennium development goal (MDG) of primary school education for all by 2015.

half of pupils will fail to qualify for secondary school, with 3,000 girls a year dropping out due to pregnancy.

The progress has come with a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Enrolment has grown so fast in Tanzania that the school system is creaking with overcrowded classrooms, shortages of books, teachers and toilets, and reports of corporal punishment being used to keep order. In short, it seems that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.

The poor, who make up some 45 percent of Bangladesh’s 164 million population, are the main beneficiaries of the country’s education efforts. In addition, girls have overtaken boys in rates of enrolment, attendance and completion of primary education. With over 94 percent net enrolment, Bangladesh is one of only a handful of the world’s least developed countries that are close to achieving the U.N. millennium development goals of 100 percent enrolment rate in primary schools by 2015.

For example, schools by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) – whose 1.2 million students account for 76 percent of all students in NGO-operated primary schools – are unique in that local community members decide and implement all academic programmes in consultation with parents and stakeholders. "We enrol drop out (and) non-enrolled children – mostly girls – from poor families, ensure high attendance, child friendly pedagogy and high completion of five-year academic studies in our primary schools," Safiqul Islam, director of BRAC’s education programme, told IPS.

It is not possible to predict the time and magnitude of an earthquake, but certain places on the Earth know they are always at risk from big tremors. Chile is one of those places.It lies on the "Ring of Fire", the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim. The magnitude 8.8 event that struck the country at 0634GMT on Saturday occurred at the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates, just off shore and at a depth of about 35km (20 miles).

The Nazca plate, which makes up the Pacific Ocean floor in this region, is being pulled down and under the South American coast. It makes the region one of the most seismically active on the globe. Since 1973, there have been 13 events of magnitude 7.0 or greater.

French and Chilean seismologists had recently completed a study looking at the way the land was moving in response to the strain building up as a result of the tectonic collision. Their analysis suggested the area was ripe for a big quake. "This earthquake fills in an identified seismic gap," Dr Roger Musson, who is the British Geological Survey's Head of Seismic Hazard, told BBC News.

The New York City schools has taken this directive seriously and to heart by creating its School for Human Rights, a combined middle and high school academy that is built around the concept of human rights.

Located in Brooklyn, the School for Human Rights is rare, even for the New York City schools. Its core values are dignity, respect and responsibility, which is the driving force behind its curriculum, how the students learn and the teachers teach, how they treat one another, and the types of adults the New York City schools hope the students become. Human rights are demonstrated to students by how the school meets the educational needs of each and every student; in its practices, such as discipline with dignity; examples given in class, questions raised by teachers, the active discussions, critical thinking and reflection that are part of the project-based coursework; and even in the human rights enriching field trips.

The School of Human Rights is the only New York City schools that integrates an academic and social skills-based curriculum. It even immerses human rights into its extracurricular activities, such as film festivals and workshops with human rights defenders.

The Guardian's work with Amref shows that education is central to helping women protect themselves. Educated women know their rights and can stand up for them. Rose, aged 13, goes to school in Katine, where she has been taught about contraception and sexual health. She said that many of her friends feel pressured to have sex because they get money for food and clothes from their boyfriends. Two of Rose's friends became pregnant while they were still at primary school. But Rose understands that the choices she makes now will affect the rest of her life, and she is determined to concentrate on her studies so that she can stand on her own two feet in the future.

Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, only about half of Haiti’s school-age children were enrolled in classes, a glaring symbol of the nation’s poverty.

more than 3,000 school buildings in the earthquake zone had been destroyed or damaged. Hundreds of teachers and thousands of students were killed, and officials are questioning the safety of the remaining buildings after violent aftershocks in recent weeks, making the goal of Haitian education officials to reopen many schools by April 1 seem increasingly remote.

Children staying in the camps face trials beyond laboring in the streets. Health workers in the camps are reporting a rising number of young rape victims, including girls as young as 12. Alison Thompson, an Australian nurse and documentary director who volunteers at a tent clinic on the grounds of the Pétionville Club, said she had cared for a 14-year-old girl who was raped recently in the camp. “The entire structure of the lives of these children has been upended, and now they’re dealing with the predators living next to them,” Ms. Thompson said.

OECD’s influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which gathers information on education systems, schools, families and students through surveys of school leaders, students and parents is launched, but where – asks EI – is the voice of teachers? Despite the triennial report claiming ‘good educational policy is informed educational policy in which all responsible actors (policy makers, school principals, teachers, students and parents), are provided with the knowledge that they need to make good educational decisions,’ EI cannot understand why the perspective of teachers, who are the first actors to be called upon to implement education policy in schools, continues to be ignored. EI has long argued that a questionnaire to survey the views of teachers in those schools that are sampled for the study will generate data that can augment the views of students and parents, and provide a robust understanding of the learning context in which findings can be interpreted.

The continuing exclusion of teacher voice from this report is a missed opportunity and undermines PISA’s aim of offering informed policy guidance to governments, or using the results to show what countries can learn from each other to set and achieve measurable goals.”