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ALMOST three quarters of year 9 schoolboys admit to "covert bullying", according to a world-first Australian study. The survey of almost 800 Victorian students found 72 per cent of year 9 boys and 65 per cent of year 9 girls had engaged in covert bullying, such as spreading rumours or excluding other children.Lead researcher, Professor Sheryl Hemphill, said it was surprising to find more boys than girls engaging in this type of bullying."Covert bullying was always thought to be predominantly done by girls, but our figures show for the first time that boys are actively engaging in this behaviour," she said.

Thousands of children are too frightened to go to school or suffer depression and even attempt suicide after being targeted by ‘cyber bullies’, according to a study.It found 28 per cent of children aged 11 to 16 had experienced bullying on the internet or via a mobile phone.

Children from an ethnic minority background are more likely to be targeted, with ‘white non-British’ youngsters the most at risk from persistent cyber bullying. The report stated this indicated ‘recent immigrants’ were most at risk.

The survey of 4,600 children was carried out by the charity Beatbullying and the National Association of Head Teachers, and the issue will be highlighted tonight in a BBC1 Panorama programme called Hunting The Internet Bullies.

Beatings and sexual harassment are rife in state-run schools in the Philippines, with many pupils also routinely bullied, according to a government-led study published this week.

Schools tolerate teachers spanking, beating, pinching, slapping, cursing and shouting at children to impose discipline, and there are no standard mechanisms for addressing complaints, the Council for the Welfare of Children said. "Children experience violence both from their peers in school and from school personnel," the council, an agency of the social welfare ministry, said in a summary of its findings.

four in 10 children suffered some kind of violence in class in their first three years in school.

Two million people have been affected by the massive earthquake that struck central Chile on Saturday, President Michelle Bachelet has said.

The 8.8 quake - one of the biggest ever - triggered a tsunami that has been sweeping across the Pacific, although waves were not as high as predicted.

Chile is vulnerable to earthquakes, being situated on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where the Pacific and South American plates meet. The earthquake struck at 0634 GMT, 115km (70 miles) north-east of the city of Concepcion and 325km south-west of the capital Santiago at a depth of about 35km. It is the biggest to hit Chile in 50 years.

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.

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."

High Stakes, a report by Oxfam and 15 other aid organizations, finds that gains in girls’ education are slipping away as a result of poverty, growing insecurity, a lack of trained teachers, neglect of post-primary education, and poorly equipped schools. The findings are based on a survey of more than 1,600 girls, parents, and teachers in 17 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

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.

While many parents and other Japanese welcome the government's move to provide English education at an early age, some experts are concerned that most teachers are being forced to venture into uncharted waters with little preparation. In addition, devoting just one period a week to English won't be near enough to nurture children's language ability.

Education ministry officials stressed that the new English lessons, Gaikokugo Katsudo (Foreign Language Activities), will be different from English lessons at the junior high level, and students won't be drilled on comprehensive grammar rules or vocabulary.

TOEFL data for 2004-2005 put Japan next to last in Asia, with an average score of only 191 points — just one point higher than North Korea. Afghanistan exceeded Japan by seven points, while Singapore had the top score at 254.

PANTNAGAR, India — The Nagla elementary school in this north Indian town looks like many other rundown government schools. Sweater-clad children sit on burlap sheets laid in rows on cold concrete floors. Lunch is prepared out back on a fire of burning twigs and branches.

But the classrooms of Nagla are a laboratory for an educational approach unusual for an Indian public school. Rather than being drilled and tested on reproducing passages from textbooks, students write their own stories. And they pursue independent projects — as when fifth-grade students recently interviewed organizers of religious festivals and then made written and oral presentations.

Nagla and 1,500 other schools in this Indian state, Uttarakhand, are part of a five-year-old project to improve Indian primary education that is being paid for by one of the country’s richest men, Azim H. Premji, chairman of the information technology giant Wipro. Education experts at his Azim Premji Foundation are helping to train new teachers and guide current teachers in overhauling the way students are taught and tested at government schools.

One of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) partners is Souktel, a mobile phone service based in the Middle East.

Souktel creates databases, message surveys, and instant alerts that can be sent out and received via mobile phone. The platform tries to better connect job seekers with employers through basic Short Message Service (SMS) texting.

More recently, Souktel has applied this system to international development work. By expanding their service into northern and eastern Africa, messaging services are being used to connect mobile phone users in previously impenetrable locations with aid and relief workers.

The government policy on Universal Secondary Education has been put on the spot after details from a new survey revealed that a total of 41,506 students benefiting from the scheme dropped out of school in the last two years.

According to the report, some students could have been discontinued due to early marriages and pregnancies and anticipated poor performance in national exams.

The Scholastic project found that teachers are desperate for more support. Three kinds rose to the top: more involvement from parents, more engagement from school leaders and higher quality materials to use in the classroom. The teachers who took the survey were given a list of 15 things that might help to retain the best teachers. Higher salaries ranked 11th on the list, behind benefits like more time for preparation and opportunities for professional development.

UNESCO staff in Gaza recruited Souktel to create an SMS alert/survey system that warns parents and their children of any danger happening near local schools. The service forms a key part of UNESCO’s Crisis and Disaster Risk Reduction project, which aims to ensure that schools are secure community spaces.

"In conflict zones, when it's not safe to leave your house to get information, mobile phones can bridge the gap and keep everyone connected," says Souktel co-founder Jacob Korenblum. "This basic technology allows aid workers, educators and local families to stay in contact at all times." 

Here’s how it works: At each school, principals and teachers are given password-protected access to a web interface, where they can send SMS alerts to all parents’ mobile phones. In an emergency, they could write, "Attack near school today, please keep your children at home." Once the violence has ended, another message could go out saying, "Shelling has stopped; please come to school this morning."