Skip to main content

Home/ Teachers Without Borders/ Group items matching "success" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Rwanda: Free Basic Education Increases Enrolment - 1 views

allafrica.com/...201009270149.html

Rwanda EFA teachers schools enrollment MDGs

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 14 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Kigali — Early last year, the government introduced the 9-Year Basic Education (9 YBE) programme, which offers six years of primary education and three years of secondary education to all Rwandan children free of charge.The idea was to have school-going children unable to access education in the past to do so, and be able to compete in the job market regionally. The Ministry of Education also hopes that the programme will reduce the dropout rate in schools.Information from the Ministry of Education indicates that already, the current enrolment rate stands at 97 percent for boys and 98 percent for girls.
  • According to UNESCO, this is the highest enrolment rate in the region. So far, many countries are implementing free primary education. Few, however, have put in place a programme for post-primary education.
  • Several Headteachers say the programme has gained momentum following a recent schools construction campaign that has seen thousands of new classrooms built across the country. Nearly all the classrooms have been voluntarily built by parents, teachers, university students or government officials. They say the strategy of free education for all is beginning to pay off. The enrolment rate has increased as more children go to school.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The goal is to reduce the teacher-student ratio from 74 to 45 students per teacher. Though headteachers commended the government's effort to equip schools with the basic teaching materials like books, they noted that lack of computers and the insufficient lab materials for practical lessons hamper the success of the programme.
  • Electricity also remains a challenge especially for schools and students in rural areas. This has a great impact on students' performance.
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Africa: Abolishing Fees Boosts African Schooling (Page 2 of 2) - 0 views

allafrica.com/...201002181133.html

Kenya Malawi Africa developing nations schools tuition girls girls' education

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 23 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Malawi struggles to cope GA_googleFillSlot( "AllAfrica_Story_InsetB" ); GA_googleCreateDomIframe('google_ads_div_AllAfrica_Story_InsetB' ,'AllAfrica_Story_InsetB'); Other countries have been less successful. Malawi eliminated its school fees in 1994. But with less than half of Kenya's gross domestic product per person and fewer financial and human resources to draw on, it still faces difficult challenges in providing universal primary education.
  • As in many other African countries, notes the UN study, "the adoption of universal primary education was triggered by political demands rather than by rational planning processes." Although Malawi had lifted some fees for Standards 1 and 2 and waived primary education fees for girls prior to 1994, the decision to eliminate all fees coincided with the return of multiparty elections that year. The focus, the researchers found, was on increasing enrolment. "Very little attention was paid to quality issues."
  • One immediate response was to hire 20,000 new teachers, almost all of whom were secondary school graduates who were given only two weeks of training. Plans to provide on-the-job training failed to materialize. Instructional quality declined sharply as the pupil-teacher ratio climbed to 70 to 1.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The lack of facilities meant that many classes met under trees, and books and teaching materials arrived months late, if at all. Despite increases in the education budget, spending per student, already low, declined by about 25 per cent and contributed to the decline in quality. As a result nearly 300,000 students dropped out during the first year, and high dropout rates continue to this day.
  • Overall, reports the UN study, only about 20 per cent of boys and girls successfully complete eight years of primary education in Malawi. This is largely a function of the country's deep poverty, the researchers say, and the lack of resources, such as nutrition programmes, to help poor children remain in school.
  • The abolition of school fees is a precondition for getting large numbers of poor children into school, but it must be accompanied by strong public and political support, sound planning and reform, and increased financing.
  • fter systems adjust to the surge in enrolment, they argue, resources must be directed at improving quality and meeting the needs of the very poor, those in distant rural areas and children with disabilities. The analysts say that a particular focus should be girls, who face a range of obstacles to attending and staying in school, including cultural attitudes that devalue education for women. Improved sanitation and facilities and better safety and security conditions can make it easier to keep girls in school.
Teachers Without Borders

The open secret behind the Cherrypal Africa, or, a brand is a promise, or, understatement by design. | GreenOpenFair - 2 views

cherrypal.com/...comment-page-1

TWB ICT4D Cherrypal developing nations laptops

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 23 Dec 09 - Cached
  • We know how to build inexpensive laptops to get access to the Internet, however, the problem in consumer electronics is that high demand for particular components drives prices up. Success is kind of counterproductive to keep prices low. That’s why we procure components for the Cherrypal Africa in a different way, we buy access inventory, overcapacity, out-of-fashion shells, shells with minor cosmetic flaws, discounted limited batches, and other high quality though discounted components and systems, package them up and sell them under the Cherrypal Africa brand. Bear with me. What this means is that 5 randomly selected people ordering a Cherrypal Africa on any given day theoretically might get 5 different systems, with different configurations. However, their “Africas” would have one particular thing in common, you can browse the Internet, actually pretty fast.
Teachers Without Borders

School Reform in Baltimore: Fewer Suspensions Equal Better Results | Open Society Foundations Blog - 0 views

blog.soros.org/...spensions-equal-better-results

USA suspensions black students reform

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 14 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • At a time when the underachievement of black boys in the United States can only be described as a national crisis, there is finally some good news. This fall, Baltimore City Schools chief executive Andres Alonso proudly reported that black male teens in his district are staying in school and graduating in higher numbers. The announcement made headlines, and for good reason: It proves that there are successful strategies in approaching this seemingly intractable problem. We urge other cities across the country to learn from Baltimore's creative approach.
  • We have long known that excessive use of suspension and expulsion results in higher rates of school absence, academic failure and, eventually, quitting school altogether.
  • Consider: In the 2003-04 school year, fewer than one out of two black male students graduated. Baltimore schools handed out nearly 26,000 suspensions to a student body of just over 88,000 kids. Two-thirds were to boys and, reflecting the city's population, nearly all were to black students.
Teachers Without Borders

Education doesn't save lives, so why should we care? « World Education Blog - 1 views

efareport.wordpress.com/...ve-lives-so-why-should-we-care

Education Under Attack education violence conflict children

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 23 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Education is one of the hidden costs of conflict and violence. Almost 750,000 people die as a result of armed conflict each year, and there are more than 20 million displaced people in the world. Violent conflict kills and injures people, destroys capital and infrastructure, damages the social fabric, endangers civil liberties, and creates health and famine crises. What is less known or talked about is how violent conflict denies million of children across the world their right to education.
  • Armed violence often targets schools and teachers as symbols of community leadership or bastions of the type of social order that some armed factions want to see destroyed. Children are useful in armies as soldiers, as well as to perform a myriad of daily tasks from cooking and cleaning to sexual favours. Children need to work when members of their family die or are unable to make a living, and families remove children from school fearing for their lives and security.
  • profound long-term effects of educational losses among those exposed to conflict.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In particular, relatively minor shocks to educational access – even as small as one less year of schooling – can have long-lasting detrimental effects on the children that are out of school, as well as on the human capital of whole generations.
  • But human capital – the stock of skills and knowledge we gain through education and experience – is the backbone of successful economic and social recovery. Ignoring these long-term consequences will endanger any attempts to rebuild peace, social justice and stability.
Teachers Without Borders

For refugees in Kenya, 'education is the only thing we can take home' « World Education Blog - 0 views

efareport.wordpress.com/...hing-we-can-take-home%e2%80%99

refugees kenya education MDGs EFA

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 20 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • In many ways, Kenya is an example of an African success story in education. According to the 2011 EFA Global Monitoring Report, growth in the number of children attending school has accelerated, the gender gap has narrowed and it is one of the few countries in the region expected to achieve the Education for All goal of halving adult illiteracy by 2015. Efforts are being made to ensure education quality does not suffer as the number entering school expands. The Kenyan government should be commended for its efforts in all of these areas.
  • Despite this progress, one marginalized group has remained beyond the radar: displaced people. Kenya is host to some of the largest refugee populations on the continent. The government is unable to stretch its limited resources to support their education, and education is not seen as a priority by international agencies in humanitarian situations – just 2% of humanitarian aid overall is allocated to education. This is part of the hidden crisis documented in the 2011 Global Monitoring Report.
  • Speaking of the Dadaab camps in northeastern Kenya, home to some refugees for as long as for 20 years, Mohamed Elmi noted: “Dadaab suffers from overcrowded classrooms, insufficient trained teachers, and too few opportunities for secondary-age students.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The challenges are indeed immense. The number of Somalis entering Kenya grows daily, but the resources available for education have not kept pace. “Education is the only thing we can take home,” refugees I met when I visited Dadaab last year told me.
  • Recognition by the Kenyan government of the challenges faced by refugees is an important first step in filling these unmet needs. The next step will be to ensure that refugee education is incorporated within the government’s strategic planning, and that pressure is put on aid donors to make sufficient funds available on a multiyear basis.
Teachers Without Borders

Study raises questions about full-day kindergarten - 0 views

www.canada.com/...story.html

study Ontario kindergarten Canada

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 07 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • 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."
Teachers Without Borders

Education |P6 in Uganda pupils cannot do fractions - report - 2 views

www.monitor.co.ug/...-

education assessment teachers evaluation professional development Uganda

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 28 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Although the introduction of Universal Primary Education (UPE) has boosted enrollment in primary schools (Uganda boasts 8.3 million children in primary schools compared to 2.3 million before 1997), numerous pupils continue to perform poorly at one of the most important aspects of basic education.
  • The report stated that, “Few primary six pupils demonstrated skills in other competences of ‘measures.’ Only about a third of the pupils (35.2 per cent) could for example tell the time shown on the clock face and merely 4.1 per cent of the pupils could apply the concept of capacity in real life situations.”The tests sampled pupils in 1,098 schools from all the districts in Uganda between the ages of nine and 15 and over.
  • Findings indicate that the main reason why pupils cannot practically apply what is taught in class is the teachers failure to identify the weakness of the pupils in the various areas of study.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The report says: “the cause of this is failure to use assessment to diagnose pupils’ and to guide teaching and inadequate practice as these pupils do their work. Primary Six pupils, whose teachers had a university degree or Grade III teaching certificate, performed better than those whose head teachers had a Grade V teaching certificate. Pupils with head teachers who reside at school performed poorer than those whose head teachers live outside the school.”
  • Mokurai Cherlin on 29 Jul 11
     
    It is evident that the sources of these problems must be sought in earlier grades, and even in the experiences of Ugandan pre-schoolers. Compare them with what I describe at http://replacingtextbooks.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/higher-mathematics-for-children/ for children in the US. There are excellent materials on fractions online. See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Open_Education_Resources for links to some sites that have as many as 100,000 e-learning resources available. Even if students do not have computers, teachers who can access these lessons can adapt them for the classroom or for individual practice, and share them with teachers who do not have Web access. On the issue of fractions, see also http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Tutorials/Fractions for an approach that requires no computers, but will be enhanced with software activities fairly soon. If your students have trouble with these exercises, and you can tell us why, we will work with you and them to develop materials that meet their needs. You will also have to tell us if there are circular Ugandan foods that we can use in lessons for children who are not familiar with European/American cakes, pies, and pizza. ^_^ When you have a 4.1% success rate on a particular topic, and thus a 95.9% failure rate, it cannot be said that individual teachers have failed to recognize individual difficulties. This is evidence that the entire curriculum is misdesigned. I assume that this is some part of the holdover colonial education system from before independence, designed originally for European children, with no relation to the prior experi
Teachers Without Borders

Tatarstan Seeks High-Tech Edge in School With Help of Intel | Business | The Moscow Times - 0 views

www.themoscowtimes.com/...444184.html

Tatarstan Russia education funding

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 30 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • KAZAN — Google has become a classroom tool in Tatarstan as the republic, already ranked by Forbes as Russia’s best region for business, invests heavily in digital technologies for its schools in hopes of becoming the best region for education as well. Tatarstan's annual budget for education has doubled over the past five years to 36 billion rubles ($1.2 billion), and it is spending 1.92 billion rubles over 2010-11 to develop computer-based education, the republic's education and science minister, Albert Gilmutdinov, said at the Electronic School 2011 conference in Kazan. In addition, 103.2 million rubles in federal funding is being used. Gilmutdinov recalled the Russian saying "a miser pays twice" as he explained the republic's hefty investment in education. To be commercially successful in the 21st century, Tatarstan will have to be well-educated, he told The Moscow Times at the conference last week.
  • The microprocessor producer has donated Intel-based computers to a Kazan classroom and conducted free teacher training in Tatarstan, said Sergei Zhukov, the Russia and CIS director of Intel's World Ahead Program, which works with governments to increase access to technology. The program's work in Tatarstan is one of  its largest projects in Russia, he said.
  • The republic's educational development strategy for 2010-15 includes installing computers and high-speed Internet in all of Tatarstan's 1,940 schools, purchasing digital educational content and training teachers to use the new technology. All schools will offer services such as school web sites, text messaging for parents and digital records and schedules. The region is working with partners including Intel, Google, Microsoft and the Tatarstan IT company ILC-KME CS.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Tatarstan has already purchased laptops for all of its 42,000 teachers at a cost of about 1 billion rubles, and equipping its 380,000 students with computers would cost about 10 times as much, he noted. The region has also already purchased 16,739 desktops computers for schools and 6,360 laptops for students.
  • Some experts, however, have voiced concern over the level of technology in schools. Although the Internet provides students with access to a far greater range of resources, left unchecked it can breed dependency, said Vadim Meleshko, deputy director of development at the Teachers' Newspaper.
Teachers Without Borders

With no $10 laptop in sight, India buys 250,000 OLPCs - Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...lpc-buys-250000-xo-laptops.ars

India OLPC laptops education learning developing nations

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 30 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The government of India has signed an agreement with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and will purchase 250,000 of the organization's XO laptops. The machines will be distributed to students throughout the country. India's decision to embrace OLPC is a bit unexpected in light of the country's past antagonism towards the project.
  • OLPC launched a pilot program in India in 2007 with 20 XO laptops at a school in Khairat-Dhangarwada village in the state of Maharashtra. Although the pilot program was successful, the country's Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) was highly skeptical about OLPC, and expressed concerns about the health implications of prolonged laptop use among students.
Teachers Without Borders

BBC News - UK pupils 'among least likely to overcome tough start' - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...education-13794591

UK education disadvantaged children socioeconomics study OECD

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 22 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Using science test results from the major international PISA study, which compares the performance of different education systems, it shows that there are wide differences in the levels of resilience.
  • Among countries, South Korea, Finland, Japan, Turkey and Canada are the most successful in terms of poorer pupils achieving high results.
  • But the UK is well below average and at the lower end of this ranking of resilience, with only 24% showing such examples of "resilience".
  • Believing that they are likely to succeed in exams is an important part of how they actually perform. The study argues that mentoring schemes can be particularly beneficial.
  • There is also a link between longer hours in class studying a subject and the improved chances of poorer pupils. It is also says that motivation is important - but in the form of a "personal, internal drive" rather than the promise of a reward or an incentive.
  • "All of these findings suggest that schools may have an important role to play in fostering resilience," says the report. "They could start by providing more opportunities for disadvantaged students to learn in class by developing activities, classroom practices and teaching methods that encourage learning and foster motivation and self-confidence among those students."
Teachers Without Borders

Peer education targets South Africa's AIDS epidemic | McClatchy - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...ion-targets-south-africas.html

AIDS epidemic education south africa HIV_AIDS teaching

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 30 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Kokolo is 20, just a few years older than her audience of 11th grade students at the Manzomthombo Senior Secondary School. The law student is part of a peer education effort that has young people teaching other young people about AIDS and prevention. "It works best when they get down to the real reasons why these kids are engaging in these behaviors and trying to warn them about the risks," said Melani-Ann Cook, a project manager for the program. "What we've found is that when our peer educators go (to the schools) ... they really look up to them." The success of the program and others like it is vitally important to the future of South Africa, which has the largest population of HIV-positive people in the world.
  • Peer education is only one of a wide array of programs under way to combat the problem. Some stress safe sex, use of condoms and care in selecting partners. Others stress abstinence. Some try to curb drug and alcohol use. Still others take aim at changing attitudes, gender roles, after school activities and erasing the stigma that attached to AIDS.
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Ghana: 129 Girls Benefit From WFP Scholarship - 0 views

allafrica.com/...201106290565.html

drop-out rates enrolment ghana girls scholarship girls' education

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 02 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • A total of 129 Senor High School girls, from the three Northern Regions, are to benefit from a GHc 74,000 scholarship scheme to guard against school drop-out. The World Food Programme and the Ghana Health Service Girls Project seek to support the less privileged girls, who attained the aggregate 06 to 16 in the 2010 Basic Education Certificate Examination.
  • As part of the programme she said, girls who attended school of a minimum of 85 percent of the month were rewarded with a take-home food package of cereal, vegetable oil and iodized salt.
  • "We at WFP are proud of the success of the girl child education programmes, but we are equally wary of challenges, including inadequate classroom, high teacher pupil ration, floods and drought, which could slow down the nation's quest to achieve MDG two," he said.
Teachers Without Borders

BBC News - African-Caribbean boys 'would rather hustle than learn' - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...education-15387444

boys gender masculinity education learning Jamaica schools UK

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 21 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Black schoolboys can choose to perform poorly to avoid undermining their masculinity, the head of the Jamaican Teachers' Association has said. Adolph Cameron said that in Jamaica, where homophobia was a big issue, school success was often seen as feminine or "gay". He was concerned the same cultural attitude was affecting African-Caribbean male students in the UK.
  • He noted that in Jamaica boys were at least 10 percentage points behind girls in national tests. Misplaced views about masculinity needed to be tackled in schools.
  • In an interview with the BBC News website, Mr Cameron said: "That notion of masculinity says that if as a male you aspire to perform highly it means you are feminine, even to the extent of saying you are gay. "But in the context of Jamaica, which is so homophobic, male students don't want to be categorised in that way so that they would deliberately underperform in order that they are not."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • He said research had suggested that boys in Jamaica deliberately underperformed in literacy tests because the tests were carried out in standard English, and "to speak in standard English is considered a woman's activity". He went on to suggest the same cultural attitudes affected the learning of African-Caribbean boys in England.
  • "Boys are more interested in hustling, which is a quick way of making a living, rather than making the commitment to study. This is a supposed to be a street thing which is a male thing. "The influence of this attitude towards masculinity seems to be having a tremendous impact on how well African-Caribbean and Jamaican males do.
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 56 of 56
Showing 20▼ items per page