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"The percentage of people who speak French fluently is about 5%, and 100% speak Creole," says Chris Low. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote It's like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold” End Quote Michel DeGraff Associate Professor of Linguistics at MIT "So it's really apartheid through language."

He argues that French should be taught in Haiti as a second-language - after children have learnt basic literacy skills in Creole. "Learning to first read and write in a foreign language is somewhat like a toddler who is forced to start walking with a blindfold, and the blindfold is never taken off," he told the BBC World Service.

No matter which indicators you pick, Haiti has an appalling record on education. One recent report rated it as the third worst place in the world, after Somalia and Eritrea, to go to school. Continue reading the main story A brief history of Haitian Creole It emerged towards the end of the 18th Century as slaves from Africa began mixing African languages with French Lots of the vocabulary comes from French, but the grammar is quite different Spelling was standardised in 1979 A law called the Bernard Reform was introduced in the early 1980s, designed to boost Creole in schools The 1987 constitution states that French and Creole are both official languages in Haiti It's estimated that about one-third of children never enrol at primary school, and only about one in 10 complete secondary school.

Associated Press= TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Boys and girls chanted slogans against Moammar Gadhafi and teachers hanged an effigy of the fugitive leader Saturday as many Libyan children started their first school year without the "brother leader" dictating the curriculum. Euphoria filled the halls, but teachers admitted a lot needed to be done to overhaul an educational system where a main goal for nearly 42 years was to instill adoration of Gadhafi and what he touted as the greatest system of rule in the world — the "Jamahiriya," a utopian "rule by the masses" that in reality boiled down to rule by Gadhafi.

Not all facilities in Tripoli opened their doors, and school officials urged patience, saying it will take time to build a new curriculum and provide new equipment after years of strict control by Gadhafi's regime. "I believe the National Transitional Council will give us new books, computers and tapes," said headmistress Moofidha Nashnoush as she rushed through the halls hanging up new flags and hugging her colleagues. "We need to help the children forget the Gadhafi era and start fresh."

The school opening is part of attempts by the National Transitional Council, once the leadership of the rebellion and now closest thing to a government in the North African nation, to restore a sense of normalcy despite continued fighting in three southern and central areas that remain loyal to Gadhafi.

“We arrived at school at 7:30 a.m. as we always do on a school day. At exactly 8:30 we could hear shooting coming from the direction of a neighbouring village,” recalls Pafait Guei, a 14-year-old boy in sixth grade, who usually attends Beoua village primary school in western Côte d’Ivoire.

Pafait and his friends have not been in school since that day, on 17 March. Côte d’Ivoire has been through political crisis and violence following disputed presidential elections last year. Although the political deadlock has been resolved with the new President, Alassane Outtara, sworn in, there is still a tremendous push required to restore the volatile situation in the country.

UNICEF, with the support of the Government of Côte d’Ivoire and its partners, has been targeting one million children for the national ‘Back to School’ campaign in the 10 most vulnerable regions in the western and southern parts of the country.

Each classroom consists of 18 to 20 kids and is named after a child killed in the war. Children paint various forms of the rebels' star-and-crescent flag. The girls learn to stitch small pillows as gifts to families who lost relatives in the fighting. Scrawled on a blackboard in Arabic is "Free Libya, out with Gadhafi."But mainly, Saffar said, the school is a way for the Children to play, meet their friends and act their age."Our goal was to allow the Children to express their emotions about what they have just gone through," said Saffar. "They are allowed to run free in the playground, sing, play, draw — whatever helps them to forget."

Teachers at Ras Mouftah said the children's behavior reflects what they have been through: They are rougher with each other, and new words have crept into their vocabulary — Kalashnikov, mortar, rape."Instead of cartoons they are now watching the news. They can even distinguish the types of rockets that fly overhead," said Fatma Tuweilab, a volunteer at the school.

In spite of numerous interventions by governments to ensure quality basic education for all Ghanaian children, the majority of children of school-going age in some parts of the Northern Region are still not in school.

Against this backdrop, the Right To Play, a child-centered international non-governmental organisation (NGO) operating in the three northern regions, has taken steps to ensure that all children of school-going age in their operational areas are enrolled in school.

The Right To Play, currently, operates in about 50 communities in four districts in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions. The NGO is using all forms of play activities including drama, talent hunt and football competitions to effect changes in the behaviour and development of its target groups.

25 October 2011 – The global demand for secondary education has risen exponentially, says a new United Nations report, which adds that governments, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are having a hard time keeping up and many children are being left out. The 2011 Global Education Digest, released today by the Institute for Statistics of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), says there are only enough seats for 36 per cent of children who want to enrol in secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa.

“There can be no escape from poverty without a vast expansion of secondary education,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. “This is a minimum entitlement for equipping youth with the knowledge and skills they need to secure decent livelihoods in today’s globalized world.”

Yet, the agency adds, a child in the last grade of primary school only has at best a 75 per cent chance of making the transition to lower secondary school in about 20 countries, the majority of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. The region also has a shortage of secondary school teachers.

South Africa's education and finance ministers are being taken to court over poor standards at state schools. The BBC's Karen Allen investigates the education crisis and why some parents in Eastern Cape province are opting to send their children to private schools despite the cost. "We are not a flashy family - I'm just an ordinary kid," says Simanye Zondani, 17, as he pores over his maths homework in the subdued light of his home. Since his parents died, his aunt has given up her smart "bachelorette" flat in Queenstown and opted instead for a house in the township. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers [and] science teachers” End Quote Khumzi Madikane Head teacher at Nonkqubela Secondary It means she can now just about afford the £700 ($1,100) to send her nephew to private school. Five thousand children, most of them from black families on modest incomes, are switching to independent schools annually. The quality varies, but in Gauteng province alone, South Africa's economic hub, more than 100 new schools have applied for registration in the past year. It is a response to a sense of failure in the state sector, argues Peter Bosman, the principal of Getahead High School, the low-cost private school which Simanye attends. "Parents want consistency and quality," he says - not with a sense of schadenfreude but resignation.

The irony is that significant numbers of parents who send their children to private schools are themselves teachers in the state sector.

"We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers, science teachers and when staff look at our facilities they decide not to come here," head teacher Khumzi Madikane laments.

What are the implications for children’s development if the age at which they complete their compulsory schooling is 14 but the legal minimum age for employment is 12? Or vice versa? What happens if a girl can legally be married before finishing compulsory education? Will she return to school and develop her potential to the fullest? And who ensures that relevant education of good quality is in place to prevent juvenile delinquency or to facilitate the reintegration into society of children in conflict with the law? These are some of the questions raised in At what age?... are school-children employed, married and taken to court? – Trends over time. Covering 186 State reports over a period of 18 years, this research confirms that States have not yet fully upheld the right to education in their legislation. Nor have they agreed standards for the transition from childhood to adulthood, either domestically or internationally.

Thousands of Ivorian children have dropped out of school because of pillaging and destruction of school buildings, a majority of which are located in economic capital Abidjan.

Out of the 224 attacks on schools during the post-election crisis in Cote d’Ivoire early 2011, more than half occurred in Abidjan. Schools were not spared from the consequences of the struggles, and suffered pillaging and destruction from stray bullets, shelling and arson. In the hotspots of the crisis, some schools were even occupied by armed forces, equipment was damaged and classrooms were ransacked. The crisis caused many schools throughout the country to close for months.

The studies show that certain regions are still hardly hit by a strong dropout rate, particularly in the western portion of the country and in Abidjan, where the fighting reached peaks of violence. In those areas, considerable damage was inflicted by armed forces and pillaging, which greatly struck the schools and prevented children from resuming their education on the school year opening on 24 October. Thousands of children are today still missing from school months after the crisis.

El Sistema’s aim is to address a depressingly universal problem: how to remove children from poverty’s snares, like drugs, crime, gangs and desperation. The method, imagined by El Sistema’s founder, the economist and trained musician José Antonio Abreu, was classical music. Orchestras and music training centers around the country were established to occupy young people with music study and to instill values that can come from playing in ensembles: a sense of community, commitment and self-worth.

In response to on-going waves of inter-communal violence across Myanmar, UNICEF this week launched ground-breaking peace and reconciliation initiatives for Myanmar’s children with a 5 day workshop on peace-building through education. The workshop – conducted with the Ministry of Education – recognises peace and reconciliation is the most important issue facing Myanmar today and will lead to the dissemination of literature nurturing children’s ability as peace agents.

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

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.

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.