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In Tehran, Iran’s capital, Dr. Bilham has calculated that one million people could die in a predicted quake similar in intensity to the one in Haiti, which the Haitian government estimates killed 230,000. (Some Iranian geologists have pressed their government for decades to move the capital because of the nest of surrounding geologic faults.)

Ali Agaoglu, a Turkish developer ranked 468th last year on the Forbes list of billionaires, described how in the 1970s, salty sea sand and scrap iron were routinely used in buildings made of reinforced concrete. “At that time, this was the best material,” he said, according to a translation of the interview. “Not just us, but all companies were doing the same thing. If an earthquake occurs in Istanbul, not even the army will be able to get in.”

Istanbul stands out among threatened cities in developing countries because it is trying to get ahead of the risk. A first step was an earthquake master plan drawn up for the city and the federal government by Dr. Erdik’s team and researchers at three other Turkish universities in 2006. Such a plan is a rarity outside of rich cities like Tokyo and Los Angeles.Carrying out its long list of recommendations has proved more challenging, given that the biggest source of political pressure in Istanbul, as with most crowded cities, is not an impending earthquake but traffic, crime, jobs and other real-time troubles.Nonetheless, with the urgency amplified by the lessons from Haiti’s devastation, Istanbul is doing what it can to gird for its own disaster.

But a push is also coming from the bottom, as nonprofit groups, recognizing the limits of centralized planning, train dozens of teams of volunteers in poor districts and outfit them with radios, crowbars and first-aid kits so they can dig into the wreckage when their neighborhoods are shaken.

Under a program financed with more than $800 million in loans from the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, and more in the pipeline from other international sources, Turkey is in the early stages of bolstering hundreds of the most vulnerable schools in Istanbul, along with important public buildings and more than 50 hospitals. With about half of the nearly 700 schools assessed as high priorities retrofitted or replaced so far, progress is too slow to suit many Turkish engineers and geologists tracking the threat. But in districts where the work has been done or is under way — those closest to the Marmara Sea and the fault — students, parents and teachers express a sense of relief tempered by the knowledge that renovations only cut the odds of calamity.

“I hope it’s enough,” said Serkan Erdogan, an English teacher at the Bakirkoy Cumhuriyet primary school close to the Marmara coast, where $315,000 was spent to add reinforced walls, jackets of fresh concrete and steel rebar around old columns and to make adjustments as simple as changing classroom doors to open outward, easing evacuations. “The improvements are great, but the building may still collapse,” he said. “We have to learn how to live with that risk. The children need to know what they should do.”In a fifth-grade classroom, the student training that goes with the structural repairs was evident as Nazan Sati, a social worker, asked the 11-year-olds what they would do if an earthquake struck right at that moment. At first a forest of hands shot toward the ceiling. Ms. Sati quickly told them to show, not tell. In a mad, giggling scramble, the students dove beneath their desks. But the threat for children, and their parents, also lies outside the school walls, in mile upon mile of neighborhoods filled with structures called gecekondu, meaning “landed overnight,” because they were constructed seemingly instantly as hundreds of thousands of migrants from rural regions flowed into the city seeking work in the past decade or two.

Equal rights, opportunities and access to resources, equal sharing of responsibilities for the family by men and women, and a harmonious partnership between them are critical to their well-being and that of their families as well as to the consolidation of democracy

Local, national, regional and global peace is attainable and is inextricably linked with the advancement of women, who are a fundamental force for leadership, conflict resolution and the promotion of lasting peace at all levels

Promote people-centred sustainable development, including sustained economic growth, through the provision of basic education, life-long education, literacy and training, and primary health care for girls and women

Take positive steps to ensure peace for the advancement of women and,recognizing the leading role that women have played in the peace movement,work actively towards general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and support negotiations on the conclusion, without delay, of a universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty which contributes to nuclear disarmament and the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in all its aspects

Prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls

Ensure equal access to and equal treatment of women and men in education and health care and enhance women's sexual and reproductive health as well as education

As pointed out by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, primary education without transition into secondary and tertiary levels can only lock a country in a basic factor-driven economy.

n Burundi, for instance, government commitments to providing universal primary education appear to be directed towards enrolment.From an enrolment rate of 36 per cent in 1999, the country recorded a full 99 per cent of girls and close to 100 per cent of boys enrolled in primary school nine years later. School drop-out rates are high however, as only 45 per cent of Burundian children complete a full course of primary education.

Girls in Rwandan primary schools outnumber boys: 97 per cent of girls compared with 95 per cent of boys are enrolled in primary school. Slightly more than half (54 per cent) of Rwandan children complete primary school. Secondary school enrolment in the country stands at 21.9 per cent, the second lowest in the region.

he situation in Uganda is similar — 98 per cent of girls and 96 per cent of boys are currently enrolled in primary school. Completion rate of primary school is 56 per cent. The transition rate into secondary school is low, however, with most pupils unable to progress past the final grade of primary school — only 21 per cent of girls and 22 per cent of boys make it into secondary school.

Kenya lags behind other East African countries in primary school enrolment — 82 per cent of girls and 81 per cent of boys of primary age are enrolled in school.

According to the findings of a national survey of secondary school students, over 13 percent of students will have experienced their first pregnancy by the time they celebrate their fourteenth birthday.

"Although there is sexual education incorporated into the curriculum, it is too basic and may not be an effective intervention, based on all the explicit messages that children are exposed to from such an early age," explains Paul Kipkorir, a teacher in Nairobi.

To fill the gap, various stakeholders have begun supporting the ‘Return to School’ programme, which has faced numerous challenges. " Pupils taunt and mock those who come to school after giving birth. Schools therefore need to be more sensitive to teenage mothers if they are to continue with their education," explains Paul Kipkorir.

Further, there have been various efforts towards more preventive measures. The Ministry of Education is now working closely with organisations that have vast experience in the field of adolescents’ reproductive health and are able to provide more comprehensive information on sexuality in schools.

The median (or middle-performing) student in Algeria, Egypt and Syria scores below the low-benchmark; in Tunisia they score just above. In other words, half of the students in each country have gone through eight years of school to arrive at a level that leaves them with no working knowledge of basic math. In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, over 80% of students fall below the low benchmark. The median student in both performs at around the same level as their counterpart in Ghana and El Salvador – and Qatar is the worst performing country covered in the survey.

Why are education systems in the Middle East and North Africa performing so badly? In many countries, teachers are poorly trained – and teaching is regarded as a low-status, last-resort source of employment for entrants to the civil service. There is an emphasis on rote learning, rather than solving problems and developing more flexible skills. And education systems are geared towards a public sector job market that is shrinking, and for entry to post-secondary education. Most don’t make it. And those who do emerge with skills that are largely irrelevant to the needs of employers.

Moreover, many Arab youth view their education systems not as a source of learning and opportunity, but as a vehicle through which autocratic rulers seek to limit critical thinking, undermine freedom of speech and reinforce their political control.

To a large extent, the protest movement across the Arab States has been led by educated youth and adults frustrated by political autocracy and limited economic opportunity. This has deflected attention from an education crisis facing low-income households in primary education – and from the needs of adolescents and youth emerging from school systems with just a few years of sub-standard education.

The Arab states have an unfinished agenda on basic education.  They still have 6 million primary school age children out of school – around 16% of the world’s total. Despite the vast gap in wealth between the two countries, Saudi Arabia has a lower primary school enrolment rate than Zambia. The Arab world also has some very large gender disparities: in Yemen, primary school enrolment rates are 79% for boys, but just 66% for girls.

Consider the case of Egypt. On average, someone aged 17-22 years old in the country has had around nine years of education. That’s roughly what might be anticipated on the basis of the country’s income. Scratch the surface, though, and you get a different picture: around 12% of Egyptians have had less than two years of education.

High dropout rates from primary and lower secondary school are symptomatic of parental poverty, poor quality education, and a sustained failure on the part of the Egyptian government to tackle the underlying causes of inequality. Adolescents from poor backgrounds entering labor markets without a secondary education are carrying a one-way ticket to a life of poverty, insecurity and marginalization.

The political crisis sweeping Arab states is the product of many years of political failure. The aspirations and hopes of young people – who are increasingly connected to each other and the outside world through the Internet – are colliding with an atrophied political system governed by complacent, self-interested elites who are disconnected from the population.

It aims to facilitate the empowerment of adolescent girls by working with governments and civil society on policies to that effect. In a joint statement, the UNAGTF organisations listed educating adolescent girls, improving their health, protecting them from violence, promoting their leadership, and collect statistic data on them as five priorities in their efforts to advance the rights of adolescent girls.

Karim praised the work of U.N. agencies in Malawi, where adolescent girls face many challenges, including early marriage and early childbearing, which pose serious health risks. Additionally, females account for more than half of all HIV infections in Malawi. The level of sexual and reproductive health of girls in Malawi is among the worst in the world.

"The UNFPA has mobilised and worked with the National Youth Council [of Malawi] to advocate against a bill on child marriage that was going to go to parliament that would have made the legal age of a marriage 16," she said.

Wong also stressed the importance of respecting local culture while introducing new ideas and relevant practices. In Ethiopia, for example, UNFPA has found that working with the community is enormously beneficial, particularly in bringing about long-term change that seriously improves the lives and futures of adolescent girls.

But new clashes over the weekend between protesters and the military renewed the sense of uncertainty in the Egyptian capital.

"Parents are still scared," Salah said. Many students were stranded, she said, because the government asked schools not to run buses through the city. "There are not enough police on the streets."

Teachers raced to make up for a month of lost instruction, but the toppling of Mubarak came up in every class. "We've been talking about the revolution all day," said Ahmed Younes, 16. "We never used to talk about politics at all."

So she encouraged her teachers to embrace the news of the day, even though they are still teaching with textbooks that have long chapters glorifying the achievements of Mubarak and his party.

Egypt launched an attempt to modernize the curriculum in 2006, but observers say schools largely remain incompetent and fawning.

In a powerful paper on education reform in Pakistan, Sir Michael quotes Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, who said in 1947, “Education is a matter of life and death for Pakistan. The world is progressing so rapidly that without the requisite advance in education, not only shall we be left behind others but we may be wiped out altogether.”

The challenge now is to find that political will – the will to turn more words into concrete changes for the 7.3 million Pakistani children who are out of school – the world’s second-largest population of out-of-school children (after Nigeria).

As the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report noted, Pakistan spends seven times more on the military than on primary education. One fifth of Pakistan’s military budget would be enough to pay for every child to complete primary school.

"Whether we want it or not, we are influenced by French because of the history of colonialism - this is not something we can get rid of quickly," he told the BBC World Service. "I don't think education should be only in Creole - Creole is not a scientific language."

The belief is widely held in Haiti that Creole is somehow a primitive, inferior language - possibly because of its origins in the days of slavery. The earthquake in 2010 destroyed about 80% of schools But linguists are at pains to counter this perception. Creole is "fully expressive", as well as being rich in imagery and wisdom says Prof DeGraff.

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.