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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.
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  • 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
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CARE: "Going to school should not be a luxury" - 0 views

www.care.org/...-Education-Dadaab-20110812.asp Dadaab Kenya children refugees schools CARE
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 22 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • "Going to school should not be a luxury, especially for the children in Dadaab. On the opposite, this is a powerful way to make their lives safer," emphasizes Stephen Gwynne-Vaughan, country director for CARE Kenya. "If children are left idle in the camps, they are most vulnerable to abuse, drugs and other threats."
  • When attending classes, children do not only learn how to read and write, but also build up their self-confidence by learning about their rights, good hygiene practices and other matters related to life in the camps. While schools are closed during the month of August, CARE has started an accelerated learning program for newly-arrived children, many of whom have never been to school before. In the first two days of the program, 1,100 children were admitted to class and are now getting up to speed to participate in regular school programs after the break. However, once classes resume in September, the schools' capacity to provide quality primary education for the growing number of children may be an impossible task.
  • CARE currently manages five regular schools in Dagahaley camp, reaching more than 15,100 children. Adults from the refugee population are trained as teachers and receive teaching material. Many of those teachers have been living in Dadaab since their early childhood themselves and were educated in the camps before becoming educators themselves.
  • Teachers Without Borders on 22 Aug 11
     
    DADAAB, Kenya (August 11, 2011) - As the influx of Somali refugees across the border to Kenya is increasing every day, CARE draws attention to the lack of sufficient primary education for children living in the refugee camps of Dadaab. The latest numbers of officially registered refugees issued by the United Nations on August 8, 2011, list 399,346 people currently living in Dadaab, a number that is expected to keep growing. Amongst the total refugee population, approximately 114,000 are children at the age of 5 to 13, and only 38 percent are currently enrolled in school.
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Somalia: Children need school as well as food - Save the Children UK - 0 views

www.savethechildren.org.uk/...en-need-school-as-well-as-food Somalia drought education schools
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 01 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • For many children in Somalia, the arrival of September meant the start of a new school year. But, for a huge number of children, school remains inaccessible. In South Central Somalia, an estimated 1.8 million children aged between 5 and 17 have been out of school. This number looks set to grow even bigger with the influx of internally displaced people caused by the country’s food crisis.
  • For children facing these risks, education is essential to provide protection in a safe environment. Children learn life-saving knowledge and skills, and they become more linked into other services – food, nutrition, health, water, sanitation and child protection. That’s why our emergency team in Somalia is making access to schools a priority. We’re building on Save the Children 20-years’ experience here. We’re now running in South Central Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland.
  • Another is the project in Somalia called Strengthening Capacity for Teacher Training, which works with primary and secondary school teachers. Teachers are trained in teaching skills, and the project focuses on girls’ education and on using effective teaching methodologies that incorporate local materials developed by Somali staff.
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Effective policies give children in Angola a second chance to learn  | Back o... - 0 views

www.educationandtransition.org/...ngola-a-second-chance-to-learn Angola UNICEF ECE education conflict in emergencies reform students
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 08 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Despite recent economic development, Angola remains a society deeply scarred by the still-recent civil war. The conflict caused massive internal displacement and refugee outflows, along with the collapse or destruction of key agricultural, health, education and transportation infrastructures, limiting the government’s ability to provide basic public services. This has resulted in a series of barriers to children enrolling and remaining in school.
  • Children living in emergencies or post-conflict contexts are often excluded from schooling or start school late. Their educational progress suffers and they lack the necessary tools for learning, leading them to drop out of school.
  • Many of today’s adolescents in Angola were born during the prolonged civil war and missed several years of schooling or never had the opportunity to attend primary school at all. These youth often do not fit in the primary school setting, and classrooms are already crowded with much younger children.
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  • UNICEF’s Accelerated Learning Programme, called Programa de Alfabetização e Aceleração Escolar (PAAE) in Angola, provides a second-chance learning opportunity for literacy, numeracy and life skills for adolescents through a condensed and adapted primary school curriculum, which can be completed in two-and-a-half years rather than the full six years of primary schooling. It thus encourages out-of-school adolescents to complete primary education, come back into the school system and continue to the second level.
  • “The Accelerated Learning Programme is a critical national strategy of the Government of Angola but what is more important is that this strategy is translated into a second chance and a renewal of hope for adolescents, and girls especially, to continue to learn and develop,” said Paulina Feijo, UNICEF Angola, Education Project Officer.
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AFP: Fears of violence shake Mexico schools - 0 views

www.google.com/...M5hRRS8DzkbgEm4L2MKyXrtMH_Wt8w Mexico violence conflict drugs education schools
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 08 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • ACAPULCO, Mexico — Mexican schools appear increasingly vulnerable to the country's drug violence, with five human heads dumped outside one school and threats of a grenade attack on another in the past week alone.From northern border areas to Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, to the port of Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico, the trend has seen parents keep their children at home as both students and teachers see themselves as targets.
  • Beyond threats linked to drug gangs, violence threatening children and teachers has also occurred in recent weeks inside schools, including in northeastern Sinaloa and northern Nuevo Leon states.
  • "The community has organized itself and decided not to send children to school until we receive promises from the authorities," said Lourdes Sarabia, director of the National Union of Education Workers of Culiacan.
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  • Perhaps the biggest drama though has played out in violence-plagued Acapulco, where thousands of teachers have demonstrated and almost 200 schools in the area have been paralyzed by a month of strike action to persuade authorities to improve security amid extortion threats.
  • The fears appear excessive but are "part of the deterioration of daily life in some communities, as violence affects civilians in public places," according to Javier Oliva, an expert in security issues at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
  • Two weeks ago the government said classes would resume, after they promised to install panic buttons in schools and police patrols nearby, but the protest continued.Acapulco street seller Elizabeth Garcia, a 26-year-old mother of two, said she felt calmer keeping her kids at home."I don't know if it's better that they don't go to school, but at least I know where they are," Garcia said.
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Schools and students face uncertain future in Japan - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html Japan earthquake children students teachers schools
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 08 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Tokyo (CNN) -- Students in many districts across Japan brushed off their uniforms and shouldered their bookbags for the first day of the new school year on Wednesday. But while most were worried about meeting their new teachers or what their class schedules might be, some were facing the threat of nuclear contamination or the loss of former classmates.
  • "I just got a letter from my mom," he said. "It says that she is hurting because we're separated. But she says don't worry, we will go home together after the nuclear power plant settles down."
  • "I haven't got used to the life yet, because I have to live separately from my mom," he said walking into the Minamisuna Primary School. "I miss her."
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  • Dozens of schools were wiped out or too badly damaged to reopen in Miyagi prefecture.
  • Governments and educators are scrambling to repair schools, round up teachers and cope with the tens of thousands of displaced people.
  • A different set of problems in Fukushima, where authorities have begun testing schools, kindergartens and playgrounds across the prefecture after parents expressed worries about high levels of radiation.
  • "In response to it, we conduct to check radiation level to secure the (safety) of the children."
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Aid donors get an F for education « World Education Blog - 0 views

efareport.wordpress.com/...-donors-get-an-f-for-education aid funding development education EFA
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 27 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • This is a war zone. Families in the sprawling camp have lost everything – everything that is except a drive to get their kids an education. In the midst of the most abject poverty, parents have come together to build makeshift classrooms, hire a teacher, and buy a blackboard. Many of the kids work in the afternoon, selling charcoal to pay the $1 fee charged every term. “Being in school is fun – and people with an education can have a better life. I’ll be a doctor,” says David Ichange, aged 12.
  • If every girl in sub-Saharan Africa had a secondary education, it would cut under-five deaths by around 1.8 million. The reason: educated mothers are empowered to demand better health and nutrition provision.
  • The same holds for cutting poverty. If every child in a low income country got into school and left with basic reading skills, the growth effects would lift 171 million people out of poverty. That’s a 12% decline.
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  • Here are the facts. We need around $16 billion in aid to achieve the international development targets in education – targets that donors have signed up for. Currently, aid levels are running at around $4.7 billion and stagnating.
  • Education in conflict-affected states is getting spectacularly short shrift. Humanitarian aid could play a vital role in keeping open opportunities for schooling in communities displaced by violence. Yet education receives just 2% of humanitarian aid – and no sector receives a smaller share of the emergency aid requested in emergency appeals.
  • Of course, some countries in conflict do receive substantial support. Afghanistan gets more aid for basic education than the Sudan, the DRC, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic and Chad combined. But the general picture is one of overwhelming neglect.
  • Yet effective aid on education is an investment in creating the hope and opportunity that makes conflict less likely by breaking the link between poverty and violence. Cutting aid for education is the type of cent-wise, dollar-dumb thinking that the Tea Party has brought to the budget reform table.
  • That $16 billion that we need in aid for education represents just six days worth of what donors spend each year on military budgets. Viewed differently, it’s roughly equivalent to the bonuses dished out to investment bankers in the City of London last year.
  • So, here’s the question. What do you think offers the best value for money? A global education initiative that could put over 67 million kids in school, or a week’s spending on military hardware. Do you really think we get a bigger bang for our buck by funding the indulgences of the team that brought you the crash rather than by financing books and schools that offer millions of kids a way out of poverty – and their countries a route into global prosperity?
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