Skip to main content

Home/ Teachers Without Borders/ Group items matching "standards" 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
1More

Bauchi to re-introduce teacher training colleges - 0 views

dailytrust.dailytrust.com/index.php Nigeria teacher development
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 09 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The Bauchi State government is to reintroduce teacher training colleges in the state with the aim of reviving the standard of education.
3More

BBC News - National Curriculum reform: Commons committee warning - 1 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...education-12355536 UK curriculum reform
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 09 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The shake-up of the National Curriculum in England's schools should ensure a place for both academic and vocational subjects, MPs have said. A report by the House of Commons education committee says boring lessons fuel bad behaviour and the curriculum should meet the needs of all pupils.
  • The report by the cross-party committee concluded: "Ministers should bear in mind that if the future curriculum is to have a beneficial effect on standards of behaviour in the classroom, it will need to meet the needs of all pupils and contain a mix of academic and vocational subjects, while being differentiated and enjoyable".
  • Committee chairman Graham Stuart MP said: "If the curriculum doesn't stimulate children, they will switch off, and the chances are that they will disrupt other children's learning. "The onus is now on the government to draw up a national curriculum which engages all children and meets their aspirations, then let teachers decide how to apply it."
11More

Education failures fan the flames in the Arab world « World Education Blog - 1 views

efareport.wordpress.com/...n-the-flames-in-the-arab-world Egypt Tunisia unemployment education EFA democracy teachers
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 27 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • 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.
4More

Pupils voice their demands - The Star - 0 views

www.thestar.co.za/-voice-their-demands-1.1045011 South Africa education reform schools protests students
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 22 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • About 20 000 pupils from primary and high schools in Cape Town marched in the city centre to mark Human Rights Day and to demand equal rights and access to education. Led by Equal Education, an NGO advocating for equal education rights, the pupils marched to demand minimum norms and standards for school infrastructure in terms of Section 5A of the South African Schools Act.
  • They demanded that Motshekga provide adequate classrooms, a laboratory, a library or media centre, a computer centre and sports field for each school. Textbooks for every child in every subject, training and decent pay for teachers and the eradication of the more than 400 mud schools in the country were also among the demands made by the pupils and the organisation.
  • “Sometimes we have to go to libraries in Delft and Khayelitsha because the library in Mfuleni does not have enough books with the information we need or there are just too many people there,” said Msebenzi.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Equal Education spokeswoman Yoliswa Dwane said she was “disappointed” that the minister had not come to accept the memorandum, but the organisation was happy with the turnout of school children. “Young people in the province showed today that they have an interest in their education.
3More

Closure of migrant children schools in China sparks anguish | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...-schools-idUSTRE77H10I20110818 china reuters children schools closure
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 22 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - China has shut down 24 schools for the children of migrant workers in Beijing forcing more than 14,000 students to drop out, state media said, sparking anger among parents who say they face discrimination. Local officials told the migrant schools that they had not met safety and hygiene standards.
  • While the overwhelming majority of China's 150 million rural migrant workers see their future in cities and towns, they are often treated as unwelcome "interlopers" and have few rights.China's residence permit (hukou) system, which channels most welfare, housing support and healthcare to urban residents, means that migrant workers do not have access to state-subsidized schools.
  • "Our school has closed, forcing some 800 students to drop out," said a representative of the New Hope School, who declined to be named. "There are still 500 students with nowhere to go although the local government has relocated 300 of them."
1More

allAfrica.com: Nigeria: NECO Releases Results, Records Another Mass Failure - 0 views

allafrica.com/...201109240012.html Nigeria exams testing results teaching education
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 25 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Another mass failure has been recorded by students across the country in the just announced 2011 June/July Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) results. Registrar, Chief Executive of the Council, (NECO) while announcing the results in Minna Friday, exonerated the Council from the poor outing of students nationwide, adding that structures that ensured that appropriate standards of excellence and transparency were maintained before, during and after the examinations were put in place.
7More

Rwanda makes gains in all-inclusive education | Society | Guardian Weekly - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...andan-schools-open-up-disabled Rwanda teachers child-friendly disabilities students education
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 02 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • In Rwanda, children with disabilities typically face discrimination and are excluded from school and community life. Silas Ngayaboshya, a local programme manager for Handicap International (HI), says that "many families hide their kids at home because having a disability is a shameful thing for the child and the family, as it's considered to be a punishment from God".
  • Rwanda's ministry of education says that 10% of young people have disabilities, while the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2010 concludes that the number of disabled children at school is likely to be small. A few attend their local mainstream school, though most go to special schools and centres in urban areas, too far for most Rwandans and mainly for children with visual or hearing impairments.
  • Despite these shortcomings, Rwanda's education system overall is considered to be one of the most progressive in Africa. The government recently introduced free compulsory education for the first nine years of school for all Rwandan children (this initiative is expected to increase to 12 years from next year). According to Unicef, Rwanda now has one of the highest primary school enrolment rates in Africa (95% of boys and 97% of girls in 2009). 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Currently, the ministry of education and Unicef fund 54 "child-friendly" schools across Rwanda, which also provide "best-practice" examples to other schools in their cluster areas. A 2009 Unicef report on the initiative indicates that they have assisted 7,500 disabled children. The government is aiming to expand the programme to 400 schools nationwide by 2012, and has also adopted it as the basic standard for all Rwanda's primary schools.
  • Ngayaboshya, who worked with Claude, says that his inclusion plan also involved preparing the teachers and the other children at his school through measures such as pinning up Claude's picture in the classroom, talking in class about how disability can occur, inviting the class to contribute ideas that could help to include him, and encouraging Claude's father to visit the school and show teachers simple measures to assist his son.
  • It took weeks to integrate Claude into school life, but he now gets good grades and is making friends. And he walks over a kilometre every day on his crutches to go to school. Although it is a long way he doesn't mind the journey, and is excited about the classroom. 
  • Undoubtedly there are complex challenges for disabled learners in Rwanda. These include the lack of awareness among families that children with disabilities can attend school; poverty (poor families might need their children to support them with looking after animals, fetching water or firewood); the effects of the genocide in 1994, including the massacre of thousands of teachers that has reduced their numbers (the pupil-teacher ratio in Rwanda is as high as 60:1 according to HI); and the burden placed on resources by a curriculum shift from French to English as the official language of instruction.
8More

Laptops for teachers? - The Teacher (South Africa) - 0 views

www.theteacher.co.za/...laptops-for-teachers teacher development third world South Africa laptops school_reform
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 09 Apr 09 - Cached
  • However, teacher unions have warned that training on the use of the computers is imperative, while analysts emphasise that the education department must monitor benefits to the system or the money will be lost.
  • He said the department wants to give teachers the tools to develop and to make the revised outcomes-based education (OBE) system work. Many teachers have been inadequately trained under the OBE system and some do not understand the content they are expected to teach, resulting in learners performing poorly.
  • Patel said it could take 10 years to retrain teachers at great costs but, through the use of computers, ­training could be accelerated and materials could be made available. "They could have access to lesson plans, for example."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • He said: "Every qualifying teacher (public paid and permanent) will be entitled to a computer on application...Investigations are under way around whether the computers will be an outright purchase, a monthly subsidy for a period of five years, or an allowance."
  • One model could entail teachers receiving R1 500 annually and choosing their laptops according to their needs, but there would be norms and standards. Depending on the package they choose, teachers might have to top up from their own funds.
  • He said the allowance or subsidy will cover internet usage through a data card or fixed line, while the marketplace has wind-up generators or solar-powered batteries to accommodate teachers in the rural areas.
  • No face-to-face training is envisaged, but the use of software to assist training is being investigated.
  • He said laptops alone will not turn the situation around. "There are other issues that also need to be dealt with, such as poor infrastructure, lack of textbooks and proper teacher training".
5More

Mosoko - NRCC Wiki - 0 views

wiki.nrcc.noklab.com/Mosoko mosoko mobile phones Nairobi Africa development developing nations cell phone wiki audio wiki Nokia
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 09 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Two recent examples show how mobile phones can improve peoples' access to information in developing economies. Robert Jensen studied the effect of the growth in mobile phone use in fishing villages in the Indian state of Kerala. As cellular coverage grew from nothing to 100% from 1997 to 2000, the fish market became more efficient: fishermen knew where that days' catch would fetch a good price, price fluctuations between villages diminished, and fewer fish were discarded at the end of each day. A second example shows how markets for agricultural goods -- accessed via phone -- aided farmers in East Africa. The Kenyan Agricultural Commodity Exchange makes nationwide prices available through text messages. Prior to the Exchange, the main source of pricing information was the middleman to whom the farmers were selling -- people who were motivated to buy the commodity as cheaply as possible. Armed with better pricing information, farmers can now sell their goods for prices closer to market rates.
  • Billions of people have mobile phones but only a small fraction of those people have access to the Web. We are focusing on three main types of services that are widespread on the Web, but are absent in developing regions: classified advertising, social networks, and information sharing through Wikis. In all three service aspects, we seek to provide an intuitive and dynamic infrastructure for user-generated content. Craigslist, in the US, and similar free classified services in other developed countries have created marketplaces for exchanging goods and services where none existed before. Their web-based access cannot be brought to developing countries in the near future. Instead, what if we could assist people in forming similar types of connections using only their mobile phones?
  • Short-term goals: Focus on one domain: apartment listings. Build a prototype and deploy it for a month in Nairobi for free.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Provide more powerful interfaces to users who do have Internet access. These interfaces will be both through standard computer web browsers and through customized applications that run on higher-end phones. Currently, the vast majority of phones in developing regions are not capable of running customized applications (e.g. Java). Use speech recognition to improve matching process.
  • This project seeks to develop an "audio wiki" -- an open platform (like Wikipedia) that people can freely access and contribute to, but rather than using a desktop computer, they use a cell phone. This means that all content will be spoken rather than written, and there are a host of interesting challenges in user interfaces, speech recognition, and audio processing that need to be tackled.
5More

43,000 Thai schools and hospitals pledge to uphold safety at national launch of United ... - 0 views

www.preventionweb.net/...v.php Thailand emergency_education natural_disaster schools education
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 30 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Bangkok – The Thai Government today launched the “One Million Safe Schools and Hospitals” initiative in Bangkok, with top government officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministries of Education, Public Health and Interior and partner agencies promising to make safety a priority at 43,004 schools and hospitals.
  • n recent years, Thailand has been experiencing intense disasters with increasing frequency. A series of flash floods in October and November 2010 – declared “one of the worst natural calamities” to hit the country – killed more than a hundred people, displaced thousands and affected six million in 38 provinces. Thousands of students were forced to evacuate their schools, with more than a thousand schools reportedly damaged.
  • “Our Government and partner agencies have pledged to spread awareness among 43,000 schools and hospitals to maintain or upgrade their safety standards.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “Young people and their education are critical to a country's future. The Thai Government promises to make sure its schools can function, even in a disaster, which is a powerful statement about its commitment to human development and resilience.”
  • Nicole Kallmeyer on 30 Mar 11
     
    Bangkok - The Thai Government today launched the "One Million Safe Schools and Hospitals" initiative in Bangkok, with top government officials from the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministries of Education, Public Health and Interior and partner agencies promising to make safety a priority at 43,004 schools and hospitals.
3More

OECD educationtoday: Chinese lessons - 0 views

oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.com/...chinese-lessons.html China OECD education curriculum reform
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 20 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The previous wave of reforms in Shanghai had focused on professionalising education and disseminating good practice through a system of empowered and networked schools. Those established the capacity of the education system to attracted the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms and the most capable school leaders to the most disadvantaged schools. The new reforms are now intended to produce innovative approaches to pedagogy and personalised learning experiences.
  • The aim is to offer a more flexible curriculum while avoiding the pitfalls that are familiar to students and teachers in the West.
  • This investment, and the ways in which students expressed themselves and discussed their ideas about their education, were very different from what I had seen and heard in Chinese schools before. What is evident now is that the Chinese system is well beyond playing catch-up with world-class standards; quite simply, China is designing its own educational future.
4More

Ghazi High School Reopens with a New Look | ReliefWeb - 0 views

reliefweb.int/...454723 high school school schools Afghanistan education construction USAID
shared by Teachers Without Borders on 24 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The Ghazi High School was established as a “Lycée” in 1926 and from the beginning, had instruction in English. After it was almost completely destroyed by decades of war, USAID began working with the Ministry of Education to rebuild the school.
  • Construction for the 8,200 square meter three-story school began in 2007 and includes buildings with 72 classrooms, an enclosed link way that connects the classroom blocks, and ramps for wheelchair access. The school was designed and constructed to international seismic safety standards to prevent damage from earthquakes.
  • USAID created the Kabul Schools Program to support the Ministry of Education’s ambitious plans to expand quality and access to education, and when the program finishes in 2012, the Ministry will have the capacity to serve the educational needs of more than 12,000 boys and girls in greater Kabul City.
  • Teachers Without Borders on 24 Oct 11
     
    KABUL, AFGHANISTAN | OCTOBER 23, 2011 - The newly constructed Ghazi High School was inaugurated today by both Afghan and U.S. government officials, including H.E. Minister of Education Ghulam Farooq Wardak and U.S. Deputy Ambassador James B. Cunningham. Funded through USAID's Kabul Schools Program, 5,400 students will be able to study in the rebuilt school.
« First ‹ Previous 61 - 72 of 72
Showing 20▼ items per page