Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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The 10 Most Important Facts About Education in Malawi

Education in MalawiMalawi has been ranked as one of the lowest-performing nations for literacy in sub-Saharan Africa. Malawi is one of the least developed countries in the world and education is proven as one of the critical pathways to improving living conditions in the country. Here are 10 facts regarding education in Malawi:

  1. Primary school in Malawi was made free in 1994. This policy boosted primary school enrollment from 1.6 million children to three million children. However, with such an influx in students, the educational quality has decreased due to weak infrastructure, poor hygiene and low teaching quality.
  2. Only 35 percent of children in Malawi complete primary school. Such a low ratio can be attributed to multiple factors.
    More than half of the country’s population lives below the poverty line. Many children enroll and drop out of school frequently due to employment responsibilities at home or illnesses. Especially for many young girls, dropping out is common due to young marriage, pregnancy, and contracting HIV/AIDS.
  3. In first grade, the teacher to student ratio is 1:130. While this ratio decreases as the grade level increases, Malawi faces one of the world’s worst teacher shortages.
    This fact is mostly due to the expense associated with hiring new teachers. To be able to attract qualified teachers, rural communities must provide housing, which is a significant cost. Many of the quality issues faced in Malawian schools are due to a lack of motivation by the teachers. They face poor working conditions, weak social amenities and lack health coverage.
    The overcrowding of classrooms is found to be another catalyst of high drop-out rates in Malawian schools. With students not receiving one-on-one feedback and lacking the resources to learn, many lose hope in the educational system.
    Therefore, in order to improve the quality of education in Malawi and reduce drop-out rates, the government must focus on improving teacher salaries and improve facilities around the nation. This policy change will incentivize staying in school and providing quality curricula.
  4. Eighty-three percent of first-grade students are unable to read a single syllable, and 92 percent of these students fail to read a single word. Malawi is ranked the weakest for its performance in English reading and second weakest for mathematics against other southern African countries.
    Such statistics are the result of children being denied the chance to learn under normal conditions. With the massive influx of students in recent years, education in Malawi has incurred a national shortage of classrooms, qualified teachers and basic teaching materials such as textbooks.
  5. Besides primary schooling, the government does not fully fund any other educational levels. For instance, the government encourages communities to introduce preschools into their societies but does not support these facilities financially. Therefore, most preschools are run on a voluntary basis and remain unregistered. Forty-four percent of preschoolers face undernourishment in Malawi and the majority of teachers work for free as they lack the necessary resources to teach the young children.
    Without proper preschool opportunities, children in Malawi are missing the opportunities that create a strong foundation for their future studies. The Global Partnership for Education declares that investing resources in the youngest children is one of the most cost-effective commitments a country can make. A study in 2011 found that, by having 50 percent of the world’s children enrolled in preschool, the global benefit is greater than $33 billion.
  6. With around 4.6 million students enrolled in schools throughout Malawi, only eight percent of them complete secondary school. A major contributor to this low completion is the lack of proper transportation links to the secondary facilities.
  7. Only 14.9 percent of adult females obtain at least a secondary education, compared to 24.2 percent of males. To try and reduce the gender gap in education in Malawi, Rihanna’s organization, the Clara Lionel Foundation, partnered with Ofo to create the 1 Km Action campaign. This program will provide scholarships to help girls across Malawi attend secondary school. For the children who qualify, the campaign will provide the students with bikes to ensure they can get to school.
  8. USAID also provides support to the education sector in Malawi by collaborating with the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. The United States’ efforts focus on increasing educational opportunities for females as well as boosting the capacity and quality of education in the country. USAID provides nine programs in Malawi to improve the educational standards of the country.
  9. Donors provide 40 percent of public education expenditure. However, in recent years donors have found that much of the money is not funneled into education but is rather stolen by the government sector. This theft has suspended much funding to the country.
  10. Over the past five years, the Malawian government has committed to allocate 18 percent of the national budget toward the education sector. With this commitment, Malawi will have one of the highest education expenditures in Africa. However, when comparing the educational quality with other countries, it can be noted that Malawi does not allocate its funds efficiently.

Experts believe that education is the driving force to alleviating poverty in Malawi and that it can help the country move toward development. With greater government involvement and international organizations supporting the nation, education in Malawi has the potential to improve in coming years.

– Tess Hinteregger

Photo: Flickr

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How to Help People in Iran

How To Help People In IranAlthough Iran is both the second-largest economy and the second-most populous nation in the Middle East with all indicators pointing towards continued growth, the citizens of Iran still face a lot of oppression and human rights violations. Already this year there have been two public hangings, torturing of prisoners, discrimination against minorities, and the lack of important rights for women. Here are a few ideas for how to help people in Iran:

  • Supporting the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group based out of New York, in their bid to protect the rights of Iranians. The organization has letter-writing campaigns lobbying the 6,000 plus worldwide government officials it reaches to get involved in Iranian human rights. It also produces daily social media content on human rights in Iran that it hopes to have shared across social media.
  • The National Iranian American Council is a nonprofit Washington D.C. organization that seeks to promote the voices of Iranian Americans, and to foster a better relationship between Iran and America through education and increased dialogue. The group provides plenty of material to familiarize oneself with issues affecting Iranians both in America and in Iran. The organization also accepts contributions to aid them in combating human rights abuses in Iran.
  • Educating oneself on the various issues in Iran, particularly those surrounding human rights and poverty, to be able to take an informed stance.
  • Sharing news and facts about the plight of the Iranian people can be another effective way of how to help in Iran, as it helps build awareness and public sympathy.
  • Donating or volunteering with organizations like the U.N. that have programs dedicated to helping countries develop, such as the U.N.’s Educate A Child (EAC) program. The EAC program, implemented in 2012, has given over 700,000 children in Iran and other countries in the Middle East and Africa access to schooling they would not otherwise have had.

The Takeaway:

Although the U.S. and Iran have never had the best of relations, the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran signed onto has helped pave the way to improving relations between the two nations. Even so, the U.S. has maintained sanctions on Iran due to its continued human rights abuses and funding of terrorist organizations. TIME magazine reports that this action is beginning to have an impact.

Though knowing how to help in Iran can be a tricky task, writing to members of Congress and encouraging them to favor the retention of these sanctions and applying pressure to reform their laws, can help have an impact on U.S. policy and potentially help put a stop to human rights violations in Iran.

– Erik Halberg
Photo: Flickr

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Jordanian Education System Struggles to Educate Refugees

Over the past several years, thousands of Syrian refugees have been fleeing their homeland to escape war and heading to Jordan, where the refugee-friendly Za’atari camp resides.

Za’atari opened in 2012 and currently houses 80,000 Syrian refugees, including families in need of a proper education system for their children. Although Jordan implemented a provision in 2016 which provided 75,000 new schools specifically for Syrian refugee children, thousands of these children are missing out on the Jordanian education system.

Among these 75,000 new schools are 50,000 new public schools and 25,000 locations in non-formal school settings, all of which were meant to be designated learning spaces for Syrian refugee children living in Jordan.

Despite the significant number of schools available to Syrian refugees, there is a severe lack of teachers who are adequately trained and qualified to instruct these students. Additionally, Syrian refugee children who enroll in Jordanian schools face social restrictions due to bullying problems.

With nearly 27,000 students in need of education, Za’atari resources, including education, have become very limited, which has led many young people to child labor or early marriage to help their families’ financial situations. With so few of these kids in school, Save the Children has found that almost 50 percent of Jordan’s Syrian population rely on income provided by a child in the family.

However, Syrian refugee children who do not attend school are not the only ones who are facing problems. Those who do go to school are only attending for about three or four hours, as the morning hours get used for other children in Jordan.

Because Syrian refugee children have been missing out on education throughout their time living in Syria, they have much learning to be successful in the Jordanian education system. With such a limited number of school hours available to these children, catching up with the other kids of Jordan is nearly impossible.

As Syrian refugee students struggle to keep up with other kids in Jordan, some are dropping out of the Jordanian education system due to bullying and harassment issues. Girls specifically have been targeted and subjected to this abuse, which leads to these young girls dropping out and being forced into marriage at an early age.

Za’atari has recognized these issues and is working to solve them to make every Syrian refugee feel safe and included in the Jordanian education system. Parents and organizations throughout Za’atari have been seeking resources to better train teachers and obtain higher security in schools.

The efforts being made in Za’atari and other parts of Jordan have been met by an outpouring of support for Syrian refugees through Their World’s #YouPromised campaign.

Their World, a nonprofit working to provide education and necessary resources to children across the globe, started #YouPromised to ensure that the Syrian refugees in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon receive the quality education that they were promised.

You can get involved with the #YouPromised project to amplify the voices of the Syrian refugee children struggling in the Jordanian education system by sending a message to world leaders.

With the work being done in Za’atari and the rest of Jordan as well as Their World’s #YouPromised campaign, Syrian refugee children are closer than ever to receive the quality education that they deserve.

– Kassidy Tarala

Photo: Flickr

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Developing Countries Are Changing Education

Changing EducationThere are many organizations and companies that are investing in developing countries to better the lives of people that live in them and to also decrease the global rates of poverty and hunger. With all of the focus on helping developing countries, new advancements in these nations often slip under the radar.

One such achievement is the way developing countries are changing education. Experts are now looking at developing countries’ new initiatives and technology and investigating how these advancements can be applied to schools in developed countries.

There are several ways schools in developing countries are changing education. One way is the use of technology in classrooms. With tech companies such as Dell, which has recently created the initiative Youth Learning that gives students access to laptops for their studies, students in developing countries are learning and using more technology.

William Altman, who is a tech industry analyst at CB insights, says that schools in developing countries are more likely to use online tools in order to stay up to date. Schools in developed countries tend to continue to use traditional techniques because they have enough funding to do so.

For students in developing countries, technology is creating new ways to learn while also providing more opportunities. Jamil Salmi, an education economist and coordinator of higher education professionals at World Bank, discusses the importance of technology for developing countries in an interview for Voices.

He says, “Today, technological innovations are revolutionizing again the capacity to store, transmit, access and use information.” Salmi goes on to say that low cost for technology access is another reason why using technology is beneficial for students.

Another difference in schools from developing countries compared to those in developed countries is the teaching techniques themselves. Since there are such large student populations, some schools in developing countries had to develop ways to teach larger class sizes.

In 2015, the United Nations’ World Population Prospects reported that African countries such as Niger, Uganda and Chad account for all top 10 positions in world’s youngest populations. The result of a large number of students is to find solutions by trying new things and thus finding new ways to teach students.

Educators are now looking at how developing countries are changing education to see what is next for schools. Schools in developed countries are seeing what ways technology can be used in schools and what techniques work to teach the most students. It seems that the more new techniques that schools in developing countries try, the more advanced school systems get.

– Deanna Wetmore

Photo: Flickr

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Improving Access to Education in Cambodia

Education in CambodiaIn the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge’s regime resulted in the destruction of most of Cambodia’s educational structures. At the end of this brutal period of communist rule, Cambodia was forced to rebuild its education system from nothing. The country has seen great success in this area, and education in Cambodia continues to improve and be accessible to more young students.

Reforms in 1996 solidified the general educational pattern of six-three-three, meaning six years of primary education, three years of lower secondary education and three years of upper secondary education. The government runs the public education system, but there are several opportunities for private education in Cambodia.

In 2014, the government formulated an Education Strategic Plan to improve the education system and subsequently stimulate the economy. The plan focuses on equal access to education, increasing the quality of the school curriculum, and encouraging teachers and school faculty towards excellence in their roles as educators.

Eighteen percent of the national budget has been dedicated to education. These efforts from the Cambodian government have been met with great success. As of 2015, 98 percent of school-age age were enrolled in some form of school. Female students comprised 48 percent of this statistic. In the last decade, almost 1,000 schools have been built and school resources have been significantly expanded.

While education in Cambodia has enjoyed great success, the country still has many areas they need to improve. The student-to-teacher ratio is very high compared to other nearby countries, and teachers are not paid enough to support themselves. Forty-seven percent of third-grade students are unable to read at a third-grade level, and the overall illiteracy rate is incredibly high.

With the government’s resurgence in attention towards the education system, education in Cambodia has flourished in the past decade. While there are many aspects that still need work, the country is on the right track and will be rewarded with improvements in the economy and reduced poverty levels as a result of a strengthened education program.

– Julia McCartney

Photo: Flickr

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Four Organizations Providing Free Education in Africa

Free Education in AfricaThroughout sub-Saharan Africa, upwards of five million children are left without traditional education due to poverty, unrest and civil turmoil. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest rate of primary school enrollment in the world, with 34 million primary age children living in the region not in school.

Without access to education, these children mature without many options for their future, allowing the cycle of poverty to continue in countries such as Ghana, Gambia and the Congo. In response to this, several organizations have put forth different efforts to deliver quality education where little is available. Across different platforms, including online curricula, these organizations are innovating to establish programs for free education in Africa.

  1. The Vodafone Foundation is a nonprofit that seeks to resolve the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges using communication technologies. In June 2017, the foundation launched Instant Schools For Africa, a program providing free access to quality education materials online in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania.Vodafone distributes online learning materials such as specialized tablets, with zero mobile data charges to encourage widespread use of its curriculum. Outside of the Instant Schools for Africa initiative, the Foundation is working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to connect young refugees to its growing Instant Network Schools program. As part of the mission of delivering free education in Africa, the Foundation aims to help three million young refugees by 2025.
  2. The Children Reach Out Program is a Ugandan organization that provides free classes and workshops to urban Ugandan children, especially those at risk economically. From basic learning skills and hygiene to hands-on career guidance, the Children Reach Out Program goes beyond traditional schooling to help Ugandans in need.Since 2009, Children Reach Out has been an important presence providing education for children living on the outskirts of Kampala and other Ugandan cities.
  3. The Volta Aid Foundation is a non-governmental agency in Ghana that connects volunteer teachers and doctors to children that may be without proper educational opportunities or medical care.In addition to offering orphanage care throughout the Volta region of Ghana, the Foundation teaches math, English, and computer literacy to establish the building blocks for a promising future. In a country where only 65 percent of the adult population is literate, The Volta Aid Foundation is committed to making a difference.
  4. The Africa Hope Fund (AHF) has been providing free, quality education in Africa since 2009. AHF works on several different fronts such as sponsoring poor children to attend secondary school in Zambia, or issuing funding to build new classrooms, libraries and deliver school supplies across the continent. AHF also partners with smaller nonprofits that are just starting out in countries like Zimbabwe and Botswana to help them grow and reach as many children as possible.

In areas where basic amenities such as electricity and transportation are in question, expanding education is necessary to ensure that children have access to learn basic skills to build the foundation of prosperity. In delivering education to areas that lack infrastructure, these organizations are playing a crucial role in fighting global poverty. Through providing free education in Africa, these initiatives help prepare the next generation to take on the challenges of the future.

– Nicholas Dugan

Photo: Pixabay

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Areas of Improvement for India’s Education System

India's Education SystemIn recent years, India has made strides in bettering its education system. Between 2011 and 2015, the country increased its spending on education by 80 percent. Additionally, as of 2011, the country’s literacy rate was at 74 percent, a great improvement from the 52 percent recorded in 1991. While India’s education system has continued to improve throughout the years, it is still known as one of lesser education systems around the world. Here are some ways that India’s education system can be improved.

Separate Education and Politics
In an interview with The Economic Times, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization G. Madhavan Nair described education in his country as a “commercial commodity.” Nair says that many political parties use schools in order to build a group of future politicians instead of focusing on education for all students.

Ensure Excellent Educators 
One of the largest problems with India’s education system is its lack of quality teachers. In 2011, the government created an exam for aspiring teachers, ever since this test has been introduced, as many as 99 percent of applicants have failed. Additionally, the Annual Status of Education Report revealed that even after three years of schooling, 60 percent of students are still unable to read, with the number only decreasing to 54 percent after another year of education.

Increase the Budget
While India made strides between 2011 and 2015 to increase the amount of its budget allocated for education, in recent years, the country has begun to back pedal. For the 2016-2017 year, only 3.65 percent of the country’s GDP was spent on education. Compared to other countries such as Mexico, New Zealand and Brazil, which all spend more than 12 percent of spending on education, India has a long way to catch up.

Take the Pressure Off of Standardized Tests 
Like many nations, India is criticized for placing too much importance on its standardized testing. This issue has become so large that many students and parents have been caught cheating in order to do well. In 2015, 700 students in Bihar were expelled from school for cheating and 300 parents were arrested for trying to pass test answers to their children. The pressure of these tests ends up hindering the students’ overall education in the long run and has lead hundreds to resort to cheating.

Private School Isn’t Always the Answer
Due to the lack of quality public school education, many parents have resorted to sending their children to private schools. In the past five years, private school enrollment has increased to 17 million whereas public school enrollment has decreased to 13 million. While the country is fortunate to have relatively cheap private education, moving children from public to private schools does not create a solution, only a temporary fix for some children.

India’s education system has worked throughout the past decade to improve the quality of schooling for students. Despite the country’s changes, it still has to make big changes to provide the education that its people deserve. As of 2016, about 47 percent of the country’s population was comprised of children and teenagers, meaning that almost half of the population is relying on this education system to improve itself, and consequently, the people as a whole.

– Olivia Hayes

Photo: Flickr

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Hungry to Learn: Education and Child Hunger

Education and Child HungerSchool is an opportunity, and it isn’t just an opportunity to learn. To combat children’s hunger in developing countries, school and its accompanying meals can be an opportunity for hungry children and their families to access nutritious, regular meals. For students who are hungry to learn and also have hungry bellies, connecting education and child hunger through policy and humanitarian work can encourage children’s education and decrease child hunger.

There are 66 million primary school-age children who attend school hungry each day, and this undernourishment can result in up to 160 days of illness, seriously affecting children’s health and absenteeism rates. It is difficult for hungry children to focus and stay motivated, lowering school performance and impairing cognitive abilities. Hunger can deeply impact a child’s education and alter how they learn and develop, decreasing student retention.

The issue of child hunger has complex roots that spread across systems and communities, and addressing child hunger through schools requires efforts just as diverse. Hungry children live in food-scarce homes and impoverished communities, and school-based nutritional interventions have the opportunity to improve the health of their entire community. The home-grown School Feeding Program by the U.N. World Food Programme is one innovative way communities are linking education and child hunger. By partnering schools with local farmers to provide nutritious school meals, child hunger is reduced and the local economy grows.

Brazil has had great success with this model, with a 2009 law apportioning 30 percent of the federal budget to purchase local produce from smallholder farms. Municipalities are encouraged to improve their school feeding practices through an annual government award, and local smallholder farmers now have a source of income that helps to alleviate rural poverty. By providing nutritious, locally sourced school meals for children, entire communities are benefitting from improving education and child hunger.

School feeding programs can also improve girls’ access to education by motivating families to send their daughters to school alongside their sons. The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program is encouraging girls’ education through the structure of its school feeding programs, providing meals during the school day and also giving children take-home meals. Attendance for girls doubled in schools with these feeding programs since the take-home meals are incentive enough for resource-scarce families to start sending their daughters to school.

In Somalia and Bangladesh, the education of women is also helping to end child hunger. Alongside its provision of nutritional supplements in Somalia, the World Food Programme offers classes to mothers about the causes of malnutrition and how to prevent it, and in Bangladesh, a partnership between the United Nations Children’s Fund and the European Union is educating mothers about the importance of a varied diet. Offering group classes and one-on-one nutrition sessions in their homes, community health workers teach mothers how to cook nutritious meals. Drawing the connection between women’s education and child hunger helps children access nutritious meals not just at school, but in the home as well.

Connecting education and child hunger through innovative programs like locally sourced produce for school feeding programs, take-home meals to increase girls’ education and educating mothers about malnutrition allows schools to be an opportunity for children to receive both an education and nutritious meals. Focusing on school feeding models that bring income to local smallholder farmers and empower women and girls ensures not only the prevention of school children going hungry but the root causes of child hunger like rural poverty and lack of nutrition education are being addressed. By examining the intersections of education and child hunger, governmental and nongovernmental programs are filling hungry minds and bellies while strengthening communities.

– Irena Huang

Photo: Flickr

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Education in Peru Continues to Thrive

Education in Peru
A republic which first gained its independence in 1821, Peru prides itself on its continual promotion of education. Education in Peru has seriously benefited from 1996 government reforms which ensured free and compulsory education for all students between ages 5 and 16. In fact, continual reform led to the establishment of the National Superintendency of University Higher Education (SUNEDU) in 2015; this organization seeks to improve quality standards for higher education.

As a direct result of the emphasis on education, Peru’s adult literacy rate has risen from approximately 40% in 1940 to beyond 90 percent in 2005. In fact, in 2014, the primary school completion rate stood at 95.9%, a significant increase from 63.8% in 1970.

In particular, Peru continues to prioritize the education of women and vulnerable peoples. Since 2000, there has been a minimal difference in the enrollment ratios between boys and girls: in fact, while 76.2% of school-aged boys were enrolled in school, 77.5% of school-aged girls were enrolled. Similarly, the Peruvian branch of CARE, an organization operating in 94 countries to implement sustainable change, empowers Peru’s most vulnerable groups, including women, indigenous people and rural populations.

Beginning with grade one, education in Peru grants students the opportunity to obtain primary, secondary, vocational and tertiary education. Higher education requires three years. The oldest university is the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Founded in 1551, the university prides itself on prioritizing social responsibility, creating professional leaders and emphasizing sustainability and environmental protection. In fact, the university offers courses in health sciences, medicine, veterinary studies, pharmaceutical studies, engineering, natural sciences, the humanities and more.

Clearly, education in Peru has continued to thrive over the course of the past few decades. However, significant funding efforts and economic growth play a crucial role in securing educational opportunities for students throughout the nation. Therefore, it is incumbent upon world leaders to provide support for Peruvian education in order to ensure that both the nation and its students succeed.

– Emily Chazen

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Organizations That Are Investing in Women

Investing in Women
Investing in women can cause multiple benefits for the economy, food security and healthcare. There are many organizations that have programs for women’s education and there are some that solely concentrate on getting women access to what they need. Two organizations that are dedicated to women are Womensphere and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). By supporting and helping women around the world, these organizations are creating growth in developing countries.

Womensphere was founded in 2007 by Analisa Balares, who is currently the chief executive. Balares started Womensphere with the goal of unleashing women’s potential to lead and transform the world. Womensphere does this by investing in programs that educate or help develop women and girls, mobilizing others to do the same and hosting its own conventions where women can collaborate and share their skills.

Womensphere is investing in women by hosting conventions that allow women to share their accomplishments. One of these conventions is an award ceremony for different organizations that are making a difference for female activism. One award recipient, Nicole Schwab, received the Luminary Award for her Gender Equality Project. This project is working to close the global gender gap by developing a global standard assessment for companies that is non-gender based. This allows women to be included more and have opportunities at higher positions. So far the project tested its idea on seven companies and five countries and hope to use this assessment framework for companies globally. Womensphere also funds and develops different leadership projects that advance women as public, societal, or entrepreneurial leaders.

WILPF was established in 1915 that is dedicated to bringing women around the world together to end violence for peaceful political, societal, and economic climates for all. WILPF four main programs as of this year are disarmament, human rights, women, peace and security and lastly crisis program. All of these programs unite women around the world to solve common problems that are happening in multiple areas. To achieve this WILPF creates awareness on issues like women’s rights as well as financing initiatives that advocate against violence.

The Disarmament Program started in 1915 when the organization was established. In 1999, the Crisis Program was developed to coincide with it. These projects are decreasing violence that directly affects women and children. The programs do this through monitoring, advocacy and reporting military spending. These programs also work to control and decrease various weapon systems to disallow any unnecessary violence.

Both of these organizations see the importance of empowering women and are dedicated to bringing women together. According to the Global Citizen, there are plenty of reasons why supporting women has a positive impact on society. One of these reasons is that women can change the global economy. Studies show that 90% of what women earn goes back to their families. The more women work, the more they spend on their children’s needs, food and healthcare. Education and awareness of childbirth and sex can cause lower maternal deaths of young children and decrease the number of teen pregnancies.

There are many benefits to investing in women and Womensphere and WILPF are just two organizations that are helping empower women and giving women more opportunities.

– Deanna Wetmore