Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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Why Teaching Abroad is Mutually Beneficial

Teaching Abroad
Teaching abroad is an incredible opportunity to give back, and the experience can provide an individual with a multitude of unanticipated advantages. In addition to experiencing a different culture, teaching abroad can vastly improve one’s chances of finding a career in a variety of fields.

The majority of teaching abroad programs aim to teach English in impoverished regions around the world, so as to improve children’s education. Such skills/lessons are desperately needed because according to a reputable teaching abroad program, Sudan Volunteer Programme (SVP), numerous local teachers in these countries do not have the proper skill-sets to teach English, or the school does not have enough money to pay their teachers.

In such cases, volunteers are needed to help educate children and give them the proper skills and opportunities to attain a successful profession. This type of education proves tremendously impactful, as speaking English can significantly increase a child’s chance of professional success down the road.

According to the University of Toronto, teaching abroad can be equally advantageous for the teacher volunteer’s career opportunities. To teach abroad, the volunteer generally does not have to be a certified teacher or have any particular foreign language skills to serve for an organization. Many volunteers can be ‘hired’ with a bachelor’s degree in just about anything, an interest to learn about foreign cultures, a good attitude, a passion for education and seriousness about the job.

Having taught underprivileged children in a foreign country provides one with distinct cultural and teaching experience that can galvanize one’s career. Recent graduates with bachelor’s degrees who teach abroad are often hired full time into high standing positions that they may not have otherwise qualified for.

According to WorldTeach, an accredited teaching abroad program, numerous individuals go into academic careers, international development, educational or volunteer organizations, teachers, school administrators and in business and multi-national companies. Some have become leaders in the U.S. Congress, and one has even served as a U.S. Ambassador.

Though living in a foreign country for a summer or a year may seem daunting, the benefits that can come from the experience prove to be well worth any initial hesitation. From giving children a shot at a better future to becoming more culturally aware, teaching abroad is an incredible opportunity that will boost one’s personal growth and a chance at professional success.

– Bella Chaffey

Photo: Flickr

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UK Makes Girls’ Education a Priority

Education for Girls in Developing Countries
The U.K. has recently pledged to put £100 million towards education for girls in developing countries.

The initiative was announced at the Girls Education Forum in London, with a particular focus on the role that technology will play in reducing the number of girls unable to attend schools around the world. According to the BBC, the initiative will be dispersed mainly across sub-Saharan Africa and will provide for smartcards (to monitor attendance and incentivize families) and satellite broadband (for internet connectivity in more rural areas).

Education’s Effects

The chair of the Global Partnership for Education, Julia Gillard, praised the initiative to the BBC and said, “When we educate girls, we see reduced child deaths, healthier children and mothers, fewer child marriages and faster economic growth.”

The pledge comes as a follow-up to Britain’s Girls Education Challenge. The challenge, launched in 2012, aims to give £300 million to 37 projects in 18 countries to ensure that girls in developing countries have access to the education they need to rise up out of poverty.

Education for girls in developing countries is important for a variety of reasons. Aside from the moral obligation to give girls the opportunity to take advantage of their right to an education, educating women and girls has proven economic and sociological impacts.

Female Empowerment

According to UNICEF, gross domestic product per capita increases with the enrollment of girls in primary school. Educated girls also learn the skills they need to make healthier life decisions, both for themselves and for their future families. Mothers are also much more likely to send their daughters to school if they too received an education, so providing girls with schooling increases the prospects of future generations.

This pledge comes on the heels of a similar initiative to increase access to education for girls: the iMlango program. Since its inception, the program has provided Android tablets, broadband internet, and interactive learning tools to 195 schools in Kenya.

IMlango has been touted as a success, increasing attendance in schools by 15%, and officials hope that the new initiative will create similar results. Girls across the world depend on organizations and programs such as these to boost not only their education, but their quality of life as well; thankfully, it seems that these females are in very capable hands.

– Sabrina Santos

Photo: Pixabay

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New Global Education Fund Aims to Increase Schooling Projects

Global education fund
Sunny Varkey, an entrepreneur from India who lives in Dubai, launched the Varkey Foundation Challenge Fund in March 2016. The $200,000 global education fund was created to support education projects across the globe.

Varkey set up the Challenge Fund to help accomplish the goals of his non-profit, the Varkey Foundation, which works to ensure every child in the world has access to quality teachers.

The fund strives to provide good teachers and quality education to all children, no matter their circumstances.

“The Challenge Fund looks to support early-stage initiatives which build the capacity of teachers and to strengthen the status of the teaching profession,” Varkey said.

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab States and South Asia are facing massive teacher shortages. This has put efforts to provide quality teachers and education for children at risk.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) found that sub-Saharan Africa must raise its current stock of teachers by 68 percent in less than a decade to provide its students with enough teachers.

However, simply hiring teachers will not solve the problem. Educators will need adequate training and support in order to provide quality instruction.

The minimum qualification to become a teacher is approximately nine years of schooling. Unfortunately, 43 percent of teachers in the Congo and 55 percent of teachers in Lao People’s Democratic Republic do not meet this requirement.

The countries that need the most new teachers are also the countries with the least-qualified teachers — this issue is one the Varkey Foundation Challenge Fund hopes to fix.

Varkey’s first projects have already been chosen but non-profit organizations from any country may apply for a portion of the global education fund.

The company will start with organizations in China, Ghana, the Middle East and Ukraine according to The Economic Times. Partner organizations that offer innovative solutions that support the fund’s mission are also offered grants of up to $50,000.

– Alice Gottesman

Photo: Pixabay

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A $3.85 Billion Emergency Education Fund is on the Horizon

Emergency education fund

U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education and former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced an emergency education fund, the Education Cannot Wait Fund, at this year’s World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. The fund, which hopes to raise $3.85 billion in the next five years, aims to ensure that the millions of children across the globe who are directly affected by emergencies are provided with an education.

What is Considered an Emergency?

Conflict or wars, natural disasters and health-related crises, such as the yellow fever outbreak, are all examples of emergencies.

How is Education Affected by Emergencies?

Children are often displaced or taken out of school due to emergencies and schools may be attacked or taken over by armed forces.

The number of children that do not attend school is alarming. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), along with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), found that only 50% of refugee children are in primary school and 25% of refugee adolescents are in secondary school.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, 2.6 million Syrian children stopped attending school due to Syria’s civil war, 1,200 schools were closed and made into shelters in Iraq and an estimated 400,000 children in South Sudan withdrew from school.

The number of schools attacked or taken over — an estimated four each day, according to UNICEF — is also devastating. Attacks have also occurred in Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria and Palestine.

Why is an emergency education fund necessary?

Education received two percent of emergency relief funding, the smallest share of humanitarian funding, according to an Education For All Global Monitoring Report. Only 38% of aid requests for education are met, which is about half of the average for all other sectors.

“Without school, young children caught up in emergencies are at risk of becoming the youngest laborers in the field, the youngest brides at the altar, the youngest recruits vulnerable to extremism and radicalization,” said Brown at the summit in Istanbul.

Education contributes to peacebuilding and the rebuilding of damaged communities. Future generations will be disadvantaged if education is not prioritized in humanitarian response. Uneducated and unprepared citizens may struggle to contribute to their society’s recovery.

Additionally, an emergency education fund provides hope. Brown stated, “We believe that this fund will offer young people hope, because when we ask ourselves what breaks the lives of once thriving young children, it’s not just the Mediterranean wave that submerged the life best, it’s not just the food convoy that does not arrive in Syria, it is also the absence of hope; the soul-crushing certainty that there is nothing ahead to plan or prepare for, not even a place in school.”

The Education Cannot Wait Fund, which was launched with an initial $100 million in donations, aims to reach a minimum of 13.6 million children over the next five years; it aspires to reach up to 75 million children by 2030.

The emergency education fund will support local NGOs, as they are able to provide education more cheaply and quickly than U.N. agencies or the World Bank.

– Alice Gottesman

Photo: Flickr

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Education in Botswana: Overcoming a Resource Curse

Education in BotswanaBotswana, one of Africa’s most stable countries, is the continent’s longest continuous multi-party democracy. The country is relatively free of corruption, has a good human rights record and is the world’s largest producer of diamonds. Trade has transformed it into a middle-income nation. In addition, education in Botswana has developed rapidly after the country became independent on September 30, 1966.

Although the Ministry of Education in Botswana spends around 30% of public spending on vocational and academic learning, education is only free from the age of 6 to 13.

Richard Khumoekae, Botswana National Front Youth League (BNFYL) President, suggests that Botswana should adopt a model of basic education especially because it currently values natural resources (diamonds, in particular) more than human resources.

Despite the criticism, the Botswanan government has continuously attempted to improve the educational system. Education is the top priority in the national budget. As it relates to primary education, the government aims to make sure that children are literate in both Setswana and English. The primary education curriculum also includes mathematics, science and social science.

Botswana’s “ten-year school programme,” adopted from the idea of Patrick van Rensburg, a South African educationalist, includes both primary and junior secondary levels, focuses on teaching children vocational and practical skills. Primary education is fully funded by the government, and most of the cost of secondary education is also funded by the state. These continuous attempts of the government to improve the education system in Botswana have led to a high literacy level, as more than 95% of the population between 15 and 24 years old can read and write.

Botswana, as a diamond-rich country, managed to overcome a so-called “resource curse”: the notion that countries with abundant natural resources do not perform as well economically as those without. It was one of the fastest-growing economies, with an average growth rate of nine percent per year, between gaining independence in 1966 and 1980. This was mainly due to its successful education reforms.

According to a recent statement, the government of Botswana is looking to diversify away from diamonds, because the precious mineral, like all-natural resources, is not going to last forever. The government is also looking for other ways to increase employment for the youth population.

According to Botswana’s education policy documents over the last 4 decades, the ideal system for education in Botswana promotes four principles: democracy, development, self-reliance and unity. One of the main objectives of the national education is “to attain competence in progress of education.”

Although Botswana still has to make sure that education becomes more compulsory, even for education level above primary, the country continues to make progress for future generations.

– Gulyn Kim

Photo: Flickr

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Stronger Anti-Poverty Efforts for Disadvantaged Children

Disadvantaged Children
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) warned that 69 million disadvantaged children under the age of five will die of preventable causes by 2030 unless countries strengthen their anti-poverty efforts.

The World’s Children

UNICEF’s annual flagship report, the “State of the World’s Children 2016,” said that based on current trends, 167 million adolescents will live in poverty and 750 million women will have been married as children by 2030.

Despite recent advances in reducing global poverty, the report reflected the increasing risk that the world’s most disadvantaged face and the need for governments and aid organizations to do more to tackle inequality.

Many countries in the West were unwilling to accept millions of refugees and migrants fleeing poverty and conflict, mostly in the Middle East and Africa, around the time the 172-page report was released.

In a foreword to the report, Anthony Lake, the executive director of UNICEF said that inequities are shaping the survival rates of poor children and “perpetuat[ing] intergenerational cycles of disadvantage and inequity that undermine the stability of societies.”

Progress is Progress, but We Need More

The report acknowledged that progress was made to expand development and improve the plight of the world’s poor. Extreme poverty and global under-five mortality rates have been nearly halved since the 1990s and boys and girls attend primary school in equal numbers in 129 countries.

However, the report noted the benefits of anti-poverty efforts have been unequal and limited in many developing areas around the world.

Children born to uneducated mothers are three times more likely to die before the age of five than those born to women with secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Girls who grow up in extreme poverty are also twice as likely to be married as children than girls from the wealthiest neighborhoods.

Nearly half of the 69 million disadvantaged children projected to perish from preventable causes will reside in sub-Saharan Africa where 247 children live in multidimensional poverty.

The report also found that insufficient access to quality education is still prevalent. Between 2010 and 2013, development assistance for basic education declined by 11%.

The number of children who do not attend school has also increased since 2011 and almost two in five adolescents who do finish primary school have not learned to read, write or do basic arithmetic.

The report recommended an increase in the investment of youth and education in order to guarantee a better future for the world’s children. According to UNICEF, cash transfers have helped children stay in school longer and each additional year of education that a child receives can increase his or her adult earnings by 10%.

Disadvantaged children need strengthened anti-poverty efforts for increased access to education, disease prevention and lower mortality rates — tasks that the global community can help accomplish.

– Sam Turken

Photo: Flickr

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Amazon Inspire Seeks to Empower Educators Around the World

Educators Around the WorldAmazon, a large internet-based retailer, recently launched Amazon Inspire. The website provides an online marketplace for educators around the world, but with one key difference: all of its products are free.

Marketed towards K-12 educators around the world, Amazon Inspire has tens of thousands of free online resources, such as lesson plans and apps available for download. Educators around the world can browse the site by subject matter or grade level, and teachers can download and edit lesson plans to better fit their own personalized courses.

Other features of Amazon Inspire that distinguish it from other educational resource databases include:

  • Collections, which allow educators to group resources on the Amazon Inspire site. These collections can then be shared with other teachers on the site, so everyone has easy access to similar information.
  • An intuitive upload system, wherein it’s easy to drag and drop files on the site, as well as add content to the site to share with fellow teachers.
  • Teachers can also rate and review resources on Amazon Inspire, helping their colleagues select the best resources for their needs.

Earlier in 2016, Amazon also signed a multi-million dollar deal with New York City public schools to help provide more digital books to the schools’ students. This agreement indicates how Amazon is no stranger to the power of funding education and programs that will contribute to making education more accessible to all students and teachers, regardless of location.

These free resources will help teachers in a multitude of ways. Not only will Amazon’s provisions help educators transition into an ever-more digital age of teaching, but they will do so without having to pay an exorbitant amount of money or spend ludicrous amounts of time searching Google for free scholarly resources.

However, since Amazon Inspire is an online resource, countries with limited or no Internet cannot benefit from its resources. While Amazon Inspire is a great site, it is important to remember that not all countries are as privileged to have nationwide Internet coverage as the United States. There is great potential in this field to not only connect more teachers to students but to connect and educate more people globally.

– Bayley McComb
Photo: Flickr

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How Sex Education in Guatemala is Transforming Lives

Sex Education in Guatemala
Guatemala has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Latin America. By age 20, 54 to 68 percent of indigenous or uneducated women have married or become pregnant.

This number is raised by a high rate of sexual abuse that boys and girls suffer: 10,000 cases are reported every year. One of the many reasons these statistics are so alarmingly high is a lack of comprehensive sex education in Guatemala. In 2012, only two percent of schools had effective programs; but fortunately, many advocates have worked to counteract these dismal statistics over the past few years.

Comprehensive sex education is incredibly beneficial to children of all genders. The National Survey of Family Growth discovered that pregnancy rates for 15 to 19-year-olds are 50 percent lower for teens who receive comprehensive sex education than for teenagers who received less education.

Guatemalan children need to be taught about contraceptives, STIs, HIV, pregnancy and especially consent. Programs should emphasize the goals of improved gender equality as well as increasing male involvement in family planning. These alterations would allow teenagers to have more control over their reproductive health as well as counteract the dangerous culture of violence and rape.

Fortunately, new legislation has paved the way for improvement. The 2010 Preventing through Education Act calls for comprehensive sex education in Guatemala and increases teenage access to sexual health services.

Sex educator Ana Lucía Ramazzini insists that “sex education cannot be successful in Guatemala without being taught from a feminist viewpoint that addresses consent, assault and the power dynamics and social inequalities between men and women.” Two other laws have been similarly positive — hospitals are now required to report pregnancies for girls under 14, and the marrying age with parental consent has been raised from 14 to 16.

Three years after the Prevention through Education Act, a program with gender equality views was incorporated into nine regions. After the 2010 law passed in Guatemala, the rate of teen pregnancy decreased from 90 births per 1000 women ages 15-19 to 81 births in 2014. While the statistic is not overtly dramatic, the steady decline does indeed bode well for the future.

Ten Guatemalan organizations and a handful of international organizations continue to transform sex education from bill to reality. UNAIDS works to educate people about HIV and decrease the stigma surrounding the condition for the 65,000 people in Guatemala who live with the disease and require treatment. Two Guatemalan organizations in particular, Asociacion Pro-Bienestar de la Familia de Guatemala (APROFAM) and Incide Joven, have done exceptional work in this field.

APROFAM is a family planning organization that serves Guatemala with 27 permanent clinics, five mobile facilities and a large number of community distributors. Their clinics and workshops provide education for both men and women about the effectiveness of contraceptives and family planning services. Using media from comic strips and television shows, they educate the public on both sexual health as well as issues of consent and abuse.

Incide Joven is a similar organization, but its uniqueness stems from the fact that it is entirely youth-run. Like APROFAM, Incide Joven is dedicated to making sex education available for teenagers. Their advocacy was very successful in creating the valuable Gender and Cultural Diversity office as part of the Ministry of Education to oversee new sex education. APROFAM and Incide Joben share sex educator Ana Ramazzini’s ideology by encouraging both genders to take an active role in family planning.

With such high rates of abuse and teenage pregnancy, sex education in Guatemala is a tough job. Fortunately, children are growing more aware of their rights and the risks of young sex. A 10-year-old listing off information about HIV at a UNAIDS event said that “[children] are very young for sex. Ah! And that our body is only ours and no one can touch it.”

The emphasis on consent in sex education in Guatemala not only builds a better-informed public, but it also is a large step in the right direction for female empowerment and youth rights.

– Jeanette Burke

Photo: Bustle

Making Education in Costa Rica High Quality and Accessible

Education in Costa Rica
Education in Costa Rica has come leaps and bounds from its past. The highly-rated education system in Costa Rica continues to lead Central and Latin America by example, striving to provide both highly accessible and high-quality education to all.

Costa Rica’s literacy rate is approximately 95 percent, one of the highest in Latin America. In 1869, the country was one of the first in the world to make primary education mandatory and free. Costa Rica is also one of the few countries in the world without a standing army, and part of the funds that would have been spent on the military is instead redirected to education.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), almost seven percent of the country’s GDP is spent on educational programs. The government has also issued a mandated goal for allocated funds to rise to eight percent by 2018. This percentage of GDP spending on education is exceeded only by Iceland, New Zealand and Denmark.

In the book, “The Ticos: Culture and Social Change in Costa Rica,” it is said that every Costa Rican pueblo is known to have five things: a local store, a football field, a church, a bar and a school. Some schools in the most rural parts of the country only have two students, but regardless of the number of children in the pueblo, they will always have access to education.

While accessible schooling for all children is a noble goal, the quality of education must also be upheld. The smaller the school, the fewer resources the school and its teachers have. Children in rural areas often miss days or weeks of school to work or ultimately drop out to help support their families.

According to the 2015 U.N. Development Programme’s Human Development Report, Costa Ricans spend an average of 8.4 years in school, and only 50.6 percent of the population receives at least some secondary school education.

While the necessary amount of money is being spent to ensure education in Costa Rica is a priority, according to the OECD the gap in educational outcomes based on family income has grown significantly larger in the past 20 years. It is critical that Costa Rica not only increases education funding but also focuses on how that money is spent, specifically by spreading resources more equitably across schools.

The Costa Rican Ministry of Education is working alongside UNICEF and other international organizations to confront the factors contributing to students permanently leaving school and to provide quality education to all.

“Yo me apunto” (“I’m in”) was launched in 2015 with the hope of encouraging students to stay in school and to reintegrate young adults back into school. The program reaches 155 schools and offers educational programs for students living in areas of poverty.

By continuing initiatives like “Yo me apunto” and increasing focus on establishing better educational outcomes, education in Costa Rica will continue to be an exemplary model for the rest of Latin and Central America and beyond.

– Erica Rawles

Photo: The Costa Rica News

Education in Singapore: Methods for Global Success

Education in Singapore
For the first time in history, Singapore has been named as having the top two universities in all of Asia. This includes the National University of Singapore, which rose 14 spots in the World University Rankings since 2012. The method for success goes back many generations, as education in Singapore instructs not only academics but teaches respect for authority and an understanding of the gravity of education.

Singapore, among other Asian nations, neared the top of the international league tables for over a decade. These tables measure child proficiency in reading, math, and science, with high scores showing the success of Singapore’s education system. Singapore’s education method is to approach classrooms with a highly-scripted way of teaching, making teachers ‘teach to the test’ instead of adapting to children’s different needs.

Students in Singapore ‘learn how to learn,’ a generally ineffective method that has been unusually successful in Singapore. Instead of checking the students’ level of understanding, teachers are instructed to check whether students can get the correct answer. The prescribed national curriculum sets the standard by which students learn, with little flexibility or deviation.

Singapore’s universities have been able to compete in the global economy by pouring financial support into research and strategically positioning each university. From the start, students are instructed on their expectations through primary, secondary and post-secondary education.

However, the first lessons students learn are how to know and how to love their country. By strengthening the pupils’ appreciation for their country, they then also appreciate the meaning of receiving an education.

Students in Singapore have been instructed since birth to follow the national and cultural standards that reproduce the instructional regime. Teachers instruct with a type of ‘folk pedagogy’ that reinforces the nature of their instruction, such as ‘teaching is talking and learning is listening.’ However, in recent years these policies have relaxed to lessen student stress.

Despite their unorthodox success, Singapore is realizing that balance is just as important as educational prowess. Education in Singapore has changed to accommodate more stress-relieving activities, such as white-water rafting, since experts in Singapore’s education system now aim to give students a more well-rounded life.

The goal is to move students from being academic-based people to leading emotionally-healthy lives, a change that should positively impact Singapore’s education system. With a combination of previous methods and these new changes, Singapore’s high status in education in Asia and around the globe should remain consistent.

– Amanda Panella

Photo: Pixabay