Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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Should I Sign the Up for School Petition?

Up_for_School_Petition
At the time of this posting, eight million people and counting have signed the Up for School Petition. These people want to make sure that children all over the world get an education — a good one. One that will help end the cycle of poverty.

This includes children displaced due to natural disasters or wars. This includes children living in poverty so bad that their parents cannot afford to send them to school, and the children themselves are forced to work. This includes girls who are married off as children or who are unmarried but get pregnant while still of primary or secondary school age or who have their period but no appropriate way to take care of the blood.

Up for School, a petition sponsored by A World at School, demands government leaders to fulfill their promise made at the U.N. in 2000, which guarantees all out-of-school children will be in school before the end of 2015. As Hellen Griberg, A World at School Global Youth Ambassador, reminded world leaders of the Up for School Petition at the Oslo Summit for Education Development on July 7, 2015, “We know that nothing changes without pressure. Therefore, we have been building support in every corner of the world.”

In 2000, 102 million primary school children were out of school. By 2011, the number dropped to 57 million. Progress was being made in developing countries. Primary school enrollment reached 90 percent. Literacy rates were on the rise and gender gaps were narrowing. In 2012, however, the number started rising again to 58 million children out of school. The number is still rising and has now reached 59 million.

Along with this increase in numbers is a decrease in funding. International aid to basic education started falling in 2011 for the first time since 2002. In 2014, only one percent of overall humanitarian aid went to education. Now progress is stalling, placing the 2015 target at great risk.

Yet education is crucial to overcoming poverty. The United Nations Children’s Fund considers education to be critical in achieving all the Millennium Development Goals. Education provides future generations with the tools to fight poverty, disease and gender disparity — all issues that need work in order for the world to improve the environment, the economy and our security. From the midst of today’s primary school children, our future leaders will emerge — our educators, doctors, scientists, economists, heads of state and all the others who will be needed to support a developed world. We may not know them by name now, but one day they will be making decisions about our world.

“Sometimes we wait for others and think that a Martin Luther [sic] should raise [sic] among us, a Nelson Mandela should raise [sic] among us and speak up for us. But we never realize that there are normal humans like us, and if we step forward, we can also bring change just like them,” asserted the Nobel laureate, Malala Yousafzai, on the June 18, 2015 airing of The Daily Show. Yousafzai is the survivor of the Taliban’s assassination attempt in 2012 for openly supporting girls’ right to education.

Why should I sign the Up for School Petition? I cannot think of a reason why anyone should not — or cannot. Most of us may not have had a voice at the Oslo Summit for Education Development on July 6-7, 2015 or at the International Conference on Financing for Development in Ethiopia on July 13-16, 2015. We also will not have the opportunity to speak at the U.N. Summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda on September 25-27, 2015. What we can do, though, is visit the Up For School Petition website to sign the petition now. I just did. It took three minutes.

– Janet Quinn

Sources: United Nations 1, United Nations 2 UNICEF, UpWorthy, A World at School 1, A World at School 2
Photo: A World at School

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The Global Teacher Shortage Crisis

Teacher-Shortage
There have been huge gains in global education recently. Schools have been built, enrollment numbers have soared and equality has risen. While much of the focus has been on these factors – schools and teachers – there is another that needs more attention.

Teachers. Love or hate them, they are key to education anywhere. But there is a problem associated with them in the developing world: there are not enough of them in many places. Ninety-three countries around the world do not have enough teachers. United Nations estimates suggested that the world needed four million teachers by this year in order to meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of primary education for all. Of this four million, 2.6 million were needed to replace teachers either retiring from or quitting the profession.

Even more teachers will be needed for the next round of development targets set for 2030. Up to 27 million teachers are needed to meet the goal of universal primary education for all by 2030. India alone will require three million new teachers and Sub-Saharan Africa will need 6.2 million.

One issue that comes with the need for more teachers, is that for every teacher trained and put to work, more children are born. This is especially true in Africa, where many country’s populations are expected to explode if they are not already. For every 100 primary school-aged children in 2012, there will be 147 in 2030. This is why out of the 6.2 million new teachers needed, 2.3 million will be completely new positions at schools around Africa. This presents another problem: to pay for all these new teachers, $5.2 billion will be needed for their salaries.

Fueled by desperation for more teachers, many countries fail to train their teachers to the required standards. One in three countries with data available shows “less than 75 percent of primary school teachers were trained according to national standards; and less than 50 percent in Angola, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and South Sudan.” This means that for every one trained teacher in Chad, there are 101 students. In the Central African Republic, the ratio is even worse: 138 students for every trained teacher

It could be said that simply training teachers and putting them into school is not actually that daunting of a task. But the real issue at the root of the global teacher shortage is the rate that teachers are leaving the profession. Teaching in the developing world, where survival comes before everything, the pay is not enough. It is for this reason that 24 of the 28 million teachers needed by 2030 will serve to replace other teachers leaving the profession for.

To combat this, countries are trying a whole range of different tactics. In Indonesia and Benin, the governments have raised teachers to civil service status, and in Korea seasoned teachers are enticed to stay with salaries more than double what new teachers make.

Addressing the global teacher shortage is extremely important in the fight against poverty. Education is a gateway out of destitution, but more properly trained teachers are essential for this to be true. “An education system is only as good as its teachers.”

– Greg Baker

Sources: Worldwide Learn, BBC, The Guardian, UNESCO
Photo: The Recruiting Times

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Students Slowly Returning to School in South Sudan

Students-Returning-to-School-in-South-Sudan
Decades of conflict have denied millions the right to education in South Sudan. Currently, about one million primary school-age children are not in school, and only 10% of those who enter actually complete a primary school education. Seventy percent of children ages 6 to 17 have never attended school at all, and gender and wealth gaps play a huge role in preventing some children from ever accessing education.

Even before violence broke out across the young nation in December 2013, schools were basic and ineffective. But now, the situation is even more dire—in the worst effected states of Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity, 70% of the schools have closed. In some counties, no schools are currently open.

Five decades of civil war left a generation of adults who never had the opportunity to attend school in South Sudan. This is one major factor behind South Sudan’s adult literacy rate of 27%—one of the worst in the world. Only 2% of the adult population has completed primary school, meaning that many teachers in South Sudan never received a comprehensive education themselves. This has resulted in poor quality of instruction and a lack of official training in areas such as effective classroom management. Furthermore, schools themselves lacked important resources, from sturdy building materials, to textbooks.

Violence over the past year and a half has worsened the situation. Soldiers have re-purposed school buildings, and there is a deficit of teachers. Some teachers have been killed or forced to flee, while others have become involved in the conflict. 400,000 children have been forced out of school. Many have been displaced due to the violence, and when they fled for their safety, they had no choice but to put their education on hold.

In April 2006, the government’s “Go to School” initiative—one of the world’s most rapid reconstruction programs—enabled more than 1.6 million children to enroll in school, but the conflict has reversed some of this progress. Recent surveys have shown that citizens see education as a top priority, as it could be a path to peace for the country, and many groups are still working to improve the education system in South Sudan.

UNICEF began their Back to Learning Campaign in South Sudan in November 2014, and they have reached 121,000 children so far. They hope to reach 400,000 by December 2015. They are currently running two programs: the Integrated Education in Emergencies program for internally displaced students, and the Basic Education Package, which can be utilized by any child who is out of school.

South Sudan also has an Alternative Education Program, which initially began for soldiers but is now open to anyone. Many adults who never had access to education as children are utilizing the program. Furthermore, aid agencies are encouraging more women to attend school. South Sudan is still struggling in many areas, but with more students returning to school, education can become a means to further developing the nation.

– Jane Harkness

Sources: The Guardian, IRIN Africa, UNICEF 1, UNICEF 2
Photo: SBS

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Pakistan’s Commitment to Improve Education

Pakistan’s-Commitment-to-Improve-Education
Pakistan has seen its fair share of violence that has torn the country apart. Part of this was a disruption in the education of the youth. Pakistan currently spends seven times more on military spending than on primary school education. The results of this is shown in the numbers of children in school and the literacy rates—63 percent of school-age children in class and 49.5 million adults can’t read. And within these numbers, 4.5 million girls don’t attend school and two-thirds of adult women are illiterate. Since 1999 Pakistan has made rather small progress. Recently, however, Pakistan has made a commitment to improve education.

That is why the statement of Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, addressing education issues at the Oslo Education Summit is so important. Sharif stated that that his government will focus on improving the quality of education for both boys and girls as well as increasing the opportunities for young girls to attend school.

Recently, Pakistan’s poverty rates have begun to slip again. This is due to the large increase in population and the low productivity of the population due to a lack of education. Another factor is the inequality of education and literacy rates between men and women. About 70 percent of men are literate, compared to the 40 percent of women.

By increasing education opportunities for the youth, especially female children, Pakistan can begin to turn around the poverty rates. They will create a more informed population that begins to transform the economy and raise Pakistan’s poverty rates.

Sharif believes that by investing in education, Pakistan can begin to improve the living conditions for its people. During the Oslo Conference he stated, “education of youth is the only way forward for socio-economic progress of our future generations and that eradicating illiteracy is essential for promotion of peace, tolerance, and harmony in any society.”

– Katherine Hewitt

Sources: CNN, Poverties, Samaa
Photo: Pakistani Youth

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Canadian “Mincome” Program Aims to Reduce Poverty

Mincome

Alberta Canada is enacting poverty reduction measures that have been long talked about by many experts in the field. The proposed “mincome” program guarantees a minimum income to people who need it. The program would give between $900 and $1,450 per month to households currently receiving welfare. Unlike other programs aimed at boosting household incomes, the mincome program allocates the funds without set guidelines on how to spend it, allowing the process to be streamlined—an attractive idea in comparison to multiple binding and restricting programs for different allowances. The mincome would be implemented as a “negative income tax,” working as the reverse of a regular income tax, helping to boost those below a designated amount.

In a few Canadian towns and U.S. cities, similar programs have been piloted in the past. The results suggest that although, as expected, hours worked generally decreased as a result of the stipend, there were promising social benefits. Most common benefits seen were higher levels of educational attainment and fewer hospital visits, related specifically to mental health. The findings suggest that granting the poor a regulated guaranteed income alleviates high stress and gives children who often feel the need to help support their families in times of economic turbulence enough stability to stay in school and receive an education. These results have, or course, tremendous benefits for the country in the long-run. Higher educational attainment is associated with lower crime rates and higher workforce and political participation. Among many economists, particularly left-wing anti-poverty activists, the idea of a guaranteed income for those below the poverty line has been a popular topic for many years. However, the new findings have brought the idea back into light.

Still, critics remain. Most commonly, the fear is that the program will allow those who do nor work to continue doing so, comfortably. Also, the fact that the mincome would be funded by higher taxes could bring back the very problems that the policy is trying to eliminate. Still, many experts agree that the benefits outweigh the risks. While the program is still relatively new and therefore lacks the abundant research needed for fierce backing, if implemented in Alberta, more data can be collected to be analyzed for the potential for more widespread implementation. Although the program may seem only feasible for developed countries like Canada and the United States, similar programs have been tested in countries such as India and Malawi. Tailoring the program to fit the needs of the country and of the people could allow for widespread growth and poverty reduction. The program is still experimental, but if the data continues to support the policy, more and more political leaders could be convinced of program’s benefits and broader use.

– Emma Dowd

Sources: National Post, PRI, The Star
Photo: The Globe and Mail

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Schools in Nairobi are Getting Free Internet

schools_in_nairobiThe internet has been a major agent in combating global poverty. Connectivity gives access to a new world of information and has revolutionized sectors ranging from finance to health in the global community. However, the internet has had perhaps its greatest impact in education, in which it gives students and teachers access to previously unknown quantities of information.

That’s why it’s great news that over 2,000 schools in Nairobi will be getting free internet.

This innovative solution comes from a project called WazED, through a partnership of telecommunications company Wananchi Group, the Kenya Education Network and the County Government of Nairobi.

WazED will put a total of 2,715 schools across Nairobi county online.

The program is a natural step for the nation Wananchi Group non-executive chairman Richard Bell calls, “the fastest growing ICT hub in the region.” Kenya has continued to be one of the most innovative nations in terms of helping people with technology, with services ranging from mobile finance platform mPesa to mobile education projects such as Eneza Education.

WazED is connected to Kenya’s “Vision 2030” goals, which seek to build a more politically just, economically thriving, and socially equitable Kenya by 2030. The Vision 2030 goals recognize the importance of all sectors of life in their achievement and particularly embraces technology as an important means of social change. And because of the educational potential that improving internet access in schools brings, this makes sense.

Connecting people to the internet is one of the most effective ways of empowering them. Online, not only can one find the most extensive collection of data and news imaginable, but an incredibly wide spectrum of ideas are also present. Connecting Kenyan schools to the internet is an incredibly important step in empowering the next generation and fighting against digital resource inequality.

– Andrew Michaels

Sources: CIO, IT Web Africa, allAfrica, IT News Africa, Kenya Vision 2030
Photo: CIO

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Bangladeshi Floating Schools Redefine Accessible Education

Bangladesh’s Floating Schools Redefine Accessible Education
Since 2002, 70,000 children have benefited from Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha’s 20 solar-powered floating schools. Bangladesh, a nation plagued by incessant monsoons, often has a disrupted school year. During the rainy season, roads become impassable, closing upwards of 4,000 schools for months at a time.

Global warming is an omnipresent reality in Bangladesh, with climatologists projecting that one-fifth of the nation will be submerged by 2050. Geographically, Bangladesh is acutely sensitive to the effects of climate change, owing to the Bengal delta—the world’s largest glacial melting from the Himalayas—as it runs off into the rivers, raising the sea level, which in turn pushes inland.

Frustrated by the month-long interruptions during his childhood education, Mohammed Rezwan believed there was a more viable solution to Bangladesh’s education woes, so instead of avoiding the floods, he embraced them.

The concept was if children marooned by floods could not attend school, then the school should come to them. “Many friends and relatives were denied access to education,” Rezwan said. “I thought, if the children cannot come to school because of floods, then the school should go to them by boat.”

In 1998, Rezwan founded Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a nonprofit centered on mobile, accessible education, with a mere $500. In 2002, he introduced his first school boat. Then, in 2003, donations started flooding in (pun intended).

From the United States, the Global Fund for Children donated $5,000, followed by $100,000 from the Levi Foundation and, finally, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gave $1 million.

The funds enabled Rezwan to build more school boats. Noka, traditional Bangladeshi boats, cost $18,000 to modify into a proper school boat, with weatherproof window vanes, solar panels and arched metal beams. An additional $6,500 a year covers teachers’ salaries and overhead.

The boats are large: stretching 50-feet long and 15-feet wide. Each boat holds roughly 30 to 35 children or adults and is equipped with a laptop, library and other electronic resources. For many of Shidhulai’s students—particularly girls—the school boats are their only opportunity to access technology.

Shidhulai provides three classes, lasting two to three hours a day, six days a week, up to grade four. Students are taught the Bengali alphabet, along with essential life skills, such as how to purify water from contaminated sources. This relatively modest education is all many of these children will ever receive.

Adults attend classes too; their curriculum covers more practical matters. Topics range from proper use of insecticide to climate change adaptation to increasing crop yields—all essential skills in Bangladesh’s agricultural economy.

Shidhulai’s ultimate gesture of accessibility takes the form of portable lanterns given to each child, who can then study at night from home. The lanterns are low-cost and solar-powered, keeping with the renewable solar energy of the school boats.

The existential question facing Shidhulai is its financial sustainability. Critics claim that, while the school boats are an ingenious form of adaption, they are not sustainable, since solar power requires vast amounts of energy.

Undaunted, Rezwan aspires to open 100 more boats within the next five years, spreading his organization’s reach to roughly 100,000 people.

To boost Shidhulai’s viability, Rezwan plans to rebrand the solar lamps currently used as instructional tools and sell them as hurricane lamps.

“Building on that concept, we plan to sell hurricane lamps for around 500 taka ($7.30) each, and the villagers will have to pay 40 taka (about US $0.60) a month to recharge each lamp on our boats,” said Rezwan.

As roughly 78 million Bangladeshis currently go without electricity, relying instead on kerosene or fossil fuel for light, the market for Shidhulai’s solar lamps looks very bright indeed.

– Bilal Ibrahim

Sources: IRIN, WISE Initiative,, New York Times
Photo: BBC

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How Poverty Affects Children’s Language Skills

How Poverty Affects Children’s Language Skills-TBP

Decades worth of research has shown that children from low-income families are at a higher risk of entering school with poor language skills compared to more privileged students. On average, they score two years behind on standardized language development tests.

New research has shown that this achievement gap could begin at as early as 18 months, and by the age of two, children from low-income families show a six-month gap in language proficiency. By the age of three, the difference in vocabulary can be so large that children would have to attend additional schooling to catch up. Furthermore, poor children have more difficulty understanding abstract language and possess lower reading and writing skills, which increases the odds that the child will drop out of school in the future. They often struggle with phonological awareness skills: the ability to consciously manipulate a language’s sound system.

There are many factors that contribute to this trend. Birth to the age of three is a critical period for language development, as the brain is rapidly growing and developing. Parents who are less educated may not know the importance of consistently using language with their baby, which can cause a delay in early language skills. Parental engagement from birth can help bridge this gap, regardless of income level.

Parents who are struggling financially may not have the time or resources to devote to reading to their children. This affects a child’s emerging literacy skills. Building a foundation for strong literacy skills must begin early, and the process of acquiring these skills begins at birth, so it is imperative that parents make an active effort to read to their children.

The vast difference in vocabulary between children of different income levels relates to their exposure to varied vocabulary at home. In the span of one year, children from poor families are exposed to 250,000 utterances at home, while children from wealthy families hear four million. Discussion in low-income households is often focused on daily living concerns, such as what to eat, what to do and other practical topics. Therefore, children may be unprepared for a different type of discussion in a school setting.

There are various strategies that educators and parents can use to close the achievement gap. Early education and intervention are extremely important. High-quality preschool programs produce the best results, particularly when children begin such programs during infancy. Equally important is educating and empowering families. Teaching parents the importance of reading to children, talking with their children as much as possible and building vocabulary by giving words meaningful context can lead to positive outcomes. Working with multiple generations of the family is the best way to promote literacy and language skills at home.

Language connects us all; therefore, it is necessary to foster children’s communications skills from a very young age. With the appropriate combination of early intervention and parental engagement, it is entirely possible for children from low-income families to overcome the language achievement gap.

– Jane Harkness

Sources: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Global Post, Stanford News
Photo: Flickr

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Rosenkranz Prize Winners Dedicated to Improving Healthcare in Developing Countries

Rosenkranz Prize
The Rosenkranz Prize aims to fund the work of Stanford University’s rising research stars who have the desire to improve healthcare in developing countries but who lack the necessary resources.

Most grants in the scientific field are awarded to established researchers. But because the Rosenkranz Prize is awarded to rising researchers, it is able to split funds between two young researchers.

Marcella Alsan, MD, PhD, is investigating how the division of labor among men and women begins at a young age in the developing world. Alsan theorizes that this is because young girls are responsible for taking care of younger siblings, missing endless days of school.

Alsan states, “Anecdotally, girls must sacrifice their education to help out with domestic tasks, including taking care of children, a job that becomes more onerous if their youngest siblings are ill.”

More than 100 million girls worldwide do not complete secondary school. Alsan will be analyzing whether medical interventions in children under the age of 5 show an increasing trend in schooling for their older sisters.

By analyzing this data, Alsan will be able to prove or disprove if sick siblings affect their older sister’s school participation. If this thesis proves true, implementing medical interventions in younger children will increase the number of girls in school. By completing school, girls will be able to not only take care of family and their own children but also have a strong background in education.

The second Rosenkranz Prize winner, Jason Andrews, an infectious disease specialist, is focusing his funds on the development of cheap, effective diagnostic tools for infectious diseases.

Andrews recalls working in rural Nepal as an undergraduate student and “founded a nonprofit organization that provides free medical services in one of the most remote and impoverished parts of the country . . . one of the consistent and critical challenges I encountered in this setting was routine diagnosis of infectious disease.”

Andrews realizes that the diagnoses are hindered by lack of electricity, limited laboratory resources and lack of trained personnel. To eliminate these obstacles, Andrews is developing “an electricity-free, culture-based incubation and identification for typhoid; low-cost portable microscopes to detect parasitic worm infections; and most recently an easy-to-use molecular diagnostic tool that does not require electricity.”

Andrews does not want to develop new diagnostic approaches. Rather, Andrews believes he can develop the diagnostic approaches already in place to function in an affordable and accessible manner.

With the Rosenkranz Prize, Andrews is also able to develop a simple, rapid, molecular diagnostic or cholera that is 10 times more sensitive than the tests currently available. Andrews plans to test this new technology in Nepal.

The Rosenkranz Prize has allowed two individuals dedicated to helping healthcare in developing countries by providing the necessary funding. With the help of Alsan, girls may be able to attend school without worrying about ill siblings, and Andrews has shed light on the problems facing many developing countries when providing medical help. But by further developing the diagnostic approaches available, healthcare will change for the better.

– Kerri Szulak

Sources: Scope, Stanford
Photo: PickPik

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STEM Education Grows in Developing Countries

STEM-Education-in-Developing-Countries

The fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) are being heavily encouraged in developed countries, but developing regions are also encouraging and financing STEM education.

STEM focuses on the areas of education that have a scientific focus. Students who earn these types of degrees are able to gain employment in information technology (IT), medicine, higher education and many other fields.

Encouraging STEM growth in developing countries is important because many new jobs are being created in the booming medicine, computer and IT industries worldwide. Educating people in these fields is going to bring tremendous growth to the nation’s economy and help get people out of poverty.

India has been working hard to promote STEM in their educational programs. Even in the United States, the results of their nascent success are visible. However, regions all over Africa are also promoting STEM education to help bolster their economies.

India still suffers from tremendous poverty throughout the country, but the country is trying to change this partly through educational initiatives. The India STEM Foundation strives to build up STEM education as described in their vision: “To create a world where young people are encouraged to celebrate fun and excitement of science and technology, and inspire them to take science and technology based career paths to become tomorrow’s much needed technology leaders.”

To get that vision to come to life, the foundation supports robotics programs and competitions for children. They have many world partners helping to create these positive learning environments such as Lego, John Deere, Caterpillar and United Technologies, to name a few.

Africa is another place that is using education, specifically STEM education, to move people out of poverty. In 2014, the World Bank approved financing for “19 university-based Centers of Excellence in seven countries in West and Central Africa. These competitively selected centers will receive funding for advanced specialized studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-related disciplines, as well as in agriculture and health.”

The World Bank is hopeful that this financing will help fill the shortage of skilled workers that Africa is facing in health, telecommunications and industry. Another benefit of financing universities in Africa will be that more students will have STEM education in relative proximity to their homes instead of having to travel abroad for education. This allows more students to have the option of a good higher education. Also, since those students will be trained in their own countries, the skilled workers have an incentive to remain in their regions strengthening the skilled labor force and even creating economic growth.

The United Nations has published findings that affirm that STEM education “can remove poverty and reduce inequality in developing countries.” However, there are several cultural challenges that countries face when implementing long-term improvements in STEM, including children losing interest in STEM classes and the gender stereotypes that often leave girls behind.

Those issues are being addressed. Robotic camps are popping up all over the world, not just in India, and they help encourage children’s interest in STEM fields through fun activities. In addition, more and more women are emerging into STEM fields and breaking down some common gender barriers.

STEM education is becoming more of a focus as our world becomes ever more digital. With the wonderful encouragement that children in developing parts of the world are getting, STEM education and the respective fields should continue improving.

– Megan Ivy

Sources: George Mason University, India STEM Foundation, UN, World Bank
Photo: Benignant De Eagle