[ZAMBIA] GOVERNMENT will soon extend the free education initiative to secondary schools in line with the Patriotic Front (PF) manifesto, Vice-President Guy Scott has said.
Dr Scott said Government was determined to provide free secondary school education as was the case at primary level. Speaking when he addressed a rally in Mpongwe, the Vice-President said it would be pointless if the citizens offered free primary school education failed to access secondary school education because of high fees.
“We are working towards giving free education even in secondary schools. Secondary education should be free so that all citizens, regardless of their social standing in society, can access free but quality education,” he said.
Malala Yousafzai Announces Malala Fund to Support Girls’ Access to Education (by vitalvoices)
Pakistan risks missing ‘primary education for all’ target – The Express Tribune
LAHORE: With Pakistan spending only 2.3% of its GDP on education, the country is unlikely to achieve its target of ‘Universal Primary Education for All’ by 2015, states the 2012 Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report.
The 10th EFA report titled ‘Putting Education to Work’ is expected to be released globally today (Tuesday). It maintains that despite having committed itself to the particular United Nations Millennium Development Goal, Pakistan still has the second largest number of out of school children: around 5.1 million.
Syria: Crisis threatens education for thousands of children
The Syrian authorities estimate that 2,072 schools across the country have been damaged or destroyed. This represents almost 10 per cent of Syria’s 22,000 schools.
Efforts are underway to repair and rehabilitate several hundred schools. UNICEF has so far completed repairs of 64 schools in Dera’a, Rural Damascus and Lattakia. Another 100 schools are scheduled to be repaired in the coming weeks. Such repairs are necessary to enable children to return to school. However, it is also expected that a number of teachers will not return to teaching duties due, inter alia, to access constraints and internal displacement.
As India celebrated Akshaya Tritiya on Tuesday, a festival associated with mass weddings, many activists renewed their calls against child marriage. “Raise your voice against child marriage on #AkshayTritiya, an auspicious day for Hindu marriage in India,” UNICEF India said on Twitter.
There are many campaigns around the world against child marriage in India, where the practice remains common despite being illegal. Perhaps the most original one is “The Girl Store” - which some may find is in bad taste. (via ‘Buy a Girl:’ An Unusual Anti Child Marriage Campaign - India Real Time - WSJ)
Improving the lives of women begins with investing in girls. Educating girls brings enormous benefits far beyond improving the lives of the girls themselves. Once an educated girl becomes an adult, it is estimated she will earn 20 percent more for each additional year of education she receives beyond grade three or four. Statistics show she will more likely share up to 90 percent of her earnings with her family and her community. She will marry and bear children later, and they will be healthier and more likely to go to school than will the children of her less literate sisters. (via Investing In Girls | Editorials | Editorial)
Africa’s educational systems are suffering from growing pains. More students than ever are enrolling in school, but the supply of teachers and infrastructure have not kept up with demand.
Educators say about 80 percent of African students are completing primary school — thanks in part to the push to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. They call for universal primary education by the 2015.
John Daniel, the president and CEO of the intergovernmental organization the Commonwealth of Learning, says success is bringing more challenges. SCOPE Secondary school students at KwaMhlanga High School in Mpumalanga, South Africa.
“The African countries achieved in 10 years what it took many developed countries 100 years to do two centuries ago,” he said, “and they don’t have many resources left over to do secondary.” (via Africa Faces Surge of Secondary School Students | Africa | English)
How do you fix education in Africa, where students have far fewer opportunities than their counterparts in other parts of the world? There are two schools of thought on the subject: do you invest bottom up? Or top down?
The statistics are hard to ignore. Sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest-ranked region in the world on the United Nations’ education development index.
The U.N. education agency (UNESCO) says a quarter of all children in sub-Saharan Africa do not go to school, and account for 43 percent of the world’s out-of-school children.
Meantime, the African Union (AU) has said the continent will need to recruit more than 2 million new teachers by 2015, just three years from now.
While the U.N. and the AU agree on the scope of the education challenges facing the continent, they are from two separate schools of thought on how to remedy the situation. (via Experts Tackling Education in Africa | Africa | English)
[PAKISTAN] … around 50 government girls’ primary schools have been shut down in Peshawar, mostly in Matani, Badhber, Urmar, Garhi Atta Mohmmad and Adezai areas, due to unavailability of teachers, while many boys and girls primary schools faced shortage of teaching staff.
Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, a co-convenor of the High Level Panel on Education, released a report this week calling for the establishment of an independent global fund for education, to raise the $16 billion needed each year to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015.
