Schools in England should be fined if pupils leave school with poor literacy skills, an independent report into last year’s riots says. It adds they should demonstrate how they are building pupils’ characters, and give careers advice to each child. (via BBC News - Schools should be fined for illiteracy, says riot panel)
![[SOUTH KOREA] … But South Korea, among the world’s most wired nations, has also seen its plan to digitize elementary, middle and high school classrooms by 2015 collide with a trend it didn’t anticipate: Education leaders here worry that digital devices are too pervasive and that this young generation of tablet-carrying, smartphone-obsessed students might benefit from less exposure to gadgets, not more.
Those concerns have caused South Korea to pin back the ambition of the project, which is in a trial stage at about 50 schools. Now, the full rollout won’t be a revolution: Classes will use digital textbooks alongside paper textbooks, not instead of them. First- and second-graders, government officials say, probably won’t use the gadgets at all. (via In South Korean classrooms, digital textbook revolution meets some resistance - The Washington Post)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1k8eijSh31qb8rnio1_500.jpg)
[SOUTH KOREA] … But South Korea, among the world’s most wired nations, has also seen its plan to digitize elementary, middle and high school classrooms by 2015 collide with a trend it didn’t anticipate: Education leaders here worry that digital devices are too pervasive and that this young generation of tablet-carrying, smartphone-obsessed students might benefit from less exposure to gadgets, not more.
Those concerns have caused South Korea to pin back the ambition of the project, which is in a trial stage at about 50 schools. Now, the full rollout won’t be a revolution: Classes will use digital textbooks alongside paper textbooks, not instead of them. First- and second-graders, government officials say, probably won’t use the gadgets at all. (via In South Korean classrooms, digital textbook revolution meets some resistance - The Washington Post)
All public and private schools in Quebec will have to adopt an anti-bullying, anti-violence plan under Bill 56, presented Wednesday in the provincial legislature by Education Minister Line Beauchamp.
The minister also announced a major media campaign against bullying, in partnership with publicly owned Tele-Quebec, and Quebecor Inc., urging people to be “ordinary heroes” by standing up to bullies.
“Bullying doesn’t start at 8 a.m. and doesn’t finish at 4 p.m.,” the minister said, adding that everyone has to get involved and the new policy will extend to cyber bullying as well.
KABUL — In a country where the recent past has unfolded like a war epic, officials think they have found a way to teach Afghan history without widening the fractures between long-quarreling ethnic and political groups: leave out the past four decades.
A series of government-issued textbooks funded by the United States and several foreign aid organizations do just that, pausing history in 1973. There is no mention of the Soviet war, the mujaheddin, the Taliban or the U.S. military presence. In their efforts to promote a single national identity, Afghan leaders have deemed their own history too controversial. (via In Afghanistan, a new approach to teaching history: Leave out the wars - The Washington Post)
Uganda will introduce Kiswahili as a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools this year as a way of integrating fully with the other EAC partner states.
Uganda joins Rwanda in the list of regional countries seeking to boost their language use as they seek opportunities in the integrated EAC where English and Swahili are the main languages of communication.
Morocco: Improving public schools and teaching conditions in rural areas
While Toronto’s population grows, the country’s largest school board has watched its enrolment slide in recent years.
To address that problem, Dr. Christopher Spence, the former B.C. Lions running back and current activist director of education at the Toronto District School Board, stood in front of a classroom of 28 boys at a busy public school on Toronto’s western border and announced his latest plan to increase what he calls “engagement.”
In September, the TDSB will open nine new “elementary academies” inside existing board schools across the city, specializing in vocal music and health and sports, as well as a boys-only and a girls-only school.
[RAMALLAH, West Bank] Do Palestinian school textbooks “teach terrorism,” as Newt Gingrich claimed in a recent debate among U.S. Republican presidential hopefuls?
His example — that Palestinians “have text books that say, ‘If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?’” — is not in any of the texts, researchers say.
As for Gingrich’s broader claim, the textbooks don’t directly encourage anti-Israeli violence, but they also don’t really teach peace, studies say.
Poonam is a Dalit and a girl in India’s poorest state. The odds stacked against her are immense.
(via Remarkable school gives girls from the bottom of India’s caste system new hope - The Globe and Mail)
[VIETNAM] All school leavers will have a minimum level of English by 2020 under ambitious education reforms, but teachers fear that they are not getting the help they need to upgrade their own skills.
