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Santiago Llanquin/AP
Students are detained by riot police officers during a demonstration to demand reforms in the Chilean education system in Santiago, Wednesday, May 13, 2009.

In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chile was pulling “out of its first recession in ten years,” and needed to make improvements in income distribution, market competition and education, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). OECD charged that the quality of public education at the primary and secondary levels needed work in order to help Chilean children “reach OECD standards in learning outcomes.”

Encyclopedia Britannica provides an overview of the education system in Chile.

In 2008, Andrea Arango, a research associate with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, outlined “The Failings of Chile’s Education System: Institutionalized Inequality and a Preference for the Affluent.” According to Arango’s report, the Chilean government favors the privatization of education in the country. As a result, only wealthier students have access to quality education. Meanwhile, the system “offers inherently unequal opportunities for students from low-income families, who consistently experience sub-standard educational achievements as a result of an ongoing bias in favor of privatization measures.”

Following Saturday’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake, however, Chile may be hard-pressed to improve its economy or its education system. An estimated 2 million Chileans—one-eighth of the entire population—have been affected by the earthquake, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Tuesday.

Aid began to pour into Chile after the country’s president, Michelle Bachelet, asked for help. Though most countries have responded with medical personnel and supplies, drinking water, electrical generators, mobile bridges and other essentials, the European Union said it would send “‘an assessing mission’ to look at damage to hospitals, schools and other facilities,” Catherine Ashton, an E.U. foreign policy chief, told AFP.

At a time when rescuers are frantically searching for survivors, it’s too soon to account for all the missing, injured and dead, or properly assess the full extent of the damage to buildings such as schools. Unlike Haiti, which suffered widespread structural damage due to a lack of building codes, in Chile, “building codes are strict,” the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Still, Bachelet estimates that one million buildings have been damaged, while Education Minister Monica Jimenez told AP that several “[k]ey structures in Santiago” were badly damaged.

Public schools were set to reopen on Monday, after summer vacation, but now are scheduled to reopen on March 8.

Subject: Uncategorized
Tags: Schools Around the World

Sayyid Azim/AP
Some of the hundreds of parents and children line up to register at the Buru Buru 1 Primary School in Nairobi on the first day of the year Monday, Jan. 6, 2003, eager to capitalize on the electoral promise of free primary education made by newly-inaugurated President Mwai Kibaki.

Last week, we spoke with Alex Grossi, a young man who helped start the Kenya School Libraries Program, a nonprofit that collects books for libraries in Kenya’s schools.

Education in Kenya has been in the headlines quite a bit recently. On Monday, tennis star Serena Williams arrived in Kenya to open her second Serena Williams Secondary School, this one in Eastern Province, Kenya. Williams is a global ambassador for Hewlett Packard and has been on several charitable missions to the region.

On Tuesday, ABC7news.com reported on Kenya Dream, a class project at Cupertino High School. Students there adopted the Nthimbiri Secondary School in Kenya three years ago, with the aim of raising $100,000 for the school. So far, the students have raised $50,000.

In January, Ashley Seager reported for The Guardian on a new program to bring education to nomadic groups in Kenya. “My view is that people should not have to choose between their lifestyle and an education,” Mohamed Elmi, the minister for northern Kenya, told Seager. Now, 91 mobile schools have opened in the country, mostly in the north and east. Children begin lessons at 5:30 in the morning, study for a few hours, and then tend to grazing animals or gather water for the village. They may study again in the evening.

(more…)

Subject: Uncategorized
Tags: Schools Around the World

Saurabh Das/AP
In this Jan. 19, 2010, photo, a teacher helps children as they learn to use computers at a private school in New Delhi, India. Private education in New Delhi was once a luxury reserved for the upper class. But with government-run schools largely a shambles and the rapidly growing Indian middle class suddenly flush with cash, the demand for private schools has exploded.

The 2008 movie “Slumdog Millionaire” brought attention to the plight of children living in the slums of Mumbai like no other film has. In an economically struggling country with a caste system that makes education difficult to obtain for the poor and lower classes, what is the state of primary and secondary education in India today?

According to a 2005 paper prepared for the National Center on Education and the Economy, India has the second largest education system in the world, after China. In 2004, estimates put 32 percent of India’s population of more than one billion under the age of 15, creating a huge burden on institutions to meet the demand for education.

Even though primary and middle school education is mandatory in India, only 50 percent of children between six and fourteen attend school, the book, “India: A Country Study,” reports. According to figures quoted in the National Center on Education and the Economy paper, males in India finish an average of just 2.9 years of schooling and females only 1.8 years.

Several factors make obtaining a public education in India a challenge. Indian law prohibits children from working in factories, but it does allow children to work in restaurants, households, cottage industries or in agriculture, according to “India: A Country Study.” School attendance varies widely by region and gender, and the quality of instruction varies depending on region and whether the school is a state-supported public school or a fee-based private school.

The caste system still plays a role in India’s primary school system today. As the National Center on Education and the Economy explains, traditional Hindu education catered to the needs of Brahmin boys who were taught by Brahmin teachers; Brahmin is the highest caste group in India. “[E]ven today, the vast majority of students making it through middle school to high school continue to be from high-level castes and middle- to upper class families living in urban areas.”

The Web site Educational Videos provides a glimpse of early education in India, while Explore offers photos from a variety of Indian schools and organizations for children.

Subject: Uncategorized
Tags: Schools Around the World

Hasan Sarbakhshian/AP
A group of girls attend the first day of school in Tehran.

Feb. 11 marks the 31^st anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran—and an opportunity for more unrest in the country. Following the controversial presidential election in June, the opposition Green Movement has been at constant odds with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

On Feb. 2, the Financial Times reported that Iran’s fundamentalists charge the Green Movement with being “restricted to the educated middle class,” and failing “to convince the poorer sections of society to back the unrest.”

In response, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, leader of the Green Movement, is trying to soften the group’s radical message and extend its reach.

“The fate of the movement should be tied up to the fate of all walks of life, in particular the two groups which are in charge of economy and education, meaning labourers and teachers,” Moussavi said in an interview on his Web site, Kaleme, according to the Financial Times.

How have Iran’s teachers and students fared since the disputed election? In September 2009, Shervin Malekzadeh of Time Magazine spoke with teachers on the first day of class in Iran. “For many, school will be the first time to confront in a formal social setting what has happened to the country,” Malekzadeh wrote. He also cautioned that “there can be no moving on, not yet, because what has happened is not over.”

The Iranian Students’ News Agency provides photos of Iranian students and teachers in the school setting, and the British Council, the United Kingdom’s international organization for education and cultural relations, links to an overview of the education system in Iran.

But as Malekzadeh points out, “Without access to the daily lives of teachers and their students, studies on Iranian schooling have proven to reveal more about their authors and our shifting preconceptions of Iran than any sort of reality on the ground.”

Malekzadeh contends that the “country’s public schools face many of the same challenges as U.S. schools”: urban schools that are overcrowded and operate in shifts in order to serve too many students, teachers that are underpaid and demoralized by a constricted curriculum and students that are stifled by a lack of creativity and constant testing.

There seems to be more than these woes plaguing Iran’s schools, however. In 2007, part of a girls’ school collapsed, killing a 12-year-old and injuring five others, Shirzad Abdollahi reported for Payvand Iran News. Many of Iran’s schools are old and in disrepair; in Tehran, Abdollahi writes, “seven out of ten schools are more than 35 years old,” and “[f]acilities at girls’ schools are especially flawed, with poor provision for sports and recreation.”

Still, Iran’s political unrest may be the most immediate threat to its schools right now. In November 2009, the Associated Press reported that “Islamic religious authorities have begun tightening their grip on Iranian public schools.” Officials announced plans to place a cleric in every school, while Ahmadinejad “criticized Western influence in school curriculum.”

For a look at how politics shaped one Iranian girl’s childhood during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, read “Persepolis.” The autobiographical novel, written by Marjane Satrapi, uses stark black-and-white illustrations to tell her story of living in Tehran from ages 10 to 14.

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, World History
Tags: Schools Around the World

The Canadian Press, Ryan Remiorz/AP
Children play soccer in front of a collapsed school Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010, in Leogane, Haiti, after the devastating earthquake two weeks ago.

Just two days after Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a statement calling for assistance in rebuilding education in Haiti.

“Education is at the core of Haiti’s recovery and is the key to Haiti’s development,” Irina Bokova, director general of UNESCO, said. “We are determined to mobilize support for temporary emergency educational facilities and for reconstruction. I also urge academia to show solidarity. Universities in the region and beyond should make every effort to take in Haitian students.”

According to a Council on Foreign Relations interview with Mark Schneider, former Peace Corps director during the Clinton administration and senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, the state of public education in Haiti was grim even before the earthquake. Forty percent of kids weren’t enrolled in school prior to the quake, and 80 percent of those that were enrolled were attending private schools that required tuition, “and those schools weren’t very good,” Schneider said.

On Thursday, Ray Rivera reported for The New York Times that “5,000 to 8,000 schools were affected by the earthquake,” displacing as many as 1.8 million children. Though education officials there said that schools not affected by the quake will reopen for the first time on Feb. 1, it remains unclear how many students and teachers will return.

John Henry Telemaque, assistant coordinator for education for President René Préval’s emergency disaster committee, said that up to 97 percent of Port-Au-Prince’s schools alone had been leveled in the earthquake.

“The schools were built without anti seismic systems,” Telemaque said. “In Haiti most of the schools were built with heavy cement block to withstand hurricanes.” (The heavy cement block style of construction is evident in these photos of Haitian schools on the Visual Geography Web site. The site is a project of two photographers and is “dedicated to those studying and teaching about the world.”)

Schneider emphasized that reconstructing Haiti, including its schools, will take decades. “Let’s take the Ministry of Education: What you need to do now is not just put back the same bricks. You need to build a new education policy in Haiti,” he said.

“You need to have a commitment to a public school education system that offers a decent education to the kids in Haiti,” Schneider elaborated. “So you need to have education experts from around the world come and partner with the new Ministry of Education in Haiti.”

Looking to help Haiti? San Francisco Chronicle has a Haiti donation list with information on how each organization is reaching out to Haiti.

Subject: Social Studies, Uncategorized
Tags: Schools Around the World

George Osodi/AP
School children prepare for the day school in Voinjama town, Liberia, Monday, Feb. 18, 2008.

With a new administration in office, there has been a renewed focus on public education in the United States. Teachers and schools are under the microscope, and the news is full of stories on new education initiatives around the country.

But what’s going on in public education in the rest of the world? We start by taking a look at Liberia.

Samuel Doe led a military coup in the country in 1980, the start of a decade of authoritarian rule. In 1989, Charles Taylor organized a rebellion against Doe and his regime, resulting in civil war. After 14 years of war, Taylor resigned and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected president through democratic elections in 2005.

The education system in Liberia was destroyed during the country’s civil war. In a 2007 press release, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) explained that a 2003-2004 Liberian Ministry of Education (MOE/UNICEF) study found that 20 percent of schools in Liberia had been destroyed. Many education professionals left the country during the conflict, leaving behind teachers without formal training or qualifications. According to USAID, unqualified teachers have resulted in reduced enrollment.

But as Kevin S. Tydehson wrote for Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), the situation is more complex. Overcrowding in Liberia’s public schools is to blame, he says, along with poverty. “[M]any students are seen every day roaming the streets selling for their parents as bread winners,” he writes. According to Tydehson, both parents and teachers agreed that if food were provided at school, this would be an added incentive to encourage parents to enroll their children in school.

Though enrollment rates had increased in 2007 by 24 percent for girls and 18 percent for boys, USAID stressed that far more had to be done to improve quality. The organization is working with the Liberian Ministry of Education to support planning, teacher training and materials acquisition.

In addition, the Liberian Education Trust, based in Washington, D.C., works “to support the restoration of basic education in Liberia.” The organization is a charitable trust that aims to gather American support to rebuild Liberia’s schools and train Liberia’s teachers. Learn more at the organization’s Web site.

Subject: Social Studies, Uncategorized
Tags: Schools Around the World