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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION NEWS ROUNDUP

Volume 4 Number 1, February 2010

Global: Financial crisis threatens to set back education worldwide, UNESCO report warns
Asia: Asian schools automate attendance tracking
Canada: Parents likely to remove kids from low-ranked schools
Germany: Why German public schools now teach Islam
Ireland: Including all in the learning experience
Malaysia: Towards quality education
New Zealand: (3 items)
Scotland: (2 items)
Singapore: New teacher academies for sports and arts
South Korea: School text service to go nationwide
UK: (13 items)
USA: (12 items)
Vietnam: Teachers are increasingly unable to teach

Global: Financial crisis threatens to set back education worldwide

UNESCO, 19 January 2010

The aftershock of the global financial crisis threatens to deprive millions of children in the world’s poorest countries of an education, the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report warns. With 72 million children still out of school, a combination of slower economic growth, rising poverty and budget pressures could erode the gains of the past decade.

“While rich countries nurture their economic recovery, many poor countries face the imminent prospect of education reversals. We cannot afford to create a lost generation of children who have been deprived of their chance for an education that might lift them out of poverty,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.

The Global Monitoring Report, developed annually by an independent team and published by UNESCO, assesses global progress towards the six Education for All goals to which over 160 countries committed themselves in 2000.

The 2010 Report, Reaching the marginalized, charts some spectacular advances in education over the past decade, a striking contrast with the “lost decade” of the 1990s. Since 1999, the number of children not attending school has fallen by 33 million — and more children are completing a full cycle of primary education.

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Asia: Asian schools automate attendance tracking

Kelly Ng, FutureGov, 25 January 2010

Serving Fung Kai Innovative School’s 700 students every morning are 20 kiosks. As students arrive, they stand in front of the camera to have their face scanned and key in their password. Based on facial recognition technology, the scanned image is matched to the schools’ database. At the beginning of the day, teachers can access a real-time attendance record either at a kiosk or via their lap top.

Implemented three years ago, the automated attendance kiosks save a good amount of time for teachers, Ma Siu Leung, Chief Executive Officer, Fung Kai Public School told FutureGov. “The students also enjoyed using the system because they find it fun.”

Approximately 20 schools in Singapore have installed fingerprint readers linked to an electronic attendance system. According to Principal Maureen Lee, automating attendance marking has saved as much as 90 per cent of the time taken at Kranji Secondary, which has 1500 pupils.

Moreover, systems can automatically alert parents via sms or email if their kids do not turn up at school or arrive late. “It is easier now, as we do not have to take the trouble of checking the telephone register to inform parents when students are late or absent. Previously, we had to call parents by the first period or before recess,” said Karen Wong, a teacher in Kranji Secondary.

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Canada: Parents likely to remove kids from low-ranked schools

Janet Steffenhagen, Canwest News Service, January 13, 2010

Chinese-speaking parents in B.C.'s Lower Mainland are more likely to transfer their children out of elementary schools that ranked poorly in the Fraser Institute's controversial report card, according to a study released Wednesday.

Parents from low-income neighbourhoods also moved their students out of low-performing schools but they did so based on test scores released by the B.C. Ministry of Education three years before the think-tank began ranking schools in 2003, said a report from Simon Fraser University's Centre for Education Research and Policy.

"Both these groups responded to the information about school tests scores when they received it," study author Jane Friesen said in an interview, but non-English-speaking families didn't appear to receive or absorb the information until it was presented in the form of school rankings by the Fraser Institute.

English-speaking families in wealthier neighbourhoods showed little or no reaction to the ministry's release of school-by-school test scores, which started in 2000, or the Fraser Institute's rankings, which began in 2003.

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Germany: Why German public schools now teach Islam

Isabelle de Pommereau, Christian Science Monitor, January 20, 2010

When Lamya Kaddor started teaching at the Gluecklauf School in this mining town, where most children are of Turkish origin, she didn’t expect her “Islamic Studies in German” class to focus on everyday life. But it has, says Ms. Kaddor, a Muslim whose parents are Syrian. Her students ask all sorts of questions: “Is it OK to have boyfriends? Can I wear nail polish? Will I go to hell if I’m gay?”

Germany’s Constitution stipulates that religion be part of school curriculum. The initiative was born out of the atrocities of the Nazi era, and aimed at giving young people an ethical foundation and a sense of identity. Roman Catholics and Protestants have conducted such classes (publicly funded) for decades, and Jews were given similar rights in 2003.

Muslims, however, have faced roadblocks. But some observers argue such classes could help Muslims, some 6 percent of the population, better integrate their religious and German identities. Now, pilot projects that are chipping away at the barriers represent the latest evidence of Germany’s changing attitude toward its booming Muslim minority.

“Muslim classes in public schools are a litmus test for integration,” says Michael Kiefer, author of a history of teaching Islam in German classrooms. “Muslims can see that they’re getting something other religions are getting. That has an enormously positive symbolic impact on them.”

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Ireland: Including all in the learning experience

The Irish Times - Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Holy Child, Sallynoggin, Dublin, provides more support for special needs students than any other school in the city, topping the recent Irish Times list.

The school has a science block, art studios, soccer pitches, tennis courts, a sports hall and a dance studio. Famous for its arts and music division, the school offers dance tutorship for all students with RTÉ choreographer Pat Howe. Every student gets a chance to play the instrument of their choice in the school band.

You’d pay a lot to send your child to a school like that, wouldn’t you?

Curiously, however, you won’t see Holy Child Sallynoggin at the top of any school league table. Unlike many of the (mostly fee-paying) schools that top the university feeder lists, this Dublin community school has a truly inclusive enrolment policy, and each year makes more room and greater provision for every and any child that applies.

Under the stewardship of Cork-woman Eileen Morris, Holy Child Sallynoggin is a model school for the post-primary sector. Through creative use of resources and a real commitment to inclusion, the school has created an environment where everybody can learn, regardless of ability. Nonetheless, few have yet followed its example.

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Malaysia: Towards quality education

Karen Chapman, Tan Shiow Chin & Tan Ee Loo, the Star, 31 January 2010

The Government Transformation Programme (GTP) road map aims to raise Malaysia’s education standards to world-class level.

THE education chapter in the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) The Roadmap is a comprehensive document which promises to improve student outcomes across the school system and to enable access to quality education for all students.

Improving student outcomes is crucial to developing a more competitive workforce as Malaysia pushes towards becoming a developed nation by 2020.

Based on the experiences of the world’s top-performing school systems, there are four imperatives to improving student outcomes.

These are to:

Ensure every child succeeds: Set the same high expectations for all students (regardless of background) and provide systematic help and support for children who fall behind;
Hold schools accountable for changes in student outcomes: Provide autonomy to schools in exchange for significantly improved student outcomes;
Invest in great leaders for every school: Invest heavily in principals and head teachers as the primary drivers of change via rigorous selection, extensive training and robust performance management based on student outcomes; and
Attract and develop top teachers: Increase attractiveness of the profession to recruit the most talented people, enhance quality of practical training, and put in place rigorous performance management and continuous professional development.

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New Zealand: Prime Minister John Key defends national standards

Martin Kay & John Hartveld, Dominion Post, 2 February 2010

Prime Minister John Key has written to 350,000 households as part of a $200,000 campaign to explain the Government's national standards for reading and writing.

Mr Key said all of National's MPs would also begin a round of public meetings to explain the policy, which aims to measure year one to eight pupils' literacy levels against a set of national benchmarks.

The policy has been fiercely resisted by teacher unions and some school principals, who say they will boycott it.

Mr Key launched a stiff attack against teachers and other who were opposing the standards, which were a core election promise by National in 2008.

He said evidence showed a significant number of school leavers did not have adequate reading and writing skills, three in ten teachers were not doing a good enough job in the area, and many schools did not do adequate monitoring.

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New Zealand: Education Sucks Big Time!

Sarah Raat, Scoop, 3 February 2010

There seems to be a fair bit of posturing and name calling going on in the arena of education. In the play ground we would call in the mediators and teach the children how to problem solve. In professional education circles we just tell each other that we suck!

Metaphorically, if there was a terrible accident with victims lying, bleeding on the road, we all know what needs to be done. Get hold of emergency staff, take first aid action, and divert traffic…

However our response to the National Standards debacle is to stand over the dying victims and finger point. Literally thousands of children come out of our school system every year without being able to read and write.

We see the violent bloody results in family dysfunction, families lacking homes, food and clothing. We see thousands of dollars lost every year in our businesses and economy due to illiteracy. We see the victims in our prisons, youth centres and in rising numbers in our morgues. Poverty is a killer and one of its parents is illiteracy.

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New Zealand: Teacher-student relationships impact progress

Victoria University of Wellington, 4 February 2010

How important are relationships between teachers and students in the context of academic achievement and motivation?

That was the focus of research by Victoria University graduate Dr Robin Averill who looked at teacher-student relationships in six different secondary school mathematics classrooms across Wellington.

“Teacher care is an essential component of effective student-teacher relationships and I was interested in the factors that contribute to developing and maintaining such relationships in low to mid socio-economic classrooms where there is also a predominance of Mâori, Pasifika and New Zealand European students,” says Dr Averill.

Over two years, Dr Averill sat in on Year 10 mathematics classes three times a year—the initial four weeks of the school year, and two weeks later in terms two and three—to collect data.

As part of her research for her PhD in Education, she looked at how teachers cared for students as individuals, their mathematical progress and how students were culturally located as individuals.

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Scotland: Island children bask in the glow of a virtual classroom:

Innovative intranet system attracts world-wide interest

Lindsay Mcintosh, Times Online, 2 January 2010

The school could hardly be more remote. Bernera primary, with its pupil roll of 19, lies at the end of six miles of single-track road running through a beautiful, barren Western Isles landscape. Yet Bernera has become central to one of the most innovative education schemes in Scotland, its remoteness serving as the key to an experiment in virtual learning that has enabled pupils anywhere in the country to attend lectures, participate in discussions or take part in events such as talent contests.

Known as Glow, it is claimed to be the world’s first national education intranet. And at a time when Scottish education is being widely criticised, Glow has been winning global praise and the attention of American, Australian, Chinese and European educators, all keen to implement a version of it.

Dreamt up by the IT education company RM, it was introduced after the Scottish government decided that it wanted to advance IT use in the country’s schools and commissioned a report on how to achieve it. The original £36 million contract, signed in 2005, was for five years and has since been extended for a further two.

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Scotland: Union warns teachers not to break up playground fights

Richard Garner, Independent, 23 January 2010

A teachers' union is warning its members against intervening in playground fights. The move by the 8,500-strong Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association (SSTA) comes after local authority officials refused to compensate a 58-year-old female teacher who was punched in the mouth after she attempted to break up a scuffle between pupils.

She subsequently had to undergo dental surgery to repair her teeth, which were damaged in the incident, and was left with a £2,500 bill for her trouble. However, Glasgow City Council refused to sanction compensation or even allow her time off to go to the dentist – advising that the claim was invalid because there was no negligence on behalf of the council.

The incident comes at a time of growing controversy over teachers' powers to restrain pupils. In England, Michael Gove, the Conservatives' schools spokesman, has said one of the first acts of a Tory government would be to issue new guidelines giving teachers greater powers to restrain pupils and also search them, with a view to confiscating any dangerous weapons.

Ann Ballinger, general secretary of the SSTA, said staff would be "less inclined" to intervene in clashes as a result of the city council's actions, and that the incident would have severe consequences for the maintenance of discipline in schools.

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Singapore: New teacher academies for sports and arts

AsiaOne, 29 December 2009

Two new academies will be set up for physical education, arts and music teachers, the Minister for Education, Dr Ng Eng Hen announced today - to "build up a cadre of better qualified teachers" and form a community of like-minded teachers who can learn from each other.

"Developing soft skills is a core deliverable of our education system. Physical Education, Arts and Music (PAM) are integral to this developmental process.

"With better arts, music and PE teachers, students can expect more avenues to develop the full range of their talents," the Minister said in his speech.

He also said that these changes were necessary to prepare our children for the world in 2020, summing up the core skills that students need in the future.

"High standards in maths and science will always be valuable for our students to excel in a technologically-driven world. Second, soft skills like leadership, resilience, an innovative spirit and the ability to communicate well will give students that added edge to compete in a globalised world. English proficiency will also be key.

"Third, our bilingual policy remains relevant for economic and cultural reasons. Lastly, but surely not the least, we must impart sound timeless values to our children in schools”.

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South Korea: School text service to go nationwide

Song Sang-Ho, Korea Herald, 4 February 2010

The pilot text-messaging service notifying parents of the time when their elementary-school children go to school and return after school will be expanded this year as part of efforts to ensure their safety, the government said yesterday.

Also this year, the proportion of primary and secondary schools with CCTV installed will increase up to 70 percent and special centres offering counselling to students who are victims of violence will be run at local education offices, it said.

Along with eight state agencies and related ministries, the Education Ministry announced a five-year basic plan to prevent school violence. The plan is the second of its kind following the one issued in 2005.

"Though the number of students experiencing school violence has decreased, school violence continues to occur with new types of violence emerging - such as forcing their friends to do errands," said a ministry official, who requested anonymity.

"In our society, people, including students and teachers, have a tendency to just shrug off minor cases of violence. With the new plan, we hope the school will more actively intervene in such cases and offer education on violence more systematically."

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UK: Secondary schools in England given 53,000 free books

BBC News, 31 December 2009

More than 53,000 books will be sent to England’s secondary schools in an attempt to get more pupils reading. Each secondary school in England will receive 15 books from a list of 260 that includes traditional and modern classics, as well as fact-based titles. Schools where more than 30% of children are on free school meals will be able to choose 25 books.

Ministers say they hope the £500,000 scheme, called Everyone's Reading, will open up "new worlds" for young people.

Among the 260 different titles on offer are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything and sports books. Schools pick the titles from a list divided into themes, including "laugh", "explore", "imagine", "boggle" and "fear". The list was drawn up by Eileen Armstrong, school librarian at Cramlington Learning Village.

Ms Armstrong said: "The themed list offers something to engage and enthuse everyone regardless of background, attitude or previous reading experience - books to appeal to the girls as well as the boys, books to catch the attention of non-readers, books to hook in the resistant and to inspire confidence in the struggling, books to satisfy the hard to please and to stretch voracious readers.

The Chief executive of the School Library Association, Tricia Adams, said: "Reading gives children different perspectives on life and is empowering because through it they can learn new things and develop their reading and personal skills like decision making".

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UK: Report highlights “gaps” in citizenship teaching

BBC News, 2 January 2010

A report ... says that in some secondary schools, pupils have "important gaps" in their knowledge. However, lessons have improved since they were made compulsory seven years ago. In some of these cases, inspectors say, citizenship has been "misunderstood or ignored".

The study adds that in schools where citizenship lessons were only "satisfactory", students were getting an uneven education. "The quality of teaching was also uneven and the curriculum only partly covered."

Often citizenship shared a timetable slot with Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education, but the time allowed was "too little to do justice to either subject", inspectors say. Inspectors praised schools which gave pupils opportunities outside the classroom - for example through volunteering or being part of a school council.

Ofsted chief inspector Christine Gilbert, said: "Citizenship is becoming a well established part of the school curriculum and this report highlights the ways in which schools are successfully promoting social responsibility, community involvement and political understanding. "It is important that the good practice featured in the report is replicated more widely."

The government has accepted the report's findings in full and says it will maintain the number of initial teacher training places for the subject and continue to provide extra training for existing teachers.

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UK: School teaches boys to meditate to reduce stress

Sam Lister, Times Online, 12 January 2010

Pupils at a leading public school are to receive weekly 40-minute classes in meditation and stress relief in a ground-breaking addition to the school curriculum.

The project — the first to introduce meditation skills as a regular subject on the curriculum — has been designed specifically for adolescents and comes after the success of a pilot study at the school last year.

The “mindfulness” course for Year 10 pupils will last for eight weeks. It is designed to develop skills in concentration and to combat anxiety, showing teenagers the benefits of silence and helping them to identify and escape corrosive mindsets that could lead to mental health problems such as depression, eating disorders and addiction.

The course develops other exercises to help to improve attention — rather than allowing the mind to be “hijacked” by emotional issues, regrets, worries about the past and future and other distractions. This can be done in a number of ways, such as by focusing on breathing, parts of the body or movement.

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UK: Schools using dance and fashion to get bored pupils interested in maths

Graeme Paton, UK Telegraph, 15 January 2010

Teachers are increasingly abandoning traditional “chalk and talk” methods in favour of extravagant lessons designed to appeal to bored pupils. In one case, a school staged a London Fashion Week-style event in which pupils learned about the technology and science behind the clothing industry.

Ofsted said a secondary school used drums to highlight the relationship between numbers in a maths lesson. Pupils were encouraged to work on a drumming routine to accompany the multiplication table – boosting their recall of numeric patterns.

In a report, the watchdog revealed how another teacher told children to come up with a dance routine to develop their understanding of chemical bonding in a science lesson. The same inner-city comprehensive also staged a mock crime scene in the school gym to get children interested in forensic enquiry.

But the disclosure sparked fears that the academic content of lessons was being dumbed down to appeal to uninterested pupils. Anastasia de Waal, head of education at the think-tank Civitas, said: “I’m worried about this idea that in order to make teaching interesting and to engage pupils you have to get down to their level. The point of school is to introduce children to new things and to challenge them.”

But Patrick Leeson, Ofsted’s director of education, said “creative approaches” to subjects made lessons more “relevant and engaging” for pupils.

The report – Learning: Creative Approaches that Raise Standards, which was based on inspections of 44 state schools in England – claimed that trendy methods boosted results. One school saw GCSE results double in three years after introducing an overhaul of teaching methods.

Download the report “Learning: Creative Approaches that Raise Standards” at: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/Learning-creative-approaches-that-raise-standards

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UK: Protecting teachers from faith schools

Alex Kennedy, Guardian, 19 January 2010

A huge number of teachers work in faith schools. Their salaries are paid entirely by the taxpayer. But without amendments to the equality bill, which is currently passing through the Lords, they will remain uniquely vulnerable to religious discrimination.

Although a private Christian charity will have to show that a decision to prefer a religious job applicant is "required", "legitimate" and "proportionate", the governors of a state-funded faith school can discriminate with no such justification. The consequence is that voluntary aided faith schools – most of them – can require any and every teacher to be religious, not just those who teach RE or are in leadership roles. In reality, that doesn't mean that every teacher in a faith school practises its religion – there are simply not enough religious teachers to go around. But if a governing body decides to rate religious devotion higher than numerical felicity when appointing a maths teacher, then nothing in the law can stop them.

And if a lucky teacher manages to get a job in a faith school despite his or her beliefs, their problems may not be over. Schools can decide levels of pay and promotion on the basis of the beliefs of teachers, meaning that there can be a de facto ban on senior posts for those of the "wrong" beliefs. Perhaps worst of all, teachers can be dismissed for conduct which is "incompatible with the precepts, or with the upholding of the tenets" of the school's religion.

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UK: Study shows phone texting 'helps pupils to spell'

Sean Coughlan, BBC News, 20 January 2010

A study of eight- to 12-year-olds found that rather than damaging reading and writing, "text speak" is associated with strong literacy skills. Researchers say text language uses word play and requires an awareness of how sounds relate to written English. This link between texting and literacy has proved a surprise, say researchers.

These latest findings of an ongoing study at the University of Coventry contradict any expectation that prolonged exposure to texting will erode a child's ability to spell. Instead it suggests that pupils who regularly use text language - with all its mutations of phonetic spelling and abbreviations - also appear to be developing skills in the more formal use of English.

The research, part-funded by the British Academy, suggests that texting requires the same "phonological awareness" needed to learn correct spellings. So when pupils replace or remove sounds, letters or syllables - such as "l8r" for "later" or "hmwrk" for "homework" - it requires an understanding of what the original word should be. Instead of texting being a destructive influence on learners, the academics argue that it offers them a chance to "practise reading and spelling on a daily basis".

Using initials and abbreviations and understanding phonetics and rhymes are part of texting - but they are also part of successful reading and spelling development, they say.

Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8468351.stm

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UK: Obsession with 'gobbledegook' undermines teaching standards

Graeme Paton, UK Telegraph, 23 Jan 2010

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the principal of Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, east London, said: “We spend too much time on marginal issues. We spend lots of time talking about the curriculum and curriculum design and not enough on teaching.

“The most important issue in schools – whether they are academies or not – is the quality of teaching. The best schools that I visit, and I visit quite a lot, are the ones that spend more time on teaching than they do on anything else.”

“Those that do not do well obsess about marginal issues and not about the important ones.”

Sir Michael, who has been hailed by both Labour and the Tories as one of the best school leaders in the country, said that many new head teachers were emerging into the education system with a lack of focus. In a speech to the 100 Group, a new coalition of leading private and state school heads, he said teachers needed to “talk in a straightforward way about school improvement” but many were obsessed with “gobbledegook”.

One wrote on an application form about “seamless learning pathways through integrated, thematic approaches to personalised learning which ensures the development of overarching concepts”.

Another cited the “warp and weft of curriculum design is meshed through a competency-based, holistic view of student learning”. And a third would-be head teacher said: ‘I recognise the value of fostering higher order critical thinking paradigms in on-line learning environments”.

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UK: Race equality programme is rolled out to schools across the country

Martin Wainwright, The Guardian, Tuesday 2 February 2010

You can imagine the possible reaction in a staff room in the home counties when the government's latest circular arrives, offering the chance to use a race equality programme devised in central Leeds.

"I'm sure it's all very sound, but what's the relevance to us?" For the answer, any sceptic needs to head north and meet the likes of Shahnoor Amin, Lenja Rohlfing and William Mitchell.

The teenagers are all students at Prince Henry's grammar school in Otley, a Leeds comprehensive that nestles in leafy lanes below soft green hills that would not disgrace Haslemere or Esher. They have picked up the Stephen Lawrence Education Standard, an initiative trialled and honed by Education Leeds, and run with it.

"The work began much closer to the centre of Leeds, but ours is a school that can really benefit from it," says Janet Sheriff, who took over as headteacher of Prince Henry's last autumn. She sat proudly at the national roll-out in the Royal Armouries last week as her global citizenship team wowed Ed Balls, secretary of state for children, schools and families, and Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack in south London in 1993.

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UK: Rotherham teacher sacked for 'bullying' bulimia victim

BBC News, 3 Feb 2020

A teacher accused of bullying a colleague who later died from the effects of bulimia has been sacked.

Britt Pilton, 29, collapsed and died at High Greave Junior School in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, in February 2009.

The sacked teacher was suspended last year after an inquest heard Ms Pilton's long-term bulimia had been heightened by her anxiety at the school.

A Rotherham Council spokesman said the case would now be passed to the General Teaching Council.

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UK: Mobile phones drive increase in exam cheating

Rachel Williams, The Guardian, 3 February 2010

A leap in the number of pupils trying to cheat in their GCSEs and A-levels by smuggling mobile phones and MP3 players into exams saw penalties issued for malpractice rise by 6% in one year, according to official statistics out today.

Students received more than 4,400 penalties in 2009, and there was a jump of 29% in the number handed out to staff at exam centres.

Penalties to staff were up from 68 to 88, according to exams regulator Ofqual, with those for helping students cheat increasing from 45 to 58.

In eight cases, impersonators were caught taking the exam in the place of students.

The most common type of cheating by pupils was bringing in unauthorised material – mainly phones and other electronic communication devices they could use to get on the internet, access stored information, or even covertly listen to recordings.

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UK: Drive to embed children's rights on a local level

The Guardian, Wednesday 3 February 2010

The luxury waterside shopping and leisure development in Portsmouth is on the doorstep of teenagers' homes, yet they felt excluded. Security guards often asked hoodies to leave and a lack of bike parks made the marina area even less child-friendly.

Six months ago, youngsters from Portchester community school, whose catchment area includes some of the neighbourhood's most deprived estates, met the Port Solent managers. Now, plans are afoot for juggling workshops and noticeboards to advertise community events, so young people are starting to feel more welcome in the area.

It was a 20-strong group of schoolchildren, the Rights, Respect and Responsibility Group, that broke down the barrier between local businesses and young people. The group was launched three years ago as part of a Unicef drive to champion children's rights in 1,000 schools and nurseries in the UK.

On Monday, Unicef UK will launch Put it Right, an ambitious five-year £55m fundraising campaign that includes an expansion of such advocacy work through a neighbourhood-based children's rights scheme.

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UK: Schools are levying more 'holiday fines' on parents

Andrew Bomford, BBC News, 3 February 2010

More parents are being fined for taking their children on holiday during term time without permission, figures obtained by the BBC suggest.

The 20 largest local authorities in England say the number of fines levied so far this academic year is up by 10%.

In Liverpool the number is up 50% to 116 fines in the autumn term compared to 77 for the same period last year.

Over 18,000 penalty notices were issued in England in the school year 2007-8. Scotland and Wales do not use fines.

"We see some families taking holidays two or three times a year," said Ron Collinson, Liverpool's chief attendance officer.

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UK: Disabled students wait for specialist equipment grants

Katherine Sellgren, BBC News, 4 February 2010

Almost 12,500 students in England are still waiting for grants to pay for specialist equipment, figures from the Student Loans Company show.

The statistics reveal two thirds of students with a disability or special needs are still waiting for money.

The figures were obtained by the Conservatives following a Freedom of Information request.

The SLC, which was criticised for its mismanagement of regular student loans, says it is reviewing its processes.

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USA: No Handouts, States Compete For Education Aid

Claudio Sanchez, National Public Radio, January 19, 2010

Tuesday is the deadline for states to apply for billions of dollars the Obama administration is offering in federal aid for education. About 40 states are competing for some of the $4.3 billion in the administration's "Race to the Top" fund.

President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are convinced that the money will entice cash-starved states to adopt some or all of the reforms they have been pushing.

But states have to qualify even to apply for the funds.

They must shut down failing schools and allow more privately run charter schools to open.

They must develop tougher tests tied to higher academic standards.

They have to collect better data to track student progress and make teacher training more rigorous.

And finally, they must allow teachers to be evaluated based on their students' performance and test scores.

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USA: Obama to seek up to $4B in new education spending

USA TODAY, 28 January 2010

President Barack Obama said Wednesday his administration will work with Congress to expand school improvements across the country, saying the success of children cannot depend on where they live.

As he prepares to ask Congress for billions of dollars in new spending for education, Obama said the nation's students need to be inspired to succeed in math and science, and that failing schools need to be turned around.

In his State of the Union speech, Obama also called on Congress to finish work on a measure to revitalize community colleges. And he called for a $10,000 tax credit to families for four years of college, and an increase in Pell Grants.

"This year, we have broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools," he said. "The idea here is simple: instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success.

"In the 21st century, one of the best anti-poverty programs is a world-class education."

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USA: Possible Teacher Layoffs Would Have Big Impact

Jennifer Medina, New York Times, January 28, 2010

For more than three decades, New York City schools have soldiered on through turmoil, politics, recessions, budget crises and a changing cast of mayors and chancellors. But since 1976, the system has never carried out significant layoffs of teachers.

That may soon change. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said that if the city does not wring pay concessions from the teachers’ union and all of Gov. David A. Paterson’s proposed budget cuts are approved — a worst case — the city may have to get rid of 11,000 of its 79,000 teachers.

Last year, about 3,800 were lost through attrition, mostly retirement, so if similar numbers are recorded this year, several thousand could receive pink slips.

Layoffs would hurt schools by increasing class sizes, which have already been inching up. They would also upset parents and students.

And they would force the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, to retreat from some of his fundamental strategies, including giving principals the prerogative to hire any candidate they wish.

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USA: Online Learning Gets High Praise From Bill Gates

Zach Miners, US News, 28 January 2010

In his 2010 annual letter, recently posted to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website, Bill Gates makes a pretty strong case for incorporating different elements of the Internet—specifically, online video and interactive lessons—into both K-12 and higher education.

"A lot of people, including me, think this is the next place where the Internet will surprise people in how it can improve things," he writes.

It is a fact that "online learning," "educational technology," and "distance education" are buzzwords that are practically ubiquitous among today's teachers, education gurus, and even high-profile business executives.

The buzz right now centers on the learning implications of Apple's new iPad tablet; last summer, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch made headlines when it was announced that he would be launching an M.B.A. program, the Jack Welch Management Institute, with classes being offered almost entirely online.

"Online education is going nowhere but up. It's for real," he told BusinessWeek magazine. Using data collected from degree-granting online learning programs nationwide, U.S. News has found that the number of such programs increased by 75 percent between 2001 and 2008.

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USA: City Schools May Get Fewer A’s

Jennifer Medina, New York Times, January 29, 2010

Months after handing out A’s and B’s to 97 percent of New York City elementary schools, education officials plan to change their methods for grading the city’s public schools, making it harder to receive high marks.

Under the proposed changes, schools would be measured against one another, with those where students show the most significant improvements getting the top grades. There would be set grade-distribution guidelines, with 25 percent of schools receiving A’s, 30 percent B’s, 30 percent C’s, 10 percent D’s, and the bottom 5 percent of schools getting F’s.

Currently, the progress reports measure improvements, but an unlimited number of schools can receive high grades.

The Department of Education plans to hold several sessions with principals on the proposed changes to get their views. In a memo to principals, Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief accountability officer, acknowledged Friday that the department’s “accountability tools aren’t perfect,” and said that it would continue to do more to improve them.

“We want to be able to really show how much value a school is actually adding,” he said in an interview.

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USA: States struggle to keep top teachers

Dorie Turner, Associated Press, 29 January 2010

Most states are holding tight to policies that protect incompetent teachers and poor training programs, shortchanging educators and their students before new teachers even step into the classroom, according to a new national report card.

The study from the National Council on Teacher Quality— being released Friday — paints a grim picture of how states handle everything from pay to discipline for public school teachers.

States are using "broken, outdated and inflexible" policies that ultimately hurt how children learn, according to the report.

In fact, even the top scoring state, Florida, received a C, with most states getting Ds or Fs. A handful of states — including Georgia, Texas and Louisiana — got a C-minus.

"We think it's really a blueprint for reform," council vice president Sandi Jacobs said about the report, called the State Policy Teacher Yearbook. "Each goal is something we think states could and should be doing to reform teacher quality."

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USA: Six States Sign On to School Turnaround Project

Lesli A. Maxwell, Education Week, 2 February

Dozens of schools are slated for aggressive interventions over the next three years under a new, multistate effort that aims to clear hurdles that have hindered previous attempts to improve underperforming schools.

Education officials in Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and New York have agreed to partner with Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit group that has developed a set of strategies it says will reverse years of low achievement in schools.

The effort will be fueled in part by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is channeling billions of extra dollars in federal aid into school improvement, a top priority of the Obama administration.

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USA: Problems with D.C. teacher evaluation

Jay Matthews, Washington Post, February 3, 2010

Marni Barron, an innovative educator, shares my discomfort with many Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on.)

But we disagree over the region’s most daring effort to assess educators honestly, the D.C. schools’ IMPACT program. I think it is a worthy experiment. Barron thinks it needs to do much more than it is designed to do to train teachers in its intricacies and demands.

Barron, 38, has been teaching, or coaching teachers, for 15 years. She works with the IMPACT system daily as the instructional coach assigned to help 15 teachers achieve and maintain excellence at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Northwest Washington. I (age withheld) have never taught a day of school in my life, and know no more about IMPACT than what I have read and heard from teachers.

Which of us are you going to believe?

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USA: Some schools rethink bans on cell phones

Alex Johnson, msnbc, 3 February 2010

More than 100 students were suspended last month at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Conn. They weren’t bullies. They weren’t cheating. They weren’t caught smoking in the bathrooms.

They had cell phones.

Michelle Wade, a spokeswoman for the New Haven Public Schools, said students had been warned since September that cell phones and other portable electronics weren’t allowed on school grounds.

“It was getting just too disruptive to the learning process,” Wade said.

The school’s total ban is at one extreme of a debate under way in schools across the country. As ever more powerful cell phones come closer to mimicking the laptop computers many pupils carry each day, teachers and administrators are wrestling with whether their utility as a teaching tool outweighs the disruptions they can pose in the classroom.

“Cell phones aren’t going away,” said Brian Begley, principal of Millard North High School in Omaha, Neb., which loosened its ban at the beginning of the school year in August.

Pupils can now use their phones during lunch, and, what is more significant, teachers have the discretion to allow them in class, even working them into lessons.

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USA: 'Why Boys Fail’ in school

Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, February 3, 2010

A new book called “Why Boys Fail” makes the argument that boys are falling behind girls in American schools (and in other countries too) because kids are now forced to use literacy skills at ever younger grades and boys take longer to develop them.

The author, Richard Whitmire, says the solution will take a “politically incorrect” decision by Education Secretary Arne Duncan that will require the federal government to admit the problem for the first time.

I asked Whitmire about his argument, noting that it has long been known that boys develop literacy skills later than girls.

Whitmire, a longtime education reporter who also writes a blog called “Why Boys Fail,” said kindergarteners today are being asked to do what second graders used to do, thanks to the standards and accountability movement, and the "No Child Left Behind" law. And now, schools no longer give boys a chance to catch up.

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USA: Bullied kids ‘helpless’ against attacks

Joe Dwinell, EducationNews, 4 February 2010

Hundreds of angry parents, worried teachers and even terrorized kids are reporting ugly episodes of brutal bullying at schools across Massachusetts as the heartwrenching case of Phoebe Prince continues to expose a painful nerve.

The abuse - detailed in e-mails and phone calls to the Herald - is emotionally jarring, often physical and spreading like a merciless virus in cyberspace.

Kids tell of being forced to drink toilet water, getting pummeled on the bus and seeing themselves ridiculed for all to see on Facebook

It’s a toxic cauldron of abuse that callers fear could land their children in the same no-win corner as Prince, the South Hadley 15-year-old who apparently took her own life after being bullied.

And, in a constant refrain, they all say nobody in power cares.

USA: Student's expulsion feeds debate on online rights

Jaime Sarrio and Emily Bazar, USA TODAY, 2 February 2010

The expulsion of a high school basketball player who posted angry messages on Facebook highlights a growing debate over students' privacy and free-speech rights online.

Taylor Cummings, 17, a senior at Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School, had been butting heads with his coaches. He logged onto Facebook at home on Jan. 3 and wrote, among other things, "I'ma kill em all."

He was suspended the next day and expelled Jan. 14, Cummings and his family say.

School officials decline to discuss the case but say they have suspended and expelled students in the past for infractions that involved social networks, text messaging, e-mail and other technologies.

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Vietnam: Teachers are increasingly unable to teach

VietNamNet Bridge, 4 February 2010

While teachers know their subjects increasingly experts believe that it’s there inability to teach knowledge to their students that is education’s biggest problem.

Experts point out that education universities have only been paying attention to provide professional knowledge, while they have not paid sufficient attention to teaching skills. The training curriculums have been too academic, just focusing on providing theories on teaching methods, while lessons are not practical.

A recent survey conducted by associate professor Dr Nguyen Thanh Binh from the Hanoi University of Education said that the lack of confidence makes 50 percent of trainee teachers want to change their jobs after their practice period.

Nguyen Huy Tuan, MA, also from the Hanoi University of Education, said that many students think wrongly that they can be good teachers if they have good knowledge and they do not need to have teaching skills.

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