Children around the world education

As children around the world return to school, there are more than two million in Syria who will not be able to join them, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) cautioned today, adding that another 400,000 are at risk of dropping out of school as a direct result of conflict, violence and displacement.

With the conflict in Syria now in its fifth year, some children in Syria have never known what it is like to enter a classroom, while others have lost up to four years of their schooling, the agency noted in a news release.

“Syria’s basic public services, including education, have been stretched to the maximum,” said Hanaa Singer, UNICEF Representative in Syria. “We need to do so much more to help the education institutions from collapsing and increase opportunities for children to access education across the country.”

School buildings are also affected by the conflict; 5,000 of them cannot be used as they have been destroyed, converted into shelters for displaced families, or used as bases for armed forces, UNICEF said. Often, the schools and their surroundings are unsafe, dangerous for children to reach, and at risk of deliberate attack. To take their exams last summer, at least 20 per cent of Syria’s children were forced to cross lines of fire.

UNICEF has been working with local partners on the ground to reach around three million children, and has implemented an informal education programme to reduce the number of out-of-school children. The agency is also printing school supplies and text books locally and distributing them to students.

“Even under the worst circumstances Syrian children keep asking to learn and go back to school because they are yearning for a better future and a chance to be influential” said Ms. Singer. “We must all invest in Syria’s children as they are the future of Syria and they will help rebuild their country when peace returns.”

Under the ‘No Lost Generation Initiative,’ UNICEF is starting a self-learning programme to reach 500,000 children who missed out on years of schooling. An accelerated learning programme is also aimed at helping 200,000 children catch up with their learning and eventually reintegrate into formal education. UNICEF is also rehabilitating damaged schools and creating prefabricated classrooms to accommodate 300,000 additional children.

UNICEF requires $68 million by end of the year, of which $12 million is needed immediately in order to continue responding to children’s educational needs.

In hopes of improving education

When Cornell superintendent Aaron Thomas interviews a potential administrator, he wants to know if the candidate will drive a school van. Administrators, including the superintendent, sometimes need to drive a parent to a teacher conference or a child to a doctor appointment.

At Grandview Upper Elementary School in the Highlands School District, it’s not unusual for principal Heather Hauser to find a bag of groceries on her desk, left anonymously by a staff member. The school started a food pantry after a student one Friday said he didn’t have anything to eat at home.

At Pittsburgh Faison K-5 in Homewood, the nonprofit Homewood Children’s Village provides extra sets of hands to help in the high-poverty school, among them a community school site director, four den advisers who help tutor and four social work interns who call families when children are absent and find ways to help.
School isn’t about just reading, writing and arithmetic.

Using their own staff and community partners, public schools are finding ways to address the many needs of children — such as hunger, homelessness, violence in their homes or communities, grief, mental health issues and inadequate clothing — that are barriers to their learning.

“The issues that kids have are not left at the schoolhouse door,” said Baldwin High School social worker Annette Fiovaniss.

Ms. Hauser recalled a child who sometimes melted down in the morning. “The first thing I would do is say, ‘Let me see your feet.’ When he didn’t have socks on, I knew that day for him was difficult.”

She got him clean socks at the nurse’s office. “That helped put his day back together,” she said.

While some researchers found teachers are the most important school-related factor, outside factors — including individual and family characteristics — may have four to eight times the impact as teachers do on student achievement, according to a Rand Corp. report.

Kellie Irwin, who has been a school social worker in Woodland Hills for more than 30 years, said, “A lot of my job is trying to get the kids to a place they can learn. … You can’t expect a child to score well on the Keystone Exams or the algebra test or whatever subject you want if they are hungry, they don’t have proper clothing or they don’t know where they’re going to sleep that night.”
In Allegheny County, all school districts provide free or reduced-price school lunch to needy students. Most districts also serve breakfast, and a few offer a snack, too. In Pittsburgh and a handful of other districts, so many students are needy that all get the food free.

Some agencies or volunteers help to provide food to take home on Fridays as well, including a new effort by the Buhl Foundation in partnership with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and FOCUS North America, an Orthodox Christian organization, that this fall will begin providing weekend food for nearly 2,000 North Side students.

Some schools provide clothes for students as needed. Pittsburgh Langley K-8 in Sheraden has coats on hand in the winter. Baldwin High School staff donated clothes for a needy student when an email told of the need and the sizes. For years, Pittsburgh Lincoln PreK-5 has had a washer and dryer to help students whose clothes are dirty.

Some of the barriers, such as food and housing insecurity, are related to poverty. Nationwide, 22 percent of children under age 18 are living in poverty, with 19 percent in Pennsylvania, according to Annie E. Casey Foundation data from 2013, the latest available figures.

At the same time, many students are receiving human services. In Pittsburgh Public Schools, 53 percent of the students had prior involvement with at least one of 14 child welfare, behavioral health, support programs, intellectual disability and juvenile justice programs, according to the county Department of Human Services. In the Clairton School District, the figure was 74 percent.
Students receiving services face challenges to do well in school, or even to show up. In Pittsburgh Public Schools, more than half of the students who missed 20 percent of the school year in 2011-12 are involved in the human services system, according to a county report. Most students who missed that much school have GPAs that fall below 2.5, according to the report.

Needs rise, staff shrinks

While many schools have staff members tackling social service needs, such resources are often limited.

On average, statewide in 2013-14 when K-12 public school enrollment totaled more than 1.7 million students, there was one guidance counselor for every 409 students. There was an average of the full-time equivalent of 1 nurse for every 877 students, with many school nurses traveling from one building to another. And in a state with 500 school districts, there was just the full-time equivalent of 250 social workers.

“I haven’t met one school which has enough social workers for the work they have,” said Samantha Murphy, resource services manager in the integrated services program of the county Department of Human Services.
Beyond their own staffs, schools also are relying on outside groups for help.

Lack Of Continued Support Causes Children To Leave School With Reading Problems

The Alliance for Excellent Education is calling for the Congress to focus on improving student literacy, from early childhood through grade 12, on its No Child Left Behind rewrite. The Washington, D.C-based education advocacy group revealed in a new report that 60 percent of America’s fourth and eighth graders are having reading difficulties.


The Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C.-based education advocacy group, recently published a new report that found 60 percent of America's fourth and eighth graders are having reading issues. The group is urging the Congress to consider improving student literacy, from early childhood through grade 12, on its No Child Left Behind rewrite.

Like Us on Facebook "Teaching students to read when they are young is an important booster shot, but not a lifelong inoculation, against further reading problems," said Bob Wise, the organization's president. "Instead, students need continued reading and writing support throughout their educational career-especially as they encounter more challenging reading material in middle and high school."

Wise, however, said only few states offer this continued support and this resulted in the majority of today's youth leaving high school without the necessary writing and reading skills for success.

The study, "The Next Chapter: Supporting Literacy Within ESEA," determined the reasons why students have difficulty reading and examined the federal government's success in its efforts to boost literacy across the country. In addition, the group noted on the report that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was not meant to address issues arising from poor reading instruction or provide support for students in schools with poor literacy achievement.

The report also maintained that majority of those issues affect students of color, and those from low-income households, Kristin Decarr of Education News wrote. The 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress, also called the Nation's Report Card, revealed 47 percent of Latino students, 47 percent of low-income students, and 50 percent of black students have reading skills below the basic level.

"Without essential literacy skills to master academic course work, students lose the motivation and confidence vital to maintaining their investment in learning," the group noted in the report. "Furthermore, students who do not read well are more likely to be retained in school, drop out of high school, become teen parents, or enter the juvenile justice system."


The group suggested government efforts, including the Literacy Education for All, Result for a Nation Act that would require educators and teachers to use research-backed strategies in their reading and writing classes in all grade levels and subject areas. It also recommended support and interventions for students with reading issues, and support for schools to help them provide high-quality literacy instruction.

Right To Education out-of-school children

These EGCs will enable the education department track those children who migrate and then help them get enrolled in schools near their new address.


To track out-of-school children from migrant families or those without permanent addresses, and increase the enrollment of such children in schools, the state government has decided to provide education guarantee cards (EGCs) fitted with a chip to all students.

These EGCs will enable the education department track those children who migrate and then help them get enrolled in schools near their new address. “This will help these children continue their education from where they left off in the previous school,” said a senior official from the school education department. The card with the tracking chip intends to reduce the number of out-of-school children and also ensure compliance with the Right To Education (RTE) Act that makes it mandatory for the government to impart education to children in the age group of 6-14 years.


Nand Kumar, Principal Secretary, School Education, said nearly 40,000 out-of-school children from migrant families were traced during the recent survey conducted by the government. According to Kumar, these students will be brought under the EGC scheme, which will make Maharashtra the state with maximum enrollment of schoolgoing children. “The cards will have information of the name of the school, district, name of principal, contact number of school, class in which the student studied in that particular, course progress etc. What the students have learned will be updated from time to time. Information about their parents and their contact numbers, if available, will also be there,” said Kumar.

He added while the cards would be given to the children, it would be the teachers’ responsibility to update information from time to time. “Class teachers will be asked to keep in constant touch with these students. When they migrate, the students will be asked to furnish the EGC at a school in their new locality. This will enable the new school to admit the child in the relevant class and teach the curriculum from where he/she left off,” said Kumar.

He added that through this scheme the government was trying to not only bring back maximum number of out-of-school children to school but also keep a track of them if they stop attending a particular school. “We will be using this technology to track the student as long as they take admission in government schools,” said Kumar.

The state government is taking the help of educational NGOs to effectively implement the scheme.

Education will help them cope

All the neighbouring schools declined to admit Kakangula because of his disabilities, his mother Vivian Sekamatte, says. It is the reason he goes to Buddo Parents Academy School – some three kilometers away – which accepted to take him in.

For the young boy, it has not been easy at all, as he needs special attention. For instance, he cannot visit the toilet on his own, so he must be helped.
Before joining his current school, located in the village of Nsaggu in Wakiso district, fellow children used to laugh at Kakangula because of his condition. “It had turned him into a loner and he would play only with his sister. But in his current school, things have changed as both children and teachers love him,” says his mother.

Only a month after his birth, the boy’s parents were plunged into a trying period of time when his health state took a wrong turn. For them, it was a recurrence of what they had years back experienced with their first born who developed cerebral paralysis before eventually dying at the age of two.
Earlier, after the birth of their first child, Sekamatte continued to sell second-hand clothes while having the baby strapped around her back. And when death came knocking at her door, it took her another five years to settle on the idea of conceiving again.

“For five years after his [first born child’s] death, I refused to get pregnant fearing to face the same challenges – not until I got enough counseling,” she says. Clearly, losing her first child had traumatized Sekamate.
And when she eventually did get pregnant again, she made sure to visit the doctor many times to confirm that her unborn baby was well. But seven months into her pregnancy, during one of such medical trips, Dr. Samuel Kaggwa checked her and told her there was a problem.

She was advised to prepare for a caesarean birth because the position of the unborn baby (Kakangula) was not proper.
At birth, the doctors noted that the baby had a number of problems – including one to do with his genitals – which until today have not been corrected yet. Doctors advised the parents to monitor his head as they feared it might start swelling.

And indeed, one month later, little Kakangula’s head began to swell.
“He was treated at Katalemwa and we were lucky the swelling stopped before we took him for an operation at CURE hospital in Mbale,” recalls his father.

The boy missed the crawling phase and only started walking at the age of three.
“Although he cannot speak, he at least understands everything we say while he can read [softly] and write,” says his mother Sekamatte.

Despite his challenges, Kakangula is raring to take on life with as much enthusiasm as any other boy of his age. He has promised his parents that he will strive to become a doctor one day and treat sickly children like him. For now, he enjoys making drawings in his book, of course in the company of his beloved sister. Theirs is a close-knit sibling connection.
“He feels great when we come up to help him with his work. It makes him proud when we praise what he has done at school,” adds his mum.

Kakangula is not the only one who dreams big even in the face of life’s brutality.

Fellow seven-year-old Hadija Mubiru, who almost lost her life due to her mother’s recklessness, aspires to become a teacher when she grows up.
Many children her age speak highly of their mothers but for little Hadija, it’s a whole different case. When I catch up with her at Victory Kindergarten and Day Care Centre at Nalugala in Wakiso district, she bluntly states what caused her disability. For her age, she possesses a sense of maturity that impresses me as much as it does move me.

“My mother Betty Nambajjwe took to drinking alcohol and whenever she became annoyed, she would throw me around like a useless object.”
I can see the sadness in her innocent eyes and sense the pain in her voice. Quite frankly, I am moved when she admits that she has not forgiven her mother. It’s easy to understand why she says so: her mother never bothered to take her for treatment after causing dislocations in her chest.

It is even claimed that Hadija’s abusive mother once poured hot water on her then eight-year-old son Shaban (Hadija’s brother), apparently leading to his death a few hours later. She was then reportedly arrested and detained at Entebbe Police for three days, before being set free without being admitted into a hospital for a mental-health examination – to check her state of mind.
Thanks to little Hadija’s paternal grandmother, she got a new lease at life. Her intervention during that difficult time for Hadija potentially proved the difference between life and a sad ending for the innocent girl.
According to Grandma Hadija Nalongo Mubiru, Hadija’s mother would often leave her husband’s home and be away for several months. She did so six years ago, taking baby Hadija along with her – to God-who-knows-where.

Sadly, she continued throwing her baby down, causing more damage to her body.
“By the time they brought baby Hadija to me, she was a totally disabled two-year-old girl. She could neither sit nor walk. She would only lie in one position, and often messed herself up when the need to ease herself arose,” recalls Nalongo.

The girl’s paternal aunt, Nakato Mubiru, says their home was no longer habitable with the sickly toddler who soiled herself and attracted a lot of flies. On top of that, the sound she made in her sleep due to her strained breathing could be heard by neighbours.

Nalongo grew more and more worried that although Hadija was born with a sound brain, the acute pain she lived with had affected her mental state.

After trying all sorts of treatment, Nalongo ended up at the national referral hospital in Mulago where Hadija underwent an operation at the Spinal Ward.

That surgery provided much-needed respite with Hadija delighttfully shocking her grandma when she sat on her own only two days after the operation. “I was coming from the canteen and suddenly dropped everything and ran to the doctor’s room fearing she was going to die,” remembers Nalongo, who instead found better news awaiting her.

Hadija knows how fortunate she was and she still relishes that turning point of her life: during my interview with her grandmother, the little girl chips in and proudly tells of how she sat unaided after the surgery.

On the fourth day following her operation, Hadija could stand and walk by clutching onto nearby hospital beds. She was discharged after one week.
“The swellings in the chest and back remained but at least her breathing improved greatly and she can sit and walk normally,” smiles Nalongo.

According to Nalongo, little Hadija’s state was so bad and she believes that some parents would have hidden her from the public. “I took into account her rights as a human being and it was the reason I sought treatment and kept her in the public,” she says.

Nalongo believes that if she had not intervened, Hadija would have lost her normal mental state. She calls upon other parents to fight for the rights of their disabled children, adding that showing them love catalyzes their healing process.

Yet, such accounts are many in our society.

Margaret Nalumansi, a market vendor at Kawuku market, near Kisubi along Entebbe road in Wakiso district says difficult times prevented her from keeping her daughter’s rights.

Lost generation of children

Primary school children take part in a race. 'Ofsted has no interest in competitive sport, thus there is little desire on behalf of headteachers to spend time, energy and resources on something they know they won’t be measured against,' writes Nick Patterson. Photograph: Angela Hampton Picture Library/Alamy
We agree wholeheartedly with Tessa Jowell and share her concerns, especially those relating to children and young people (Coalition wasted Olympic school sport legacy: Jowell, 6 July). Schools are important settings for promoting health and should work with pupils and their parents/carers to address this concern, encouraging children and young people to participate in a range of physical activities and to understand how such activity is beneficial to health and mental wellbeing.
Physical activity must mean not only structured activity in the curriculum through physical education and sport, but also those other physical leisure activities available in school and in the community. Any activity which enables children and young people to be warm and breathless for significant periods of time which they enjoy and overcomes the barriers to participation brought about by disability, gender, religion and culture, should be valued. Compounded by government education policy, schools still focus too much on traditional team games, which include few and exclude so many.
Schools must be given the capacity to nudge children and young people in the right direction. Perhaps we should now have some of the UK heroes of this spectacular event providing high-profile leadership to a multifaceted healthy eating and exercise campaign.
Michael Craig Watson Associate professor of public health, University of Nottingham
John Lloyd Immediate past president, Institute of Health Promotion and Education
• Some expensive centrally driven government “initiatives” achieve very little other than ticking a few boxes and keeping consultants in employment. I can remember many sessions on the national literacy strategy when my eyes would glaze over and my brain slipped into neutral.
To succeed at something you have to develop skills learned through success and failures and this takes time
Glyn Scott
The schools sports partnership actually worked. Primary school PE coordinators met regularly and organised inter-school sports competitions – everything from football to bocchia. Secondary school PE specialists had time to come in to primary schools to take lessons and give advice. They organised brilliant sports days – I remember one at a comprehensive where hundreds of primary children attended and engaged in different sports. It was all run by their 16-year-old sports leaders. They were a credit to the school.
Nearly £9bn was lavished on the 2012 London Olympics; the annual cost of running the 450 schools sports partnerships was £162m. In 2010, Michael Gove said that the Olympics were the best way to increase participation in sport.
• It is somewhat hypocritical of politicians to talk of the lack of involvement in sport. Labour, coalition, and Conservative governments, in their demands for a curriculum that has to have measurable outcomes, have reduced sport and the arts to sidelined subjects. To succeed at something you have to develop skills learned through success and failures and this takes time. Primary schools, where passion and enthusiasm take root, have to spend endless hours on literacy and numeracy just to survive. That precious time to experience, compete and practise sport is not available. It is, however, in private and public schools, where it is still regarded as developing self-esteem, discipline and perseverance. Politicians, one expects, think local clubs will fill this gap, but they in turn provide for those who can pay the subs, and usually the kit, regardless of how children get there. This excludes a whole group of children who cannot afford any of these.
One of the aspects of the 2012 Games was the relatively small number of non-state school medallists, and I see no chance of this improving.
Glyn Scott
Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
Change the Ofstedcriteria and you might change how headteachers see school sport
• It will come as zero surprise to any schoolteacher that the Olympic legacy has foundered. Whether it has anything to do with funding is, however, debatable. Ofsted has no interest in competitive sport, thus there is little desire on behalf of primary and secondary headteachers to spend time, energy and resources on something they know they won’t be measured against. Change the Ofsted criteria and you might change how headteachers see school sport.
Saffron Walden, Essex

• There is, in our small town, what was once a centre of excellence for sports education. It was the venue used for the Italian football team for the European championship. There is a gym, a swimming pool, a sports hall with a specialist sprung wooden floor for dance, and a fitness suite, all paid for by public money. All this is to be demolished by a developer to make way for houses. Ironic that we will have 500 more homes, yet lose high-quality sport and leisure facilities for families and the community. Before the response is made that the country needs homes, we are already scheduled for 1,500 houses to be built. All on green spaces. Where will all these extra children play?

'the blob' to transform teaching

Sir Chris Woodhead battled with 'the blob' to transform teaching
The former Ofsted chief's insistence on rigour in schools informed Michael Gove's reforms as Education Secretary
Chris Woodhead loved a challenge. "There’s nothing more exhilarating," he once told me, "than hanging by your fingertips 200ft up on a Cornish cliff face. Each move has to be planned. If you have an adequate toe-hold and your knee starts shaking it’s because your mental control is failing."
During the course of a 25-year friendship, much of it honed on unforgiving mountains in Skye and Wester Ross, I often knew him to be hanging by his fingertips politically, personally or physically; but his mental control never failed.
Courage was his defining quality: the courage, when I first knew him, to confront an education establishment that, in his view (and mine), was demonstrably betraying one child in three; and, over these last 10 years, the courage, with the devoted help of his wife, Christine, not to be daunted by what was for him the cruellest of all diseases.
For he was an exceptionally physical man, a long-distance runner as well as a mountaineer who, since his grammar school days, had prided himself on his fitness and agility. Imagine, then, the bitterness of a muscular disease that kills by a thousand cuts but leaves untouched a fierce intelligence and a craving for outdoor beauty.
The full poignancy of it was brought home to me four years ago when he and Christine asked me to drive them to Scotland so that he could look again at the mountains he had once strode over; look at them, that is, sitting inertly in a wheelchair anchored in the back of a van. "I hate MND," he said.
Although capable of great charm, Chris was not good at ingratiating himself and usually scorned to make the effort. By nature, austere, uncompromising, impatient and un-suffering of fools, he accumulated enemies almost as quickly as he rose up the education ladder. By the time he was head of Ofsted, his carelessness about those who disagreed with him had become a real issue.
Cabinet ministers, MPs and senior civil servants complained privately about what they saw as his arrogant contempt for them. His “body language” at meetings became legendary: slumped in his chair, legs crossed, papers shoved aside, boredom inscribed on his every feature. “Why can’t you hold two ideas in your head at the same time?” he snapped at an MP during a public hearing of the Commons education committee. And, of course, he was just as bracing with trade union leaders, teacher training colleges, headteachers and classroom teachers generally. He came to refer to the lot of them – the entire education establishment – as “the blob”.
All this was driven by his understandable outrage at the damage that so much professional incompetence and stubborn prejudice was doing to children’s schooling, and by his impatience to fix it. However by 2000, he had run into the sand and resigned.
What, then, is left? First and foremost, the teaching of reading, the most fundamental skill of all, especially for children from deprived backgrounds who encounter little intellectual stimulus before school, has been transformed by his espousal of “phonics”, a method of formal, as opposed to haphazard, instruction.