Education

Rebuilding schools and the infrastructure for a sound education system as you known is a big undertaking in Haiti right now. Jonathan Katz, writing for the Huffington Post, reports on glimmers of hope in the earthquake’s aftermath:

“This is an opportunity in a lifetime to radically change the educational system in Haiti,” said Marcelo Cabrol, head of the Inter-American Development Bank’s education division. “We want to be aggressive.”

The problems are monumental: Just one in 10 Haitian teachers is a qualified educator, according to the IADB – and a third have not even completed ninth grade. The government is unable to support more than a handful of schools, leaving the system dominated by fly-by-night, for-profit storefront schools whose onerous fees and other costs keep half of Haiti’s children from enrolling at any given time.

Buildings were so unsafe that one school collapsed on its own in 2008, a year and three months before the quake, killing 100 students and adults.

Wealthy Haitians and foreigners opt out entirely, putting their children in upscale schools that cost some $8,000 per year – more than most Haitians will spend on food and basic necessities in 20 years.

Education advocates see a chance for a fresh start.

Celebrities like Shakira, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have pledged money to rebuild individual schools and prominent U.S. educators are volunteering to help restructure the system.

Paul Vallas, a former Chicago and Philadelphia superintendent working to rebuild Louisiana’s storm-ravaged Recovery School District, is working with the IABD, researching ways to build hurricane- and earthquake-resistant buildings in Haiti and create a unified Creole-language curriculum to improve math, reading and other skills.

“We benefited from the generosity of others and we almost feel there’s an obligation for us to the same,” Vallas told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from New Orleans.

The IADB has also reached out to Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp proposing a program for Haiti that would train and employ teachers, drawing from some of the estimated 35,000 university students who lost their classrooms, as well as Haitian diaspora and others overseas.

Education officials know they have limited time to act. The education ministry is eyeing an early April return.

“A country can’t function without education. We can’t have our children in the streets,” said Laguerre, who attended Catholic schools in Haiti and earned advanced degrees in Paris and Montreal.

Mobile phone operators sign up to 1GOAL

Mobile phone operators from around the world have teamed up with ONE’s partner 1GOAL, in support of universal education at this summer’s football World Cup in South Africa.

The operators, who serve more than 1 billion mobile users, will encourage people to sign up to the campaign, demonstrating to global leaders and the UN that universal education is a universal demand.

Making the announcement in Barcelona, Spain at the Mobile World Congress, Her Majesty, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, Co-founder and Co-Chair of 1GOAL said:

“I want to thank each and every one of you here today who has joined the 1GOAL team and who’ll reach out to subscribers with a message, an app, or a widget. 1GOAL is about people-power… the largest ever, never-before-done, cause-related campaign of its kind. And I hope that those of you in the mobile ecosystem who haven’t done so, will join up and sign up before our kick-off in April.”

South African football caption Aaron Mokoena, who recently joined ONE in London to talk about the importance of 2010 and the World Cup for Africa, added:

“This will be the year that the mobile fraternity and football joined hands for the greatest of events, and the greatest of causes; Education for all.”

The 1GOAL campaign aims to ensure that the lasting legacy of the football World Cup next year in South Africa is that every child can be learning in school by 2015.

Find out more on the 1GOAL website

On Wednesday I attended the Washington, D.C. release of UNESCO’s EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010, Reaching the marginalized. This annual report provides the most up-to-date information on progress in education around the world, noting this year that many of the world’s poorest countries are now experiencing the impacts of the global economic crisis, making it harder to maintain or build upon recent strides.

This report comes a decade after world leaders adopted the Education for All goals, but millions of children are still out of school. Inequalities based on poverty, gender, location, ethnicity, disability, and language all impact the educational prospects of the world’s children.

However, progress is being made. The number of out of school children has dropped significantly since 1999, even with a growing population, and gender inequalities are on the decline.

Here are some of the figures from this year’s report:

• 72 million children are out of school worldwide (down from 105 million in 1999), 32 million of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Nearly 42 million African children have been newly enrolled in primary school since 1999.
• Girls account for 54% of out of school children, down from 58% in 1999.
• One-third of out of school children are in states affected by conflict.
• If current trends persist, 56 million children will still be out of school in 2015.

You can read UNESCO’s press release here and the full report here.

Nicholas Kristof’s latest column focuses on Tererai Trent, a remarkable woman from Zimbabwe who overcame extreme poverty and a husband who beat her and will be receiving her Ph.D. from Western Michigan University next month. As Mr. Kristof puts it: “Tererai is a reminder of the adage that talent is universal, while opportunity is not.”

Below is the beginning of her story. You can read Kristof’s full column here.

Of all the people earning university degrees this year, perhaps the most remarkable story belongs to Tererai (pronounced TEH-reh-rye), a middle-aged woman who is one of my heroes. She is celebrating a personal triumph, but she’s also a monument to the aid organizations and individuals who helped her. When you hear that foreign-aid groups just squander money or build dependency, remember that by all odds Tererai should be an illiterate, battered cattle-herd in Zimbabwe and instead — ah, but I’m getting ahead of my story.

Tererai was born in a village in rural Zimbabwe, probably sometime in 1965, and attended elementary school for less than one year. Her father married her off when she was about 11 to a man who beat her regularly. She seemed destined to be one more squandered African asset.

A dozen years passed. Jo Luck, the head of an aid group called Heifer International, passed through the village and told the women there that they should stand up, nurture dreams, change their lives.

Inspired, Tererai scribbled down four absurd goals based on accomplishments she had vaguely heard of among famous Africans. She wrote that she wanted to study abroad, and to earn a B.A., a master’s and a doctorate….

Keep reading here.

At the start of the year, Nora Coghlan from our policy team wrote about the education crisis in Zimbabwe. After a heated conflict between school teachers and the Zimbabwean government, it was feared that “2009 will be another lost year for education in Zimbabwe.”

Today, CNN.com has an article examining the state of education in Zimbabwe. While they note signs of the education system fighting back to normalcy, the price of education and continued lack of funding still make it incredibly difficult for families to send their children to school.

Watch this corresponding video that CNN ran a few weeks back:

Excerpts below, full piece here:

The country’s education minister in the year-old power-sharing administration believes it could be decade before standards are back up to Zimbabwe’s good past record.

According to the education department, 20,000 teachers have left the country in the past two years and half of Zimbabwe’s children have not progressed beyond primary school.

Many parents today are too poor to send their children to school. Rural schools — where pencils, desks and books are luxuries — are hardest hit.

When CNN visited a Mathabisana primary school in Umguza, in the southwest of Zimbabwe, headmaster Nonkululeko Ndlovu said that at one point teachers used charcoal as a substitute for chalk.

“There are no textbooks to talk about at the moment because I remember the last text books were bought sometime in 2000 or so, when we were still getting government grants but now we don’t have anything.

“Those text books have reached their shelf life. An aid organization donated 32 text books which we really appreciated and we are using those text books right across the grades, trying to impart knowledge to the kids.”

Over the weekend I happened to catch this clip with Queen Rania on CNN. It covers an array of subjects, but I thought the particular focus on education would be of interest to readers.

She also discusses 1GOAL in detail (which we’ve covered here) as well as the role of social networking in creating change.

Last Friday, ONE members from the Twin Cities gathered at the University of Minnesota for a special conference on Literacy and Education in a 21st century Africa.

The event was hosted by a local organization called Books for Africa, the world’s largest shipper of donated books to the African continent. In the past 11 years they have shipped over 20 million high-quality text and library books to 45 African countries. ONE shares a belief in the simple mission of Books for Africa: To empower the next generation of leaders by leveling the playing field with literacy and education. ONE hosted a table at the event and spoke to many attendees about what ONE is doing locally and nationally to improve the lives of those living in extreme poverty by advocating for greater access to basic education.

During the conference the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, gave the keynote address remarking that his last trip to the University of Minnesota was nearly 15 years ago when Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was conferred an honorary degree. Among the many facts he cited, he also noted population projections for sub-Saharan Africa are expected to double in the next 25 years.

He concluded his keynote address by delineating five areas key to the progress of African countries: closing the digital divide, reversing the ‘brain drain’ (African Diaspora), investing more in girls’ education, expanding teacher training, and improving academic research and higher education.

The breakout session, “Economic Development and Literacy”, was comprised of four expert panelists. They presented facts such as country literacy rates, educational variables, and learning impediments. The common threads throughout the day included minimizing the gender gap, (“women hold up half the sky”), expanding access (geographical and financial), and improving systems and teacher training (accountability).

In the past, former President Clinton has said that US media and citizens need to stop viewing Africa as a monolith, given that there are 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Each country has its own unique challenges and strengths. I heard similar sentiments echoed at the conference on Friday, and believe it is important to continue promoting this increased understanding.

As a ONE member and a participant in the conference, I am truly hopeful. While the way forward is not always apparent, it is clear that the development community and Africans themselves are committed to an improved future.

-Kris Jernigan & Libby Crimmings

Last week I spoke to 4-year-old Ercilia in the village of Muzingane Bairro 3. As she played with her friend Carlos on the swings at their preschool, Ercilia told me how much she loves her new playground. She smiled and laughed as Carlos pushed her high up into the air on the swing.

Nothing is more thrilling than the sight of a happy child like Ercilia. And we at Save the Children in Mozambique have seen a lot of joyful children lately — all of them laughing, playing and hanging out with friends at brand-new playgrounds outside of our preschools.

Here in the rural communities where we work, children had few amenities, much less new see-saws and jungle gyms. These new playgrounds, built with funds raised by the 2007 Idol Gives Back television special, add a whole new element of excitement to our early childhood development program. They also give children another reason to look forward to going to school every day.

The response from Americans to Idol Gives Back (video above) is a testament to the power that people can have when everyone works together to support a cause, much like we all do through the ONE campaign. With the opening of 31 playgrounds this summer and 42 preschools last summer, Americans have made it possible for over 3,000 Mozambican youngsters to learn and to play. I know that the kids are more excited than ever to go back to school this year.

The playgrounds were designed by three local Mozambican artists and the jungle gyms, seesaws and tire swings were all built with locally available and environmentally sustainable materials.

MACHALUCUANE, MOZAMBIQUE – JULY 15: Children play in the newly built ‘Idol Gives Back’ playground supported by Save the Children in Machalucuane, Mozambique on July 15, 2009. The village is located about 18 miles outside Xai-Xai, in Gaza province in Mozambique. The villagers have about 7 miles to the nearest hospital and secondary school. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Reportage by Getty Images for Save the Children.)

Aside from being a great addition to our schools, the playgrounds have created an opportunity for communities to come together and support education for their children.

Community members volunteered their time this summer to help build the structures and local auto mechanics donated used car tires for swings.

Through our work with the ONE campaign, we can continue to advocate for support for basic education, including early childhood development programs like the one in Mozambique, providing communities with the tools they need to improve the lives of their children.

-Domingos Mahangue, Field Operations Manager, Early Childhood Development Programs, Save the Children in Mozambique

Tonight PBS’s “Wide Angle” series will begin airing part 3 of the program Time for School. A 12-year documentary project on global education, Time for School has been following a group of students in Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya and Romania since they first entered in 2002.

According to PBS,

These children’s stories put a human face on the shocking fact that more than 75 million children are currently out of school; of these, two thirds are girls. One in four children in developing countries does not complete five years of basic education, and there are nearly one billion illiterate adults — one-sixth of the world’s people. WIDE ANGLE plans to continue revisiting all the children, and their peers and families, through 2015, the year they should graduate — and, not coincidentally, the U.N.’s target date for achieving universal education, a Millennium Development goal endorsed by all 191 members of the United Nations.

Check out this brief clip:

You can check your local listings here, and join in at 12:00 pm EST tomorrow for a live discussion with the film’s producers and experts on global education through PBS’s website here.

If you get a chance to check it out, let us know what you think in the comments thread!

-Chris Scott

As in many African countries, children in Ghana often missed out on schooling because their parents could not afford the school fees or needed them to help work in the fields or the home. In 2004, Ghana started a free compulsory Universal Basic Education Program, which abolished school fees and introduced a National School Feeding Program. Much of this was done with the help of donor funding. Between 1999 and 2006, donor support for basic education in Ghana more than doubled. Ghana is now on track to achieve 100 per cent basic education enrolment by 2015. The removal of school fees opened school doors to the poorest Ghanaian children; school lunches have helped improve attendance and retention rates. By the end of 2008, 595,000 children were receiving lunches through the program, many of them eating locally produced food purchased largely by the United Nations World Food Program. Thanks to this combination of measures, Ghana’s net primary school enrolment rates for boys increased from 60 per cent in 2004-2005 to 84 per cent in 2007-2008. Enrolment of girls increased from 58 per cent in 2004-2005 to 82 per cent in 2007-2008.

-Nora Coghlan