More than 200 academics have voiced their support for this week’s school climate strikes, in which thousands of young people are expected to take to the streets in towns and cities across the UK.
The academics, including almost 100 professors, say the “tragic and desperate facts” of the unfolding climate breakdown – and the lack of meaningful action by politicians – leave young people with little option but to take matters into their own hands.
In a letter to the Guardian, they write: “[Those taking part in the strike] have every right to be angry about the future that we shall bequeath to them, if proportionate and urgent action is not taken.”
The UK day of action is part of a movement that started in August when Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, held a solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament. Globally, up to 70,000 schoolchildren each week are taking part in 270 towns and cities.
Individual demonstrations have already been held in the UK, but Friday’s coordinated day of action is expected to see the biggest protests by students and young people in the UK since the student strikes of 2010 over tuition fees.
There has been some criticism of the strikes by climate change deniers and politicians who claim the strike amounts to little more than truanting.
Earlier this month a Belgian environment minister was forced to resign after falsely claiming the country’s intelligence services held evidence that the tens of thousands of children skipping school were being directed by unnamed powers.
But the strike has been backed by one of the UK’s leading teaching unionsand the academics say the young people who are prepared to organise and take part in the strike are setting an example that others should follow.
“We are inspired that our children, spurred on by the noble actions of Greta Thunberg and many other striking students all around the world, are making their voices heard.”
The letter highlights the growing signs of climate breakdown, from the latest UN report that warns there are 12 years to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, to record-breaking droughts and heatwaves, warming oceans and melting ice sheets.
The academics added: “It is with these tragic and desperate events in mind that we offer our full support to the students, some of whom may well aspire to be the academics of the future, who bravely plan to strike on 15 February to demand that the UK government takes climate action.”
Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/13/academics-back-uk-schools-climate-change-strikes
More American workers — 533,000 — were involved in strikes or work stoppages last year than at any point since 1986, according to Labor Department data released Friday. The driving force behind this remarkable development: educators who are finally fed up with years of cutbacks and government indifference to public education. The two largest labor actions of 2018 were statewide teacher strikes in Arizona (involving 81,000 teachers and staff) and Oklahoma. “Statewide major work stoppages in educational services also occurred in West Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado, and North Carolina,” the Labor Department noted.
In 2019, teachers will continue standing up for public education. Last month, 33,000 educators in Los Angeles picketed, and thousands of parents and students rallied in support. On Monday, Denver teachers went on strike for the first time in 25 years.
The Angeles teachers succeeded in winning a new contract that, in addition to a 6 percent pay increase, brings reductions in class size; more nurses, counselors and librarians; and less standardized testing. The contract also includes a mayoral and district endorsement of a state school funding measure called Schools and Communities First; a district call for a moratorium on charters; a reduction of searches that criminalize students; and an immigrant defense fund.
The Los Angeles teachers strike, the first in 30 years, was one of the most stirring events I’ve witnessed in my long experience with public education. I grew up attending Prince George’s County public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, then joined Teach for America in its first year, 1990, and moved to Los Angeles. I taught for 22 years in South Los Angeles and helped start an organization with parents and students called Coalition for Educational Justice. In 2014, I was elected president of United Teachers Los Angeles, or UTLA.
I was proud to lead the organization that is finally setting Los Angeles schools on a better pathway after years of battling forces arrayed against public education in California, as they are across much of the country.
California is the fifth-largest economy in the world, yet in measures of states’ per-pupil spending, Education Week ranked California 46th in the nation for 2017, and the California Budget and Policy Center pegged it at 41st in 2015-2016. California also permits the unregulated growth of privately run charter schools, undermining neighborhood public schools.
The over 98 percent participation in the strike by Los Angeles teachers, and strong support from parents, reinforced three basic premises: People will fight for reinvestment in public neighborhood schools and against privatization. Unions and parents will work together for the benefit of students. And strikes work.
Another teacher strike may come soon in Oakland, Calif., and mass teacher protests are planned in the state capitals of Maryland and Texas. These labor actions are essentially demands for reinvestment after decades of deliberate underfunding of public schools.
In the 1990s and 2000s, pushed by conservative think tanks and the corporatization of the Democratic Party, a bipartisan consensus seemed to emerge in Congress and many statehouses. The emphasis regarding public neighborhood schools shifted from providing adequate funding to de facto privatization through vouchers and the charter industry. Federal efforts stalled in fully funding Title I (a 1965 provision directing federal help for schools and school districts with a high percentage of students from low-income families) and the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Many states also cut education spending. Privately run schools with less accountability would now receive public money, further draining public schools of already scarce resources.
Because of ideology and economic philosophy, the current Republican Party leadership will not lead on reinvestment in neighborhood public schools. For the Democratic Party, it is time for leaders to choose a side. Several potential Democratic presidential candidates expressed support for the Los Angeles teachers strike, but few offered ways to adequately fund public schools. The preliminary budget of California’s new Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, increased spending for K-12 and community college by $2.8 billion, for a total of $80.7 billion, but that is not enough after years of austerity in a state with more than 6 million public-school students.
Parents and students supported the teachers in the Los Angeles strike because they wanted to win on matters such as class size. But they also supported the strike because it articulated some basic truths: Students aren’t getting what they need. In the richest country in the world, the issue is not a lack of money but a lack of political will. If neither political party is capable of leading on reinvestment, teachers and parents and students will continue taking to the streets to defend the essential civic institution of public education.
Source of the article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-teacher-strikes-show-no-signs-of-slowing-down/2019/02/11/5b8a6d80-2e18-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5a3c8a468298
South Africa’s education system is to go through a radical overhaul in order to adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Under the Framework for Skills for a Changing World, which will be rolled out over the next six years, educators and learners are being trained to respond to emerging technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence.
Several new technology subjects and specialisations will be introduced, including technical mathematics and technical sciences, maritime sciences, aviation studies, mining sciences and aquaponics.
To expand participation in technical streams, President Cyril Ramaphosa said several ordinary public schools will be transformed into technical high schools.
The President made these announcements at his second State of the Nation Address in Parliament on Thursday.
In addition to this, government will provide every school child in South Africa with digital workbooks and textbooks on a tablet device.
Already, 90% of textbooks in high enrolment subjects across all grades and all workbooks have been digitised.
“We will start with those schools that have been historically most disadvantaged and are located in the poorest communities, including multigrade, multiphase, farm and rural schools,” the President said.
ECD centres to fall under Basic Education
Government’s plan will also cut across Early Childhood Development (ECD).
With over 700 000 children accessing ECD in the last financial year, President Ramaphosa announced that the responsibility for ECD centres will migrate from Social Development to Basic Education.
Another critical priority will be improving reading comprehension in the first years of school by expanding the availability of early reading resources across the foundation phase of schooling.
“This is essential in equipping children to succeed in education, in work and in life – and it is possibly the single most important factor in overcoming poverty, unemployment and inequality,” the President said.
The department’s early grade reading studies have demonstrated the impact that a dedicated package of reading resources, expert reading coaches and lesson plans can have on reading outcomes.
Expanding access to higher education
Turning to government’s commitment to the right of access to higher education for the poor, the President said free higher education for qualifying first-year students will continue to be rolled out.
The scheme is being phased in over a five-year period until all undergraduate students who qualify in terms of the criteria can benefit.
Another key focus area for government will be stabilising the business processes of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme so it is properly capacitated to carry out its critical role in supporting eligible students.
“We call on student representatives and university authorities to work together to find solutions to the challenges that students are facing,” the President said, citing the latest clashes at the Durban University of Technology.
Students have been protesting that institutions of higher learning should allow those with historic debt to register along with the improvement of specific residences, and for allowances to be paid.
The protest saw students locking horns with the private security hired by the institution.
Twenty-year-old Mlungisi Madonsela was caught in the crossfire and died in hospital after succumbing to his wounds.
The President called on law enforcement agencies to thoroughly investigate the incident.
“We are concerned about developments on some campuses this week, especially reports of violence and intimidation,” the President said before extending condolences to Madonsela’s family
Source of the notice: https://techfinancials.co.za/2019/02/08/south-africa-education-to-adapt-to-digital-revolution/
Schools tailored to girls’ needs in northern Ghana are removing barriers, encouraging girls to become independent thinkers, and motivating them to pursue higher education.
The average girl in Ghana only receives four years of education. Early marriage, pregnancy, poverty, and sexual harassment are all obstacles that force girls to drop out of school before the end of junior high.
At Oxfam, we know educating girls is critical to improving their lives. Each additional year of primary school a girl attends increases her future wages by 10 to 20 percent. Educated girls also are likely to marry later and have fewer children, and their children are also more likely to thrive.
With that in mind, we partnered with Ghana Education Service, the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba district, and local communities to build a junior high school in the northern province of Sawla to tackle barriers preventing girls from finishing their educations. We aimed to demonstrate that safe, girl-friendly schools would empower girls and motivate them to stay in school—and maybe even pursue higher education.
That school became a model for girls’ success in Ghana.
Laying the groundwork
The first Girls Model Junior High School opened in Sawla in 2008, targeting girls from the poorest families. All 28 enrolled girls passed their final exams, and 24 went on to attend senior high school. In 2013, a sister school was established in the Kpandai district. By March 2018—a decade after the project began—there were 44 schools in districts across northern Ghana. They are all financed and administered by local authorities.
“It makes me feel more confident in myself when there are no boys around,» says Haddisah Ibrahim, 15, a student at Savelugu Girls Model Junior High School. Photo: Lotte Ærsøe/Oxfam IBIS
Haddisah Ibrahim, 15, learned about the Savelugu Girls Model Junior High School when a teacher came to her village. “He told us about the new school that was opening—that it was a good place where we could learn a lot. I wanted to go, and my father agreed.”
She’s now a student and likes that her school is girls-only. “It makes me feel more confident in myself when there are no boys around,” she says. “We don’t have to put up with all the noise the boys at my old school used to make.”
Her father can’t always afford to pay for her schoolbooks, but Haddisah isn’t discouraged. She borrows books from her classmates when she needs to. Hadissa is committed to finishing school and becoming a doctor. “One day I will return to this area and help treat the sick people in my home town,” she says.
A different style of teaching
Tackling endemic problems requires innovative solutions, so the schools have taken a novel approach to pedagogy. Teaching is based on learner-centered methodologies, a concept that has previously not applied very often by teachers in this part of Ghana, who lacked the know-how to implement it. Discussions and group work are core elements. The girls form study groups in the evenings. Parents are invited to support the girls’ education through school management committees.
Computers are integrated into lessons, and teachers are trained to encourage the girls to participate actively in the classroom, and even to challenge teachers with individual points of view. These schools go beyond the national curriculum to address sexual health and life skills.
Gladys Asare Akosu is a teacher at Savelugu Girls Model School. “Traditionally, girls’ education is not considered important in this part of Ghana. Many people believe that a girl should just get married as early as possible—they don’t see much sense in wasting time and money on the girls going to school,” she says. “That’s extremely unfair.”
For her, teaching here is different from what she’s used to. There are fewer students in each class, which makes it easier to focus on each child’s needs.
“As teachers, we do a lot to involve the students instead of just lecturing. We encourage them to participate in discussions,” she says. “Some of the girls were very shy in the beginning, but now they raise their hands and take part in the discussions. It is amazing to witness such a change in a young girl.”
Akosu knows adolescence is a fragile time for girls. Teenage pregnancies and child marriages are far too common in this part of Ghana, and consequently many girls drop out before they graduate high school. Compounding that is the fact that many of her students come from poor families and live far away.
Parental support is integral to the schools’ success. If a girl misses more than a day or two of school, the headmistress gets in touch with the family. Akosu says it’s not uncommon for educators to go on home visits to prevent girls from dropping out.
“I really enjoy being part of the change that we are making here,” she says. “Hopefully our work will help eradicate the old prejudices toward girls’ education. These girls just have so much to offer.”
Shafaw Mohammed, 15, pictured with her mother Zinatu Alhassan, says her favorite subject is English. «I dream of becoming a journalist when I finish my studies.» Photo: Lotte Ærsøe/Oxfam IBIS
Increasing the chance for success
Ninety-five percent of the girls registered at the Girls Model Junior High Schools have graduated, and the majority are continuing their education. In the schools’ surrounding communities, girls constitute just 10% of the children who graduate from junior high school.
In total, more than 1,642 girls are now enrolled at the model schools, and the goal is to continue scaling up.
”The Girls Model School is a baby for us in Savelugu,” says Municipal Chief Executive Hajia Adishetu Seidu. “When we educate girls, we break the cycle of poverty. Women take care of their families, they share everything they earn, and they make sure that their own children also go to school.”
Source of the article: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/creating-a-model-for-girls-education-in-ghana/
Politicians promised that expansion would produce jobs and social mobility. Neither has materialised
In any other area it would be called mis-selling. Given the sheer numbers of those duped, a scandal would erupt and the guilty parties would be forced to make amends. In this case, they’d include some of the most eminent politicians in Britain.
But we don’t call it mis-selling. We refer to it instead as “going to uni”. Over the next few days, about half a million people will start as full-time undergraduates. Perhaps your child will be among them, bearing matching Ikea crockery and a fleeting resolve to call home every week.
They are making one of the biggest purchases of their lives, shelling out more on tuition fees and living expenses than one might on a sleek new Mercedes, or a deposit on a London flat. Many will emerge with a costly degree that fulfils few of the promises made in those glossy prospectuses. If mis-selling is the flogging of a pricey product with not a jot of concern about its suitability for the buyer, then that is how the establishment in politics and in higher education now treat university degrees. The result is that tens of thousands of young graduates begin their careers having already been swindled as soundly as the millions whose credit card companies foisted useless payment protection insurance on them.
Rather than jumping through hoop after hoop of exams and qualifications, they’d have been better off with parents owning a home in London. That way, they’d have had somewhere to stay during internships and then a source of equity with which to buy their first home – because ours is an era that preaches social mobility, even while practising a historic concentration of wealth. Our new graduates will learn that the hard way.
To say as much amounts to whistling in the wind. With an annual income of £33bn, universities in the UK are big business, and a large lobby group. They are perhaps the only industry whose growth has been explicitly mandated by prime ministers of all stripes, from Tony Blair to Theresa May. It was Blair who fed the university sector its first steroids, by pledging that half of all young Britons would go into higher education. That sweeping target was set with little regard for the individual needs of teenagers – how could it be? Sub-prime brokers in Florida were more exacting over their clients’ circumstances. It was based instead on two promises that have turned out to be hollow.
Promise number one was that degrees mean inevitably bigger salaries. This was a way of selling tuition fees to voters. Blair’s education secretary, David Blunkett, asked: “Why should it be the woman getting up at 5 o’clock to do a cleaning job who pays for the privileges of those earning a higher income while they make no contribution towards it?” When David Cameron’s lot wanted to jack up fees, they claimed a degree was a “phenomenal investment”.
Both parties have marketed higher education as if it were some tat on a television shopping channel. Across Europe, from Germany to Greece, including Scotland, university education is considered a public good and is either free or cheap to students. Graduates in England, however, are lumbered with some of the highest student debt in the world.
Yet shove more and more students through university and into the workforce and – hey presto! – the wage premium they command will inevitably drop. Research shows that male graduates of 23 universities still earn less on average than non-graduates a whole decade after going into the workforce.
Britain manufactures graduates by the tonne, but it doesn’t produce nearly enough graduate-level jobs. Nearly half of all graduates languish in jobs that don’t require graduate skills, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. In 1979, only 3.5% of new bank and post office clerks had a degree; today it is 35% – to do a job that often pays little more than the minimum wage.
Promise number two was that expanding higher education would break down class barriers. Wrong again. At the top universities that serve as gatekeepers to the top jobs, Oxbridge, Durham, Imperial and others, private school pupils comprise anywhere up to 40% of the intake. Yet only 7% of children go to private school. Factor in part-time and mature students, and the numbers from disadvantaged backgrounds are actually dropping. Nor does university close the class gap: Institute for Fiscal Studies research shows that even among those doing the same subject at the same university, rich students go on to earn an average of 10% more each year, every year, than those from poor families.
Far from providing opportunity for all, higher education is itself becoming a test lab for Britain’s new inequality. Consider today’s degree factory: a place where students pay dearly to be taught by some lecturer paid by the hour, commuting between three campuses, yet whose annual earnings may not amount to £9,000 a year – while a cadre of university management rake in astronomical sums.
Thus is the template set for the world of work. Can’t find an internship in politics or the media in London that pays a wage? That will cost you more than £1,000 a month in travel and rent. Want to buy your first home? In the mid-80s, 62% of adults under 35 living in the south-east owned their own home. That has now fallen to 32%. Needless to say, the best way to own your own home is to have parents rich enough to help you out.
Over the past four decades, British governments have relentlessly pushed the virtues of skilling up and getting on. Yet today wealth in Britain is so concentrated that the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, believes “inheritance is probably the most crucial factor in determining a person’s overall wealth since Victorian times”.
Margaret Thatcher’s acolytes promised to create a classless society, and they were quite right: Britain is instead becoming a caste society, one in which where you were born determines ever more where you end up.
For two decades, Westminster has used universities as its magic answer for social mobility. Ministers did so with the connivance of highly paid vice-chancellors, and in the process they have trashed much of what was good about British higher education. What should be sites for speculative inquiry and critical thinking have instead turned into businesses that speculate on property deals, criticise academics who aren’t publishing in the right journals – and fail spectacularly to engage with the serious social and economic problems that confront the UK right now. As for the graduates, they largely wind up taking the same place in the queue as their parents – only this time with an expensive certificate detailing their newfound expertise.
For everyone’s sake, let us declare this experiment a failure. It is high time that higher education was treated again as a public good, as Jeremy Corbyn recognises with his pledge to scrap tuition fees. But Labour also needs to expand vocational education. And if it really wants to increase social mobility and reduce unfairness, it will need to come up with tax policies fit for the age of inheritance.
Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/20/university-factory-failed-tony-blair-social-mobility-jobs
The following is from a submission by Kerry Crisley for Acera School.
Concord resident Liam Lurker took the stage at LearnLaunch Institute’s 2019 Learning Innovation Showcase at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston on Feb. 1.
The Acera School student and two of his classmates presented “Hail Caesar?” — an online multiplayer game they designed and created using Javascript.
Set in 44 BC, the game enables up to six players to take on the roles of Roman senators at the height of the conspiracies against Caesar. Each player has a unique set of goals that he or she must complete to win. The idea behind the game was to help history come to life for today’s students.
“The game gives us ways to learn creative and technical skills, along with systems thinking, perspective taking, and problem solving,” said Liam.
The Acera team was one of 23 middle and high schools from across New England selected to appear at this education conference showcase. The event is part of an annual national conference where educators, entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers can see a range of edtech tools applied in real learning environments.
“We were very pleased to see the impressed reactions of many attendees who visited our table to play the game demo and learn about its development,” said Danny Fain, the lead educator representing Acera at the showcase. “One conference organizer even suggested these students might soon be ready to launch their own entrepreneurial venture!”
“Hail, Caesar?” was conceived and created by students in Acera’s middle school elective class, “Powerfully Playful Programming.” Acera, a nonprofit STEAM school for kindergarten through eighth grade based in Winchester, features hands-on electives such as science labs, architecture, woodshop and computer science.
Oceania/ New Zealand/ 12.02.2019/ Source: www.stuff.co.nz.
I was very excited to see the outcomes of Bali Haque’s Tomorrow’s Schools Review. It is insightful, clear, and I think, largely correct. I hope we have the courage to implement the review’s recommendations – all bar one.
I don’t believe that school-based teacher preparation pathways will improve the quality of new teachers, and believe it will have a raft of unfortunate consequences for schools and their learners.
Preparing teachers has always been a tricky business. Between 1920 and 2018 there has been a review, a White Paper, a Green Paper, consultation, an advisory committee or report to government on New Zealand’s teacher education about every 10 years. This despite the shift of teacher education over this period from school-based preparation to training colleges and colleges of education, to universities and private providers.
These reports have the same themes: selection and recruitment, what the content of teacher education should be, where it should be taught, and what the roles of the providers and the profession are in preparing teachers; all similar concerns to those raised by the Tomorrow’s Schools Review.
So is New Zealand particularly bad at teacher preparation? Actually, no. If we look internationally, exactly the same concerns predominate in English-speaking countries around the world. Essentially it comes down to whether you think teaching is a profession or not.
Professions are defined by having an established body of knowledge that is not held by the general population, and therefore require a period of advanced education before they can be practised. Because we’ve all experienced teaching at school in a way that most of us haven’t been exposed to law, accountancy or medicine, some people think there’s not much to it; that it’s basically managing children, a practical «craft» best learned on the job.
If teaching is a profession, advanced preparation is appropriate. If it’s a craft, it could be learned by doing. In practice, of course, it’s both; a highly intellectual activity, characterised by rapid high-stakes decision-making, and a practical task with routines and strategies that need to be mastered.
So which is the right way in: learn the professional knowledge, then practise the strategies, or learn the strategies and then gain the knowledge? I believe it’s a clever combination of the two, and the institutions best placed to develop it are not schools.
But why not? It’s tempting logic, followed by England in its «School Direct» reform (an employment-based route into teaching). It’s had some successes, but hasn’t solved the variability and supply issues the New Zealand Taskforce highlights.
And a consequence has been the disestablishment of teacher education programmes in higher education, resulting in a loss of expertise in teaching and teacher preparation from the system. Just as the schools discover how hard teacher preparation is, the number of people who could help them diminishes.
Successful schools are good at teaching students. It turns out that teaching adults how to be teachers is actually another task entirely. Putting unprepared people in front of children to «learn as they go» clearly disadvantages those children, and trying to avoid this by preparing, mentoring and evaluating prospective teachers in schools is a serious challenge.
Do we want our schools to be both schools for students and teacher education institutions?
One of the reasons school-based routes appeal is because prospective teachers are paid.
Creating long, unpaid internships as part of teacher preparation reduces the number who can afford to prepare and reduces the diversity of the workforce. Paying people to become teachers is a great idea, we used to do it, but it doesn’t mean that preparation should be led by schools.
I think schools should play a larger role in teacher preparation and be rewarded for doing so. I don’t think, however, that they should be given the whole responsibility because they have another, extremely important, job to do – teaching their students.
In a post-Tomorrow’s School Review system, where supports like advisory services and education hubs are restored, why not retain a highly skilled teacher educator service that is seen as part of the profession, and works closely with schools to provide teacher preparation?
Rather than creating a dual pathway, let’s use all the resources we have to provide quality graduates for New Zealand’s schools.
Source of the notice: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/110510328/on-the-job-learning-for-new-teachers-a-disservice-to-them-and-students
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