Brasil/Septiembre de 2017/Autor: Luiz Claudio Tonchis/Fuente: Jornal de Todos of Brasis
Resumen: La escuela pública en Brasil pasó a ser un ambiente tenso y potencialmente peligroso. Los profesores están enfermos tanto como está la Educación en Brasil de los más humildes. Sólo quien vive en el cotidiano escolar y acompaña la realidad de los profesionales de la educación percibe la nube gris que ronda el universo de la escuela. Las dificultades en el día a día del aula corroen buena parte de los sueños que los llevaron a convertirse en educadores. Sólo quien es profesor sabe cuán difícil es serlo ante el caos en que nos encontramos, cuánto le cuesta vencer a los monstruos encontrados en los desiertos de las instituciones. Esto significa que el humano está en extinción y la crisis en la profesión es su reflejo. El resultado es un profesor deprimido, ansioso, tenso y con fobias que se manifiestan en las más variadas formas.
A escola pública no Brasil passou a ser um ambiente tenso e potencialmente perigoso. Os professores estão doentes tanto quanto está a Educação no Brasil dos mais humildes. Somente quem vive no cotidiano escolar e acompanha a realidade dos profissionais da educação percebe a nuvem cinzenta que ronda o universo da escola. As dificuldades no dia-a-dia da sala de aula corroem boa parte dos sonhos que os levaram a se tornarem educadores. Só quem é professor sabe o quanto é difícil sê-lo diante do caos em que nos encontramos, o quanto lhe custa vencer os monstros encontrados nos desertos das instituições. Isto significa que o humano está em extinção e a crise na profissão é seu reflexo. O resultado é um professor deprimido, ansioso, tenso e com fobias que se manifestam nas mais variadas formas.
A indisciplina, a falta de interesse, o vandalismo, a recusa ao conhecimento, as agressões, o descaso, o deboche e as ameaças são situações muito comuns deparadas pelo professor em cada sala de aula que adentra. Há sempre o risco eminente de um professor ser agredido. Para esse tipo de aluno, que não são poucos, não existem nenhuma autoridade constituída a quem eles devem o mínimo de obediência e respeito. Evidentemente, existem bons alunos, mas são prejudicados por aqueles que não tem o mínimo compromisso com as normas de convivência da escola. Evidentemente, esses alunos indisciplinados e rebeldes são vítimas do descaso, do caos social e cultural em que o nosso país se arrasta há tempos.
O paradoxo é que o professor e, somente o professor, é responsabilizado pelo caos que se encontra a escola pública atualmente. Mas, ele já não consegue exercer a autoridade dentro da sala de aula e quando tenta fazê-lo pode ser xingado, humilhado, ameaçado e até agredido. Muito pouco se aproveita dos cinquenta minutos de uma aula, boa parte dela se perde na tentativa de colocar a sala em ordem. É muito frustrante ser professor hoje em dia.
Atualmente, muito se fala em escola democrática, a participação das famílias na escola, uma escola aberta às novas demandas contemporâneas, capacitação docente etc. O que é muito positivo, mas muito se fala e pouco se faz. Por outro lado, muitas famílias não possuem as condições intelectuais e afetivas para assumirem esse compromisso.
Essas famílias são vítimas de um modelo histórico de exclusão social, que produziu a desigualdade em todos os sentidos, incentivando a pobreza material, moral e intelectual, além daqueles que são submetidos à violência e à dominação vigente e que jamais podem entrar em justas relações que façam reconstruir o sentido bom do poder. Essas crianças estão sendo criadas à revelia, sem o mínimo exemplo familiar e excluídos de uma educação humanística. Todas essas mazelas refletem diretamente na escola e afetam os profissionais da educação. É muito difícil orientar um aluno que não traz consigo o pré-requisito mínimo para a convivência social e o respeito ao outro e aos educadores.
Tornou-se muito comum que esses genitores, ou pelo menos grande parte deles, quando são chamados à escola em razão de algum problema com o seu filho, se posicionem veementemente a favor do filho e contra os educadores, ou seja, sempre o filho tem razão e o culpado é sempre a escola.
O professor pede socorro, ele está só, doente e solitário. Falo aqui da solidão da sala de aula em que ele, somente ele, tem que dar conta de todos os problemas e de todas as mazelas sociais que refletem na escola. Além disso, é mal remunerado, as condições de trabalho são péssimas e sofre drasticamente com o desprestígio social da profissão.
Pelas peculiaridades do ofício, a carga de trabalho é bastante excessiva e, muitas vezes, são praticamente obrigados a acumular cargos para dar conta da própria subsistência e de sua família.
A quantidade de afastamento de professores para consultas e licenças médicas é absurda. Faltam professores para substitui-los e, por isso, um professor de Matemática, por exemplo, tem que substitui os professores licenciados de outras disciplinas: Biologia, Língua Portuguesa, História etc. O prejudicado é sempre aquele aluno que ainda tem interesse em aprender.
Segundo uma reportagem na Folha de São Paulo por meio do acesso a informação, no Estado de São Paulo, o mais rico da Federação, cada professor da rede pública registra, em média, trinta dias de ausência no ano. Isso significa que dos 200 dias letivos obrigatórios, 30 dias está sem professor ou com um professor eventual que, nem sempre, está apto e preparado para assumir às aulas. O principal motivo é o volume de licenças médicas, que representam, na média, 60% dos dias de ausência na rede estadual e na rede municipal da capital paulista.
Diante dessa realidade cruel, cabe ao Estado assumir a sua responsabilidade com a educação e com a escola e, sobretudo, valorizar o professor, equipar a escola com uma série de ingredientes materiais e humanos indispensáveis à manutenção da ordem e de uma convivência possível para que aprendizagem, em todos os sentidos, possam fluir rumo a uma sociedade decente, através do estímulo e a potencialização da criatividade dos educandos.
Ser professor se tornou uma escolha de poucos. Os baixos salários, a excessiva carga horária de trabalho, a desvalorização social, as condições de trabalho e a falta de plano de carreira afastam as novas gerações da profissão.
Peço aos leitores que perdoe a crueza com que uso as palavras, mas é por necessidade de atenção para estes eventos comuns, mas ignorados e banalizados, para que, pela forma, provoquem reflexões.
Aqueles que ensinam crianças e adolescentes que passam necessidades materiais, que foram ou são violentadas ou estupradas por um Estado ineficiente merecem toda a nossa atenção. Aquele que ensina o outro que não tem perspectivas de futuro numa sociedade cínica, corrupta e cruel mas, mesmo assim, não deixam de acreditar num mundo melhor e possível. A lição mais importante de um educador é fomentar que é possível a humanidade chegar a um nível de consciência e respeito ao outro e ao meio ambiente que até então são utópicas para todos nós.
Resumen: En otros lugares de este centro de educación infantil en el centro de China, los jóvenes están montando caballos en balsa, trepando en un gimnasio en la selva, pulgares a través de libros ilustrados o participando en la lectura en grupo. Una vez a la semana, los cuidadores reciben entrenamiento individualizado sobre cómo leer a los niños pequeños y jugar juegos educativos. El centro forma parte de un ambicioso experimento que Rozelle está dirigiendo, que busca encontrar soluciones a lo que él ve como una crisis de proporciones gigantescas en China: el retraso intelectual de aproximadamente un tercio de la población. «Este es el mayor problema que China está enfrentando que nadie ha oído hablar nunca», dice Rozelle, profesor de la Universidad de Stanford en Palo Alto, California. Las encuestas realizadas por el equipo de Rozelle han encontrado que más de la mitad de los estudiantes de octavo grado de las zonas rurales pobres de China tienen coeficientes de inteligencia por debajo de 90, dejándolos luchando para mantenerse al día con el currículo oficial. Un tercio o más de los niños rurales, dice, no completan la secundaria. Rozelle hace un pronóstico sorprendente: Alrededor de 400 millones de chinos en edad laboral, dice, «están en peligro de convertirse en discapacitados cognitivos».
Glasses askew and gray hair tousled, Scott Rozelle jumps into a corral filled with rubber balls and starts mixing it up with several toddlers. The kids pelt the 62-year-old economist with balls and, squealing, jump onto his lap. As the battle rages, Rozelle chatters in Mandarin with mothers and grandmothers watching the action.
Elsewhere in this early childhood education center in central China, youngsters are riding rocking horses, clambering on a jungle gym, thumbing through picture books, or taking part in group reading. Once a week, caregivers get one-on-one coaching on how to read to toddlers and play educational games. The center is part of an ambitious experiment Rozelle is leading that aims to find solutions to what he sees as a crisis of gargantuan proportions in China: the intellectual stunting of roughly one-third of the population. «This is the biggest problem China is facing that nobody’s ever heard about,» says Rozelle, a professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Surveys by Rozelle’s team have found that more than half of eighth graders in poor rural areas in China have IQs below 90, leaving them struggling to keep up with the fast-paced official curriculum. A third or more of rural kids, he says, don’t complete junior high. Factoring in the 15% or so of urban kids who fall at the low end of IQ scores, Rozelle makes a stunning forecast: About 400 million future working-age Chinese, he says, «are in danger of becoming cognitively handicapped.»
Among Chinese academics, that projection «is controversial,» says Mary Young, a pediatrician and child development specialist formerly of the World Bank Institute in Washington, D.C. But although experts may debate the numbers, they are united on the enormity of the problem. «There is definitely a tremendous urban-rural gap» in educational achievement, says Young, who is leading pilot interventions for parents of young children in impoverished rural areas for the government-affiliated China Development Research Foundation in Beijing.
RURAL EDUCATION ACTION PROGRAM
While China’s dynamic urban population thrives, much of rural China is mired in poverty. More than 70 million people in the countryside live on less than $1 a day, according to the World Bank, and children have it particularly hard. On a recent visit to Shaanxi province, at a group of farmsteads isolated in a remote valley, a 27-year-old mother of two says that she would like to send her kids to preschool. But she would have to rent an apartment in town to do so—a prohibitive expense.
Many parents migrate to the booming cities for work, leaving children with grandparents. (China’s household registration system requires that children enroll in schools in the district where their parents are registered.) Left-behind children tend to leave school early, eat poorly, and have little cognitive stimulation in the crucial first years of life. Grandparents, with limited education themselves, are poorly equipped to read to the next generation. They sometimes carry swaddled infants on their backs while working their fields, which delays infant motor development, Young says.
Such early deprivation, Rozelle and others say, limits kids’ potential for success in life. «There is a massive convergence of evidence» that development in the first 1000 days after a baby’s conception sets the stage for later educational achievement and adult health, says Linda Richter, a developmental psychologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who doesn’t work with Rozelle.
China’s millions of at-risk children could threaten its future. Economic modeling shows that in some low- and middle-income countries, such as India and Tanzania, «the gross domestic product lost to stunting can be more than a country’s spending on health,» explains Richter, who helped produce a series of papers on early childhood development published online in The Lancet last October. Conversely, she says, «There is a special window of opportunity» for interventions that bolster health and improve parenting.
Luo Lie, 5, does eye exercises at a rural school. Like many of his peers, he is being raised by grandparents.
KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES
That’s what Rozelle is setting out to prove—on an unprecedented scale. In 100 villages across Shaanxi, his team of Chinese and foreign collaborators is following 1200 baby-caregiver pairs; half attend the enriching early education centers and half serve as controls. If the intervention works, Rozelle says his team will seek to convince authorities to establish early education centers nationwide. «It will keep China from collapsing,» he says.
Rozelle’s earlier experiments on health interventions in China had «a real impact on the lives of poor people,» says Howard White, a developmental economist with the Oslo-based Campbell Collaboration, which reviews economic and social studies. Rozelle’s group, he says, has been «very successful testing things on a small scale, taking them up to the provincial level, and using the findings to influence national policy.» Now, Rozelle hopes to have a similar impact with parenting.
Rozelle followed an unlikely path to becoming a crusader for China’s infants. He started studying Mandarin in middle school because his father thought it would be a useful skill, and he pursued finance as an undergraduate at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. But he put his courses on hold to spend 3 years studying Chinese in Taiwan. Seeing the island’s emergence as an Asian Tiger «got me excited about Asian development,» he says.
Later, the poverty he observed backpacking through Southeast Asia and in South America, where he spent 2 years studying Spanish, instilled in him a concern about economic inequality. That led him to pursue a master’s degree in development economics at Cornell University. Development economics was «a new, wide-open field,» he says. And he had an advantage. «Not too many development economists speak Chinese.»
Returning to Cornell for his Ph.D., he began a varied academic career in which China was the one constant. At Stanford and UC Davis, he explored such topics as irrigation investment, genetically modified cotton, and microcredit programs for rural poor. These efforts netted him a national Friendship Award, the highest honor given to foreigners for contributions to China, in 2008. He is also the longtime chairperson of an advisory board to the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s (CAS’s) Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy.
Rozelle’s unorthodox path through academia is matched by his quirky sense of humor. At a recent public talk in English to a general audience in Shanghai, China, he mimed cradling an infant in his arms while he talked about rural parenting. He explained that studies show that investing in early childhood education pays off for society, whereas spending on adult education has negative returns. «You guys are done, sorry,» he told the crowd.
In the mid-2000s, Rozelle and his colleagues shifted their focus from agriculture to education. China’s economy was growing rapidly, but «children from rural areas with poor educations or in bad health didn’t have the capabilities» to take advantage of new economic opportunities, says Luo Renfu, a longtime Rozelle collaborator and economist at Peking University in Beijing.
In Anshun, China, Luo Hongni, 11 (left), and her brother Luo Gan, 10 (right), carry flowers to be used as animal feed.
KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES
The result is a widening gap between urban and rural educational achievement in China, Rozelle says. Many urbanites fit the stereotype of «tiger» parents, pushing kids to excel in school. After hours, their schedules are packed with music and English lessons and sessions at cram schools, which prepare them for notoriously competitive university entrance exams. More than 90% of urban students finish high school.
But only one-quarter of China’s children grow up in the relatively prosperous cities. Rural moms have high hopes for their children; Rozelle’s surveys have found that 75% say they want their newborns to go to college, and 17% hope their child gets a Ph.D. The statistics belie those hopes: Just 24% of China’s working population completes high school.
Rozelle believes such numbers bode ill for China’s hopes of joining the ranks of high-income countries. Over the past 70 years, he explains, only 15 countries have managed to climb from middle- to high-income status, among them South Korea and Taiwan. In all those success stories, three-quarters or more of the working population had completed high school while the country was still in the middle-income bracket. These workforces «had the skills to support a high-income economy,» Rozelle says. In contrast, in the 79 current middle-income countries, only a third or less of the workforce has finished high school. And China is at the bottom of the pack. School dropouts don’t have the skills needed to thrive in a high-income economy, Rozelle says. And, worryingly, the factory jobs that now provide a decent living for those with minimal training are moving from China to lower-wage countries.
Rozelle thinks a lack of opportunity isn’t the only factor holding back China’s rural children. Physically and mentally, they are also at an increasing disadvantage, hampering their performance in school and their prospects in life.
Childhood in the other China
Compared with peers in the cities, rural kids have higher rates of malnutrition, uncorrected vision problems, and intestinal parasites. Many rural parents leave kids in the care of grandparents. The result, according to a team of economists: the intellectual stunting of roughly one-third of China’s population.
CREDITS: (GRAPHIC) G. GRULLÓN/SCIENCE; (DATA) SCOTT ROZELLE
In 2006, Rozelle gathered many of his research collaborators into a Rural Education Action Program (REAP). Based at Stanford, it has key partner institutions in China, including top schools, such as Peking University, and CAS’s Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy in Beijing, which gives REAP credibility with national authorities. REAP also has connections with provincial universities and, through their professors, ties to local officials. (To avoid the scrutiny China gives nongovernmental organizations, Rozelle emphasizes that REAP is an academic entity conducting research.)
REAP’s initial studies focused on the quality and cost of rural education. But Rozelle became aware of health issues during a 2009 visit to a rural school with Reynaldo Martorell, a maternal and child health and nutrition specialist at Emory University in Atlanta. «After lunch, all the kids were napping; Rey said they should be running around,» Rozelle recalls. Martorell suspected malnutrition, and a preliminary survey proved him correct. Over several years, Rozelle’s team conducted 19 surveys in 10 poor provinces covering 133,000 primary school kids. They found that 27% were anemic, an indication of malnutrition; 33% had intestinal worms; and 20% had uncorrected myopia. «If you’ve got one of these three things,» Rozelle says, «you’re not going to learn because you’re sick.»
REAP followed up with trial interventions. At 200 schools, they checked each child’s vision and gave them a math test. Then, in half the schools, the kids who needed them got free glasses. A year later, the math scores of the kids with glasses had improved far more than those of peers in the other schools. Vitamin supplements and deworming yielded similar results. Luo says these and other findings helped convince the central government in 2011 to establish a school lunch program now benefiting 20 million rural students daily. «What impresses me about Scott,» says Martorell, «is that his work does not end with just publications; he is deeply committed to making sure government officials become aware of the problems and solutions.»
But Rozelle believed that he might achieve more by starting with younger children, persuaded by the work of economists showing that investment in the first 1000 days of life yields economic dividends. As he puts it: «The development economics field discovered babies in the past five or so years.» Adversity early on—malnutrition or neglect of an infant’s physical and emotional needs, for example—can leave cognitive deficits that persist for life. And in REAP, Rozelle had an organization that could do rigorous studies of interventions and their benefits.
Fluent in Mandarin, Stanford University economist Scott Rozelle enjoys interacting with the rural children in his intervention programs.
RURAL EDUCATION ACTION PROGRAM
In 2013, REAP launched a study enrolling more than 1800 babies, ages 6 to 12 months, and their caregivers from 348 villages in impoverished Shaanxi province. A team took blood samples and measured the height and weight of each infant. An evaluator gave each baby a widely used test—the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development—that measures cognitive, language, and motor skills. Each caregiver answered a questionnaire used to assess the infant’s social and emotional status. The tests were repeated three times at 6-month intervals. The team also tracked whether and when a mother had migrated away for work.
On the bright side, Rozelle says, the tests indicated rural kids «don’t need help with their motor skills.» But 49% of the babies were anemic. And 29% scored below normal on the Bayley test: nearly twice the 15% of babies that naturally fall at the low end of intelligence tests in any population.
The researchers initially focused on nutrition, providing vitamins in the trial’s intervention arm. But follow-up tests showed that the supplements had marginal impact and that mental development scores deteriorated in both intervention and control groups.
At that point, Rozelle recalls, the team began to think, «Maybe it’s a parenting problem.» In spring 2014, REAP started asking caregivers in their study about parenting practices. Only 11% had told a story to their children the previous day, fewer than 5% had read to their children, and only a third reported playing with or singing to their children.
The situation is particularly fraught for «left-behind» children. Fully one-quarter of Chinese children under age 2 are left in the care of relatives at some point, according to UNICEF statistics. Grandparents often end up as the caretakers—and many «are still in a survival mode of thinking,» without the time, energy, or education to read to their grandchildren, Young says. The test scores confirm a devastating impact: After mothers left home to work in another city, mental development scores among their children declined significantly and socio-emotional indices «fell apart,» Rozelle says. The declines were greatest when a mother left during the child’s first year.
REAP was already adapting what’s known as the Jamaican intervention. Sally Grantham-McGregor, a physician and child development specialist, devised the strategy to help developmentally stunted children she observed while at the University of the West Indies in Kingston in the 1970s and 1980s. The Jamaican intervention relied on home visits to teach mothers, one-on-one, how to interact with their toddlers using books and toys designed to raise cognitive, language, and motor skills. The REAP team enlisted child education specialists and psychologists at Shaanxi Normal University in Xi’an, the province’s capital, to translate and adapt the teaching materials. For coaches, REAP turned to China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, which was seeking new roles for its 1.5 million workers, who had enforced the country’s now-ended one-child policy.
REAP then took 513 children-caregiver pairs from the 1800 participants and split them into intervention and control groups. For the next 6 months, the newly trained family planning workers visited intervention homes weekly for coaching using the Jamaican method. In the intervention group, when the mother was present the baby’s Bayley scores rose to normal. But when a grandmother was raising the child, the Bayley score barely budged. «We’re working hard to figure out why,» Rozelle says.
The in-home visits were expensive, trainers sometimes skipped the most isolated families, and caretakers did not always comply. The coaching also did little to relieve the isolation of kids who did not have playmates, or of their mothers. A questionnaire given to mothers who remained at home with their children—often living with in-laws far from their own families and friends—suggested that 40% of them show signs of depression and could benefit from psychiatric help.
At early childhood development centers, coaches work with caregivers to bolster such parenting skills as reading to children.
RURAL EDUCATION ACTION PROGRAM
Those findings set the stage for REAP’s most ambitious experiment yet. To deliver services more cost-effectively, ensure that coaching sessions take place, and relieve isolation for toddlers and caregivers, the team over the past year set up 50 early childhood development centers in villages in Shaanxi province. The centers cost an average of $10,000 each to furnish and equip; their annual running costs range from $60,000 to $100,000. REAP raised the money from charitable foundations and philanthropists. The Shangluo facility, opened in May, is the first of several «supercenters» that will be located in apartment complexes being built in provincial towns to encourage rural residents to move off their isolated plots.
The REAP team will chart the progress of kids who visit the centers against children in 50 villages lacking them. Typical among those children is a 26-month-old girl being raised by her paternal grandparents in the village of Wanghe. Their house sits among a cluster of ramshackle buildings at the end of a dirt track. There are no playmates her age nearby. Her father works a 2-hour drive away in Xi’an, making it home only several times a year. Her mother has deserted the family. The grandmother, the main caregiver, did not even attend primary school. No toys or books are in sight. At an age when most kids have started forming two-word phrases, the girl barely talks. Not surprisingly, she scores dismally on the development test.
Rozelle says that when he sees kids in the randomly selected control villages, «I often want to take them in my arms and move them to the treatment village.» But randomized trials are key to demonstrating the benefits of the intervention. Few countries have comparable programs providing all-around support for mothers and babies during a child’s first 1000 days. Richter says there are a lot of unanswered questions about how to scale up interventions and adapt them to different cultures, how to support mothers at risk of depression, and how early interventions dovetail with later educational programs.
REAP’s studies might provide some answers. The first assessment of the childhood education centers will be done in early 2018. «We hope to follow the kids for as long as we can find funding,» says Wang Lei, a Shaanxi Normal University economist and a REAP affiliate. And Rozelle is already trying to convince the central government to set up centers in 300,000 villages across the country. Authorities could solve China’s rural cognitive deficit problem, Rozelle says, «if they knew about it and put their minds to it.»
The caregivers taking advantage of the centers are convinced of their value. At a center in Huangchuan, a village 30 kilometers north of Shangluo, Zhang Yanli says she has learned a lot about parenting and can see how quickly her 18-month-old daughter is picking up verbal and social skills. The young mother gestures to her older daughter, who is four-and-a-half years old. «I wish there had been a center for her.»
Australia/Septiembre de 2017/Autor: Ben Butler/Fuente: The Australian
Resumen: El grupo de estudio del gigante de la formación de capital privado está bajo investigación por parte del regulador de educación terciaria, después de que su modelo de negocio fue golpeado por una ofensiva del gobierno federal sobre los fondos de financiación en el sector. La compañía, que Providence Equity Partners compró a su rival CHAMP por 660 millones de dólares en 2010, obtuvo una rebaja de 166 millones de dólares el año pasado debido a una «disminución de las inscripciones» tras las reformas de financiación. Esto ocurrió después de que el ministro de Educación, Simon Birmingham, en octubre cubrió los préstamos para ayudar a los estudiantes de educación vocacional, después de un dramático estallido en el costo del plan a alrededor de 2.900 millones de dólares. Las cuentas presentadas ante el regulador corporativo por la Comisión de Estudio muestran que a pesar de una pérdida después de impuestos de casi 140 millones de dólares, sus directores encontraron a la compañía financieramente lo suficientemente sólida como para aspirar más de $ 100m offshore hacia su propietario final.
Private equity-owned training giant Study Group is under investigation by the tertiary education regulator, after its business model was battered by a federal government crackdown on funding rorts in the sector.
The company, which Providence Equity Partners bought from rival private equity group CHAMP for $660 million in 2010, took a $166m writedown last year due to a “decline in enrolments” following the funding reforms.
This came after Education Minister Simon Birmingham in October capped VET Fee-Help loans available to vocational education students, following a dramatic blowout in the cost of the scheme to about $2.9 billion.
Accounts filed with the corporate regulator by Study Group show that despite an after-tax loss of almost $140m, its directors found the company financially sound enough to hoover more than $100m offshore towards its ultimate owner, a fund in tax haven the Cayman Islands.
Study Group, run in Australia by managing director Warren Jacobson, claims to educate 55,000 students a year, but it is unclear how many of these pass through its plethora of Australian institutions as it also has operations in Britain and the US.
In Australia, it offers both vocational education, regulated by the Australian Skills Quality Authority, and university-style courses, regulated by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.
A TEQSA spokesman told The Australian it was assessing the adequacy of a Diploma of Commerce course Study Group offers at its Taylors College subsidiary that the company hopes to extend to its Flinders International Student Centre.
The regulator’s move came after it placed conditions on Study Group’s accreditation last June, giving it until the end of 2016 to provide evidence comparing the academic standards achieved by commerce students to those of students at other institutions.
Yesterday, a TEQSA spokesman said the company provided the information by the due date.
“However, TEQSA has not made a decision on this condition as it is being considered alongside a current assessment of the Diploma of Business intended for delivery through the Flinders International Student Centre.
“Essentially, both courses are drawn from a largely common curriculum, so both matters are being assessed at the same time.”
He said TEQSA expected to finish the assessment “within the next month”.
A Study Group spokesman said it was “awaiting the outcome of the accreditation applications as a normal course of business”.
ASQA, which imposed additional reporting conditions on Study Group in 2015 after finding it didn’t comply with assessment standards, declined to comment.
Assistant Vocational Education Minister Karen Andrews said she would “await the outcome of the investigation”.
In a financial report filed with the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, the company that sits atop the Study Group corporate structure in Australia, EDU Holdings SPV, said that after spending $105m to buy back preference shares from its offshore parents, its current liabilities exceeded its current assets by $216m.
It said that “in order to address the group’s capital structure and due to an improving liquidity position and increasing foreign exchange risk” it redeemed the preference shares on October 27 — three weeks after Mr Birmingham announced his VET Fee-Help crackdown.
This was partly funded from a short-term loan from its immediate British parent, EDU UK Management Services, of $72m.
“The financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis, as the directors are satisfied that the group will have sufficient future cash flows to meet its financial obligations,” the company said in the report.
This was because the shortfall arose due to it receiving payments in advance for courses not yet undertaken, it said. In addition, related companies in Britain have agreed not to seek repayment of $163m in debt until the Australian group is able to pay.
Study Group’s spokesman said the underlying Study Group Australia business “reported a profit in 2015 and 2016 and will report a growth in profit in 2017.”
Canada/Septiembre de 2017/Autor: Naomi Buck/Fuente: The Globe and Mail
Resumen: Este verano dejé a mis hijos en la granja de un amigo en la zona rural de Quebec y observé que los niños bien alimentados, cuando se los dejaban a su suerte, pasaban un buen tercio de sus horas de vigilia en movimiento. Correr, nadar, luchar, cargarse en recipientes de reciclaje para volar sobre la colina y el valle – los niños son increíblemente criaturas cinéticas. Regresar a la escuela se siente un poco como rellenar cachorros en una caja de zapatos. Y mientras que tiene que ser hecha, sé que el éxito del año escolar de mis cabritos descansa sobre todo en dosis amplias de actividad física. Las malas escuelas canadienses no siempre lo proporcionan. Las limitaciones a la educación física – tiempo, espacio y presupuesto – pueden ser reales, pero el mayor obstáculo es de hecho actitudinal. Las escuelas deben dejar de considerar la actividad física como una divertida distracción del serio trabajo académico y reconocer que es esencial para el aprendizaje.
This summer, I let my kids loose at a friend’s farmhouse in rural Quebec and observed that well-fed boys, when left to their own devices, spend a good third of their waking hours in motion. Running, swimming, wrestling, loading each other into recycling bins to wheel over hill and dale – kids are incredibly kinetic creatures.
Returning to school feels a bit like stuffing puppies into a shoebox. And while it has to be done, I know that the success of my kids’ school year rests largely on ample doses of physical activity.
Too bad Canadian schools don’t always provide it. The constraints to physical education – time, space and budget – may be real, but the biggest obstacle is in fact attitudinal. Schools need to stop considering physical activity a fun distraction from the serious business of academic work and recognize that it is essential to learning.
My boys’ elementary school in midtown Toronto, a shining exemplar of decrepitude within the TDSB’s already infirm stock, is facing the enviable prospect of a rebuild. The new building will be erected on what is now the schoolyard and for the two years of construction, the board is considering leaving the kids on site, a scenario that would have 706 kids sharing one gym, which translates to one period of gym a week. For recess, the kids would be emptied onto a 32-foot-wide swath of concrete sandwiched between the existing school and the construction site’s hoarding line: a kennel run, minus balls and toys, plus a chorus of jackhammers. The sports program would fold.
Short pain for long gain, some may say. But really, how can such a scenario be considered viable? The Ontario Ministry of Education, very specific about instructional space requirements in schools, says nothing about outdoor space. School boards can set design standards but these are ignored. On paper, the TDSB recommends 220 square feet of outdoor space per student, but as Jeff Latto, the board’s senior manager of major capital projects admits, the actual norm is more like 150 square feet and many schools fall well beneath that (our school under construction would offer students one-tenth of that.)
Just as space is considered optional, so, too, are teachers. The advocacy group People for Education reports that only 45 per cent of Ontario schools have a specialized physical-education teacher. For the rest, gym falls to whichever teacher looks okay in yoga pants or dares not decline the request. And teachers not qualified to teach gym can hardly be faulted for not offering to coach teams, which is done on a volunteer basis.
What’s needed, more than fancy playgrounds or even more teachers, is a shift in priorities: a recognition that physical activity and non-desk time are essential to learning.
With phys-ed programs flagging, much depends on recess but in these cautious times, recess depends on the weather: it’s icy, kids could slip; it’s raining, kids could jump in a puddle. Add to that the sizable portion of kids, often new to Canada, who come to school in weather-inappropriate dress and the decision to skip recess and throw in a DVD stands explained. Why not declare recess inviolable – barring fire, hail or brimstone – and hold outerwear freecycles or raid the lost and found for the underdressed? An inviolability clause would also put an end to the ludicrous practice of withholding recess as a disciplinary measure; never again would I have to hear that my high-energy son was kept in for recess because he had been misbehaving in class.
In 2010, Finland embarked on a national action plan to increase physical activity in schools. The Finnish Schools on the Move program – a suite of measures, from peppering 15-minute breaks throughout the school day to conscripting older kids to lead games and activities at recess – has been adopted by 90 per cent of Finnish municipalities and is having a gradual but positive impact on activity levels. The initiative was the government’s response to reports that only half of Finnish youth were meeting the World Health Organization’s guideline of one hour of moderate to vigorous activity a day. In Canada, the figure is a dismal nine per cent.
Absent a national program, some Canadian educators are getting creative. My son is sent on regular courier missions through the school, delivering empty envelopes to an invariably appreciative front office. The five minutes of movement might just buy him 20 minutes of concentration. In recent years, several Canadian school districts have run pilot projects substituting chairs with exercise balls, spin bikes, standing desks and bean-bag chairs, to rave reviews by teachers. Lunch time yoga is also increasingly popular – you just need someone to lead it.
On a recent visit to Canada, British education guru Sir Ken Robinson suggested that the answer to Ontario’s abysmal math scores may not in fact be more math, as recommended by the province’s Ministry of Education, but more dance. Dance? Yes, dance. Movement not for movement’s sake, but for the sake of well-being, creativity and balance: the things that make learning possible.
Resumen: El ministro Schafer preocupado ya que el 66,7% de los estudiantes que tomaron drogas fueron positivos. Las estadísticas recientes muestran el grado de abuso de sustancias por parte de nuestros jóvenes en algunas de nuestras comunidades. Especialmente preocupante es que este problema se extiende no sólo a los estudiantes de secundaria, sino también a los estudiantes de primaria. Durante la primera mitad de 2017, se realizaron varias pruebas de drogas en varias escuelas donde se sospecha razonablemente que los estudiantes están bajo la influencia de sustancias ilegales. Las pruebas sólo se llevaron a cabo en estudiantes que ya habían sido sospechosos de abuso de sustancias. Un total de 360 estudiantes de primaria de 36 escuelas fueron sometidos a pruebas de drogas. De éstos, 229 dieron positivo. Un total de 605 estudiantes de secundaria de 17 escuelas fueron examinados para drogas – de estos 415 positivos.
Minister Schafer concerned as 66.7% of learners tested for drugs were positive
Recent statistics show the extent of substance abuse by our youth in some of our communities. Particularly concerning is that this problem extends not only to high school learners, but primary school learners too.
During the first half of 2017, a number of drug tests were conducted in various schools where there has been reasonable suspicion that learners are under the influence of illegal substances.
Tests were only conducted on learners who had already been suspected of substance abuse.
A total of 360 primary school learners from 36 schools were tested for drugs. Of these, 229 tested positive. A total of 605 high school learners from 17 schools were tested for drugs – of these 415 tested positive.
I am shocked at these results.
Safe and secure learning environments are essential if we are to ensure that quality education is delivered. It is imperative that our schools remain drug free.
It is therefore vital that parents, community members and learners are aware of the programmes and support mechanisms on offer to deal with such a scourge.
As primary caregivers, parents play the most important role in identifying drug use by their children. Parents are encouraged to be vigilant and to keep the channels of communication with their children open so that they can pick up on the use of illegal substances early.
Most drug use takes place at home or within the community. But, the sad reality is that some learners do come to school in possession of or under the influence of illegal drugs.
This has potentially serious consequences, not only for their own education, but for that of others, as well as the safety of learners and teachers.
It is therefore not uncommon for the WCED to call on SAPS and/or City Law Enforcement to conduct random search and seizure operations at schools as a security measure and to deter learners from bringing weapons and narcotics onto school premises.
Schools also conduct drug testing. SASA contains elaborate procedures in Section 8A, subsection (1) to (14) and regulates the circumstances and conditions under which random search and seizure and drug testing in schools may be conducted and dealt with.
If the learner has tested positive for alcoholic liquor or illegal drugs, a discussion must be held with the parent so that he or she may understand the consequences of the use of alcoholic liquor or illegal drugs.
The principal may, if the parent so requests, refer the learner to a rehabilitation institution for drug counselling. Only the learner and his or her parents must be informed about the outcome of the alcohol or drug test. The identity of the learner may not be revealed, except to his or her parents.
El sindicato CSI·F insta a Conselleria de Educación a negociar y fijar ya la rebaja de horas lectivas en Secundaria de 20 a 18, que eran las impartidas por docente antes del decreto de recortes. La central sindical destaca que Andalucía pactó la reducción este curso a 19, con el objetivo de rebajarlas a 18 el próximo, y Cantabria trabaja en la misma línea. Mientras, en la Comunidad Valenciana el personal docente imparte 20.
La Central Sindical Independiente y de Funcionarios (CSI·F) explica, además, que otras autonomías han abordado la negociación para aplicar la reducción horaria; no obstante, en el ámbito valenciano Conselleria de Educación no abre vías de diálogo para revertir ese recorte que proviene de 2012. El sindicato recuerda que hasta esa fecha los docentes impartían 18 semanales.
CSI·F hace hincapié en que esa rebaja de horas lectivas semanales contribuiría a que el profesional de la docencia pudiera dedicar esas dos horas de diferencia a más atención indirecta a alumnos, adaptación de material o elaboración de actividades, de manera que, en la práctica, redundaría en mejorar la calidad educativa para los estudiantes.
La central sindical también explica que los docentes están saturados por la acumulación de trámites administrativos, la adaptación a los requisitos formativos que exige Conselleria, además de las actividades ya integradas en su jornada, hasta las 37,5 horas semanales, como preparación de clases, corrección de exámenes, evaluaciones o tutorías.
El sindicato apunta, del mismo modo, que la reducción de 20 a 18 horas lectivas en Secundaria y Formación Profesional para todo el personal permitiría recuperar unos 3.000 puestos de trabajo perdidos por los recortes y la ampliación horaria del personal docente. Esta circunstancia repercutiría directamente en concursos de traslados, oposiciones y cobertura de vacantes por interinos.
El equipo técnico de UNICEF México que visitó hoy la zona más afectada por el sismo que azotó al país el pasado jueves, determinó que es prioritario que los niños, niñas y adolescentes afectados reciban apoyo psicosocial y toda la ayuda necesaria para regresar a la escuela lo antes posible.
“Un aspecto fundamental para su recuperación, luego de un trauma tan fuerte como éste, es que retomen su rutina lo antes posible, y parte de ello es el regreso a clases”, dijo desde el estado sureño de Chiapas Pressia Arifin-Cabo, Representante Adjunta de UNICEF.
Más de dos millones de niños viven en los 166 municipios que el gobierno de México ha declarado como zona de emergencia, y es primordial que retornen a la normalidad lo antes posible luego del sismo de 8.2 grados.
Durante un recorrido que hizo en la zona costera del estado de Chiapas, Arifin-Cabo señaló que las autoridades mexicanas tienen la capacidad institucional para que los niños reanuden sus estudios a través de aulas móviles en el caso de las escuelas dañadas, y que UNICEF está en la mejor disposición de apoyar esos esfuerzos con el programa que aplica en casos de desastres a nivel internacional, llamado “School in a Box” (Escuela en una Caja).
Este programa consiste en facilitar a estudiantes de los diferentes niveles educativos y a sus maestros un paquete de suministros que facilitan el regreso a clases por medio de una serie de útiles escolares y materiales de apoyo para los maestros.
UNICEF inició hoy el trabajo de reconocimiento de las necesidades de los niños, niñas y adolescentes afectados por el sismo, y en los próximos días hará un planteamiento completo del tipo de apoyo que podrá ofrecer a los esfuerzos nacionales del Gobierno para que la niñez y toda la población regresen a la normalidad.
Cualquier tipo de apoyo que UNICEF brinde en este sentido será determinado en conversación con las autoridades mexicanas.
UNICEF lanzó esta semana una campaña de recaudación de fondos para ayudar a los niños afectados por huracanes en el Caribe, y ahora ha ampliado sus esfuerzos para abarcar también las necesidades de los niños afectados por este terremoto.
Este organismo internacional estima que para cubrir necesidades inmediatas y a mediano plazo de los niños en las zonas afectadas por el sismo, así como las que puedan surgir en Veracruz y otras áreas como resultado de los huracanes en el Caribe, requerirá un mínimo de $1.2 millones de dólares estadounidenses.
El sismo en voz de los niños
Durante el primer día de recorrido por algunos de los municipios más afectados por el sismo, el equipo técnico de UNICEF México pudo conocer directamente de los niños y de sus familias la experiencia que vivieron la noche del pasado jueves 7 de septiembre en la zona del epicentro del terremoto.
José Raquel Tirado, de 12 años de edad, narró cómo lo despertó el estruendo de las tejas de barro del techo de su casa de adobe al caer: “Yo estaba dormido. El sismo me despertó y luego, luego me levanté y abrí las puertas para que salieran mi abuelita, mi abuelito y mi mamá”, narra en tono agitado aún.
“Después nos pusimos junto al lavadero y rezamos para que pasara el sismo”, dice.
Como José Raquel, los niños de estas comunidades reconocen haber sentido otros sismos con anterioridad, pero ninguno tan fuerte como éste. Leonel Indili Ríos, de 10 años, vino al ejido de Gustavo López Gutiérrez del municipio de Pijijiapan, epicentro del sismo, para visitar a sus primos y amigos, y relata: “Yo también me asusté mucho porque cuando se caían las cosas hacían mucho ruido”.
Erika Guadalupe Prado, de ocho años, conversa tímidamente con el equipo de UNICEF, pero coincide con los demás niños de la comunidad en que sintió mucho miedo porque la luz eléctrica se apagó y sólo escuchaba caer parte de los techos y paredes de las casas.
En opinión de las autoridades municipales de los lugares visitados, los niños de diferentes edades están muy asustados por la vivencia del que se considera el sismo más fuerte que ha vivido México en los últimos 100 años.
OtrasVocesenEducacion.org existe gracias al esfuerzo voluntario e independiente de un pequeño grupo de docentes que decidimos soñar con un espacio abierto de intercambio y debate.
¡Ayúdanos a mantener abiertas las puertas de esta aula!
Users Today : 33
Total Users : 35474695
Views Today : 56
Total views : 3574704