The leadership of almost all major political parties have signed reform agenda called “Charter for Education”, committing to increase the provincial and federal education spending to 4 per cent of the GDP, supported by substantial governance reforms to ensure that the allocated funds are spent effectively and transparently.
The leadership of almost all major political parties made the commitment in a landmark education conference titled Ailaan-e- Amal hosted by education campaign Alif Ailaan here on Monday.
All the parties have committed to ensuring that the agreed charter will be adopted into their respective election manifestos, besides committing to developing a plan of implementation within 100 days of the oath-taking of the future chief ministers after the upcoming elections.
Political parties including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), National Party (NP), Awami National Party (ANP), Jamat-e- Islami (JI), Qaumi Watan Party (QWP), Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), PkMAP and BNP-M pledged to go beyond political differences and proceed with national reform agenda for education.
Punjab School Education Minister Rana Mashood, KP Education Minister Muhammad Atif Khan, ANP’s Afrasiab Khattak and Sardar Hussain Babak, PTI’s Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar and PPP MNA Dr Azra Pechuho among others attended the conference.
The conference discussed improving learning outcomes in schools and delivering on the state’s obligation to provide compulsory and free education for all children between the ages of 5-16 and continue support for the provision of quality education to all Pakistani children. Besides that, all provinces were also asked to commit a minimum of 20 per cent of their budget for education annually.
The conference also agreed on a standard career plan for all recruited teachers and clear distinction between teaching paths and management paths, besides reaffirming merit-based recruitment.
Speaking on the occasion, Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar stated that in a country like Pakistan, where 23 million children were still out of school, a national emergency must be declared after the general elections. “We will need to set strict targets to get them all in school and get them learning.”
Dr Azra Pechuho was of the view that there is a need for legislation extending beyond the provision of free and compulsory education to legislation on quality, teacher availability and budget utilization.
Punjab School Education Minister Rana Mashhood stated that it was heartening to see that all provincial governments have prioritized education since 2013 and Punjab, specifically, focused on providing quality education.
Speaking on the occasion, Ajmal Khan Wazir said that it was shocking to know that FATA was even not included in the draft despite having many out of school children. He added that the long-deprived area must be included and all political parties should play their part to develop the area.
Former President of India Pranab Mukherjee on Monday emphasised on more research and development and urged the government to invest more in this area.
«Today, not as a former President but as a citizen of India, I want greater investment in education and research and the country will benefit from this,» Mukherjee said here today while delivering an endowment lecture at the Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Golpark.
He however, regretted the dwindling budget towards education and R&D of the country.
Citing example of Germany that stood strong even during the Eurozone crisis, he said it was possible because of its continuous focus on R&D.
«In 1991, the budget on education was six per cent of the GDP but in 2018-19 Union budget allocation is just 3.6 per cent of the national GDP, though the allocation of Rs 80,500 crore may seem to be a huge sum.»
According to a UNESCO report, secondary level dropout is 45 lakh, he said.
Mukherjee said by 2025, India will have the largest young population, becoming the biggest workforce in the world.
«If we are unable to convert this population into suitable workforce and not able to create jobs by adopting new technologies, then instead of ‘demographic dividend’ it will be a ‘demographic disaster’,» Mukherjee said.
Mukherjee said, we are not able to get the finest talent in education and research. They move to corporate sector due to their lack of sense of societal giving back and not thinking what society has invested on them so that they can bloom.
Student-teacher relation is also vital for shaping of a student. Taking his example, he recalled the role of his teachers including those in Siuri Vidyasagar College in Siuri, for being what he is today.
Higher education spending per student has been cut by 32 percent since 2001.
Student debt is rising in Massachusetts, but state funding is falling. College students are calling on the state to invest more in the higher education system and provide them with some financial relief.
According to a MassBudget report, average tuition and fees for Massachusetts public colleges and universities have more than doubled since 2001. But higher education spending per student has been cut by 32 percent over the same period.
Students lobbied lawmakers at the State House Monday to put money back into the higher education system. They want lawmakers to pass a bill that would pay for one full year of tuition and fees at a public college or university for eligible students. It’s known as the “Finish Line Grant.”
“So many students usually drop out after the first year after seeing the costs and how it effects them so even just giving them one extra year to over think-especially with community colleges where you might only go for two years, pay for your first year and it encourages you to stay for your degree,” Westfield State University student Mickey Prout told 22News.
The bill is currently stuck in committee, but they’re expected to take action by April 25.
Students and advocates are also hoping voters will pass a 2018 ballot question, known as the “Fair Share Amendment” or millionaire’s tax, that would invest a portion of income tax revenue in education and transportation.
“We can’t afford to do the things that we’re talking about if the Fair Share Amendment doesn’t pass,” State Rep. John Scibak, (D) South Hadley, said.
If passed, the question would place a four percent surtax on incomes over one million dollars. Higher education advocates want $500 million of generated revenue to go to public higher education.
Cuts to local authorities’ education budgets are «impossible to defend», the leader of Swansea council has said.
In a letter to Education Secretary Kirsty Williams, Rob Stewart criticised cuts to a grant that was partly used to fund teaching children who do not speak English as a first language.
The Labour councillor said the money had been taken away but councils were still expected to provide the service.
The Welsh Government said talks to provide extra funding were under way.
In the last budget, the Welsh Government responded to calls from local authorities to cut the number of grants that force them to spend money on specific services and said it would instead transfer the money into the main funding pot.
But Mr Stewart said his education budget would face a shortfall of £2m in the next financial year.
Kirsty Williams is the sole Liberal Democrat in an otherwise all-Labour cabinet
He said an 11% cut to the Education Improvement Grant for Schools had not been fully handed back to main funding pot.
The council would now have to fund teaching support for children from ethnic minorities from existing budgets, he said.
Cardiff council also said it faced a financial shortfall in its education budget.
In a letter to council leaders in November, Liberal Democrat AM Ms Williams said she still expected £10m to be spent across Wales to support ethnic minority learners.
Mr Stewart responded to her, saying the budget for the next financial year had been «disingenuously packaged».
He wrote: «You have placed yourself in a tautologically impossible to defend position. You have proposed a cut to a specific grant which previously, amongst others, funded Gypsy, traveller and minority ethnic groups.
«You have made no cash transfer to revenue support grant, unlike ministerial colleagues.
«You tell us how to prioritise spending – including demanding we spend the same amount on a function for which you have unequivocally removed the grant – with no recompense in cash in the revenue support grant.
«I can’t spend money I simply have had taken away.»
The Welsh Conservatives have lodged a request in the Senedd for an urgent question on the matter .
Tory AM Darren Millar said: «The Welsh Labour-led Government needs to explain why, in wielding cuts to this specific grant, they have made no additional transfer to the main budgetary pot, as was previously promised.»
Analysis by Nick Servini, BBC Wales political editor
Kirsty Williams, as the solitary Liberal Democrat in the Welsh Government cabinet, has navigated her way through the choppy waters of dealing with Labour council leaders successfully since taking on the job 18 months ago.
The response from Rob Stewart is the exception, rather than the norm.
A source close to Ms Williams says the tone of this strongly-worded letter caught her team by surprise and has not been helpful to the discussions behind the scenes – code for anger at the way the council leader has responded.
The Welsh Government defence is that it is doing what councils want in freeing them up from specific grants, but at a time when there is not much money sloshing around local authority coffers, there are inevitably going to be disagreements about whether the councils are being left out of pocket.
The cost of tuition rests on Louisiana’s legislatures vote for fully funding higher education.
In preparation for Louisiana’s budget meeting in July 2018, universities around Louisiana hosted forums to advocate how students and faculty can prevent higher education from being on the chopping block.
ULM agreed to host an open forum for students and faculty to stress the importance of fully funding higher education last Thursday in Sandel Hall.
While higher education hasn’t taken a budget cut in 2017, there are still concerns for the next year as about $1.5 billion dollars will have to be cut from Louisiana’s budget.
Any decrease in higher education funding means an increase in tuition, and a decrease in professors and classes.
Many of the speakers like our Student Government Association president, Bryce Bordelon, and the faculty staff senate president, Katherine Dawson, agreed that the way to fix the gap is by keeping Louisiana students in Louisiana’s workforce.
“It’s an investment for economic growth for the state as a whole for now and in the future. I think it’s a vote of confidence on behalf of the legislature that the students stay here and help the state prosper,” said Dawson.
ULM alumnus, Ash Aulds, spoke about his ability to find his niche as a Senior Marketing Analyst at CenturyLink to the funding higher education provided through internship opportunities.
It allowed him to internship in whatever he was interested in at the time, later producing a well-rounded graduate from ULM that afforded him a career in northeast Louisiana.
Senator Francis Thompson spoke to the crowd on his fight in legislature to make it important to other senators.
He considered decreasing funding for higher education as extreme as a homeland security issue and that it should be an important issue for everyone, and not just those who attend college.
Make higher education apart of everyday conversation with our families and friends, so that they can understand.
At the end of the forum, many wanted to know what can we do as students and faculty.
State Representative, Katrina Jackson, offered solutions like calling and emailing your state legislatures.
Voting also makes a difference because “some elected officials tailor to the demographic that voted for them,” said Jackson.
Young adults had a low voting turnout at the last election which accounted for the lack of consideration for higher education.
EEUU/ October 10, 2017/By: Valley News/Source: https://vtdigger.org
State officials and school board members say the Education Fund shortfall could go as high as $80 million and could wallop many property owners with a 5 percent increase in the school tax rate.
Vermont Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe has said that a 7- to 9-cent increase in the statewide property tax is likely unless school boards make significant budget cuts.
The projections for fiscal year 2019 will ultimately add pressure to local school boards gearing up to begin their budget processes, said Hartford School Board Chairman Kevin Christie, who also is a Democrat in the Vermont House.
“There might be some very, very difficult decisions to make, and until we know what that bottom line is looking like, we don’t know what they are,” Christie said.
Hartford School Board chair Kevin Christie. File photo by Geoff Hansen/Valley News
If the budget gap falls on property taxpayers, who pay $1.06 billion into the $1.58 billion Education Fund, it would add about 8 cents to the current homestead property tax rate of $1.51 per $100 of assessed property. It also would add 8 cents to the nonresident rate, currently $1.535, state officials said this week.
The exact impact on individual school districts will vary, depending on their spending, but the base rate increase would amount to a $200 tax hike on a home valued at $250,000 for those Vermont residents not eligible for the state’s income sensitivity program.
“Needless to say, the pressures that we’re trying to address are very similar to the state level, especially with the health care component, and we haven’t completed our negotiations for our teacher contracts,” Christie said.
Emily Byrne, the chief financial officer for the Vermont Agency of Education, said the primary driver of the funding gap is the state’s decision to prop up the current FY2018 budget with about $47 million in “one-time” funds that were taken primarily from an end-of-year surplus and an education reserve fund.
“The problem from a budgetary perspective is, if you use one-time money for ongoing costs, you have a problem right out of the gate the following year,” Byrne said.
Those measures actually slightly decreased the property tax rate for the current year, but for fiscal year 2019, which starts next July, there is pressure not only to make up for the loss of the cushion, but also to put about $9.4 million back into the reserve.
Adam Greshin, commissioner of finance and management said the Education Fund gap could go as high as $80 million if school district voters approve budgets with an average increase of of 3 percent. If school budgets are held level or below 3 percent, the anticipated tax increase could be partially averted, said Greshin, a former independent state representative and school board member from Warren.
“I think the governor is going to continue to focus on the same issues because they’re just as important,” he said. “We’re going to ask school districts to reduce the growth in their spending and level fund their budgets, and we’re going to continue to advocate strongly for a statewide health care contract.”
Greshin pointed to an anticipated spike in fiscal year 2019 health care rates — the Vermont Education Health Initiative says premiums will increase by as much as 17 percent for school district employees across the state.
“Keep in mind, the two initiatives that you saw out of the administration last (spring), both would have zeroed in on unsustainable growth. The first would have asked school boards to level fund their budgets. That didn’t happen,” Greshin said.
“The second initiative, which received a great deal of attention, was to move to a statewide health care contract for all school employees. That too didn’t happen. Both of those initiatives would have made life substantially easier this year.”
Royalton School Board member Geo Honigford, president of the Vermont School Boards Association, said he’ll argue against a budget cap at an upcoming Oct. 19 meeting of VSBA members that will include a discussion on how to address the fiscal crisis.
“Caps are never really great policy, because they’re a one-size-fits-all solution,” he said, citing schools with capital improvement emergencies or growing student populations as examples of districts that would not do well under a cap.
Honigford said the Vermont School Boards Association is developing recommendations for solutions that would include a statewide teacher health care agreement negotiated by school boards and unions.
The VSBA also will seek to address Vermont’s student-to-staff ratio, which Honigford said has fallen from 4.7 students per staff member to a lowest-in-the-nation 4.2 to 1 over the past several years.
“A task force would look at staffing in each district and then be able to make recommendations,” he said.
Honigford said that local budget talks in Royalton would depend on the outcome of an upcoming Oct. 24 vote on a consolidation with the Bethel School District.
Even as school boards prepare to sharpen their pencils on local education budgets, there will be various initiatives to change the picture at the state level.
Honigford said the Legislature is sure to make an effort.
“It’s an election year, so we fully anticipate legislators will have no stomach for an 8-cent increase and then saying ‘vote for me.’ We anticipate some sort of cost containment measures coming down the road and we want them to make sense,” he said.
Christie said he’s seen several proposals, some including diversifying the revenue stream, that would dramatically change the way that education is funded, and that any one of them could be implemented very quickly — if the political will can be mustered.
“Most of the concepts have been placed on the table before or at least have been looked at in a cursory way,” he said. “It kind of takes a collective will to say ‘we’re going to change.’ That’s not easy.”
He revels in a public discourse that threatens, humiliates and bullies.
He has used language as a weapon to humiliate women, a reporter with a disability, Pope Francis and any political opponent who criticizes him. He has publicly humiliated members of his own cabinet and party, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a terminally ill John McCain, not to mention the insults and lies he perpetrated against former FBI Director James Comey after firing him.
Trump has humiliated world leaders with insulting and belittling language. He not only insulted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with the war-like moniker “Rocket Man,” he appeared before the United Nations and blithely threatened to address the nuclear standoff with North Korea by wiping out its 25 million inhabitants.
He has attacked the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico for pleading for help in the aftermath of a hurricane that has devastated the island and left many Puerto Ricans without homes or drinking water.
He has emboldened and tacitly supported the violent actions of white supremacists, and during the presidential campaign encouraged right-wing thugs to attack dissenters — especially people of colour. He stated that he would pay the legal costs of a supporter who attacked a black protester.
During his presidential campaign, he endorsed state torture and pandered to the spectacle of violence that his adoring crowds treated like theatre as they shouted and screamed for more.
Violence for Trump became performative, used to draw attention to himself as the ultimate tough guy. He acted as a mafia figure willing to engage in violence as an act of vengeance and retribution aimed at those who refused to buy into his retrograde nationalism, regressive militarism and nihilistic sadism.
‘Lock her up’
The endless call at his rallies to “lock her up” was more than an attack on Hillary Clinton; he endorsed the manufacture of a police state where the call to law and order become the foundation for Trump’s descent into authoritarianism.
Donald Trump supporters in Virginia in November 2016.(AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
On a policy level, he has instituted directives to remilitarize the police by providing them with all manner of Army surplus weapons — especially those local police forces dealing with issues of racism and poverty. He actually endorsed and condoned police brutality while addressing a crowd of police officers in Long Island, New York, this summer.
These are just a few examples of the many ways in which Trump repeatedly gives licence to his base and others to commit acts of violence.
What’s more, he also appears to relish representations of violence, suggesting on one occasion that it’s a good way to deal with the “fake news” media. He tweeted an edited video showing him body-slamming and punching a man with the CNN logo superimposed on his head during a wrestling match.
And recently, he retweeted an edited video from an anti-Semite’s account that showed Trump driving a golf ball into the back of Hillary Clinton’s head.
Trump’s domestic policies instill fear
The violence has found its way into Trump’s domestic policies, which bear the weight of a form of domestic terrorism — policies that instill in specific populations fear through intimidation and coercion.
Trump’s call to deport 800,000 individuals brought to the United States as illegal immigrants through no intention of their own — and who know no other country than the U.S. — reflects more than a savage act of a white nationalism. This cruel and inhumane policy also suggests the underlying state violence inherent in embracing the politics of disappearance and disposability.
In this Sept. 6 photo, Karen Caudillo, 21, of Florida and Jairo Reyes, 25, of Rogers, Ark., both brought to the U.S. as children, attend a Capitol Hill news conference in Washington. DACA has shielded them from deportation.(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
There’s also Trump’s pardon of the vile Joe Arpaio, the disgraced former Arizona sheriff and notorious racist who was renowned by white supremacists and bigots for his hatred of undocumented immigrants and his abuse and mistreatment of prisoners.
This growing culture of cruelty offers support for a society of violence in the United States. Before Trump’s election, that society resided on the margins of power. Now it’s at the centre.
Trump’s disregard for human life is evident in a range of policies. They include withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change, slashing jobs at the Environmental Protection Agency, gutting teen pregnancy prevention programs and ending funds to fight white supremacy and other hate groups.
Budget punishes poor children
At the same time, Trump has called for a US$52 billion increase in the military budget while arguing for months in favour of doing away with Obamacare and leaving tens of millions of Americans without health coverage.
Many young, old and vulnerable populations will pay with their lives for Trump’s embrace of this form of domestic terrorism.
He’s added a new dimension of cruelty to the policies that affect children, especially the poor. His proposed 2018 budget features draconian cuts in programs that benefit poor children.
Trump supports cutting food stamp programs (SNAP) to the tune of US$193 billion; slashing US$610 billion over 10 years from Medicaid, which aids 37 million children; chopping US$5.8 billion from the budget of the Children’s Health Insurance Program which serves nine million kids; defunding public schools by US$9.2 billion; and eliminating a number of community-assisted programs for the poor and young people.
These cruel cuts merge with the ruthlessness of a punishing state that under Trump and Attorney General Sessions is poised to implement a law-and-order campaign that criminalizes the behaviour of the poor, especially Blacks.
It gets worse. At the same time, Trump also supports policies that pollute the planet and increase health risks to the most vulnerable and powerless.
Violence an American hallmark
Violence, sadly, runs through the United States like an electric current. And it’s become the primary tool both for entertaining people and addressing social problems. It also works to destroy the civic institutions that make a democracy possible.
Needless to say, Trump is not the sole reason for this more visible expression of extreme violence on the domestic and foreign fronts.
On the contrary. He’s the endpoint of a series of anti-democratic practices, policies and values that have been gaining ground since the emergence of the political and economic counterrevolution that gained full force with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, along with the rule of financial capital and the embrace of a culture of precarity.
Trump is the unbridled legitimator-in-chief of gun culture, police brutality, a war machine, violent hypermasculinity and a political and social order that expands the boundaries of social abandonment and the politics of disposability — especially for those marginalized by race and class.
He’s emboldened the idea that violence is the only viable political response to social problems, and in doing so normalizes violence.
Violence that once seemed unthinkable has become central to Trump’s understanding of how American society now defines itself.
Language in the service of violence has a long history in the United States, and in this current historical moment, we now have the violence of organized forgetting.
Violence as a source of pleasure
As memory recedes, violence as a toxin morphs into entertainment, policy and world views.
What’s different about Trump is that he revels in the use of violence and war-mongering brutality to inflict humiliation and pain on people. He pulls the curtains away from a systemic culture of cruelty and a racially inflected mass- incarceration state. He publicly celebrates his own sadistic investment in violence as a source of pleasure.
At the moment, it may seem impossible to offer any resistance to this emerging authoritarianism without talking about violence, how it works, who benefits from it, whom it affects and why it’s become so normalized.
But this doesn’t have to be the case once we understand that the scourge of American violence is as much an educational issue as it is a political concern.
The challenge is to address how to educate people about violence through rigorous and accessible historical, social, relational analyses and narratives that provide a comprehensive understanding of how the different registers of violence are connected to new forms of American authoritarianism.
This means making power and its connection to violence visible through the exposure of larger structural and systemic economic forces.
‘Dead zones’ of imagination
It means illustrating with great care and detail how violence is reproduced and legitimized through mass illiteracy and the dead zones of the imagination.
It means moving away from analyzing violence as an abstraction by showing how it actually manifests itself in everyday life to inflict massive human suffering and despair.
The American public needs a new understanding of how civic institutions collapse under the force of state violence, how language coarsens in the service of carnage, how a culture hardens in a market society so as to foster contempt for compassion while exalting a culture of cruelty.
How does neoliberal capitalism work to spread the celebration of violence through its commanding cultural apparatuses and social media?
How does war culture come to dominate civic life and become the most honoured ideal in American society?
Unless Americans can begin to address these issues as part of a broader discourse committed to resisting the growing authoritarianism in the United States, the plague of mass violence will continue — and the once-shining promise of American democracy will become nothing more than a relic of history.
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