Education

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Reap: delivering more than rural education

Noticias

Oceania/ New Zealand/ 29.07.2019/ Source: www.odt.co.nz.

 

Education is needed to create a sustainable world, write Roger Browne and Mary Ann Baxter.

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly accepted a set of 17 goals to be achieved globally by 2030.

These are referred to as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and encompass the physical and social world we inhabit.

The full details are available at sustainabledevelopment.un.org.

Among these goals are many which will be familiar to New Zealanders.

Goal number 12, responsible consumption and production, envisages a world where repurposing and recycling will replace our «throw-away» habits. Avoiding food waste will not just avoid food going to landfills but, through appropriate adjustments to production and distribution, will assist in alleviating hunger.

Energy-efficient appliances will, on a global scale, assist in limiting carbon emissions. Planting trees will support the restoration of native habitats and biodiversity.

Avoiding plastic bags will help protect life in the oceans.

Goal number 13, climate action, states: «Educate young people in climate change to put them in a sustainable path early on.»

What will drive the achievement of the SDGs at the local level?

One key element is education. In rural New Zealand one of the most effective vehicles to deliver that education is the Reap (Rural Education Activities Programme).

There are 13 Reaps in New Zealand, including one in Central Otago. Our local Reap, based in Alexandra, services an area stretching from Makarora in the west to the outskirts of Dunedin, and up into the Maniototo. The Central Otago Reap was formed 40 years ago.

So much has changed in that time. The world population has grown by 75% and the global inflation-adjusted GDP has grown by a factor of almost three. With economic growth comes the growth of waste and the production of carbon emissions.

Globally, waste production is forecast to triple by the end of the century in the absence of any measures to counter this trend.

The United Nations’ SDGs seek to ensure economic growth is channelled towards wellbeing and away from waste.

Achieving this will require buy-in from all sectors of society.

If economic activities continue to be linked to the production of waste then society faces a bleak future.

Understanding the need for change involves education on a broad scale.

Some of this can be driven by central government (for instance, through changes in school curricula) and by local government (for instance, through supporting community-based recycling facilities).

Alongside this, partnerships with education providers at the local level have proven very effective.

Such partnerships have enabled and supported the Central Otago Reap’s well-established track record in initiating and embedding educational programmes on sustainable living across our local community.

The 17 SDGs are central to the way in which the Reap delivers all of its programmes.

Activities such as Plastic Free July are indicative of how Reap’s skilled communicators can be seen to have endorsed and implemented the SDGs ever since our partnership was initiated in 2006.

Skilled communicators in subjects supporting the sustainable development goals are to be valued.

Their message is vital to our future wellbeing.

We live in a part of the country where our regional identity is «A World of Difference».

Our belief that we can and are making a difference together at the local level is vital to our future wellbeing.

Source of the notice: https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/reap-delivering-more-rural-education

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Nigeria: Free basic education, not Almajiri system

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Africa/ Nigeria/ 29.07.2019/ Source: guardian.ng.

Although the Federal Government has been vacillating over the proscription of the Almajiri system practised mainly in the northern part of the country the directive by President Muhammadu Buhari to governors, the other day, seemed to have made any proposed soft landing for the Almajiri system superfluous. While the suspension of the proscription might have given some respite to supporters of the Islamic education system, the president’s charge to governors to enforce free basic education was an indirect castigation of the obnoxious practice.

It is somewhat curious that within 24 hours, three confusing statements about the same Almajiri and free basic education had hit the public space. While the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, suggested that the Federal Government was going to proscribe the Almajiri for security reasons, a quick reaction came from the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, stating that the government had no immediate plan to ban the Almajiri system. In the same breath, the president directed governors to enforce the provision of basic education. What kind of conceptual confusion on public policy is this at the highest level?

Despite confusing statements emanating from the presidency over what to do at the moment about the Islamic education system, it is gratifying that the same presidency was considering its proscription or some sort of overhaul. And perhaps the president’s charge to governors to enforce free basic education might be the way to overhaul that controversial practice.

When one considers the glaring absence of free basic education in Nigeria, the filthy, disease-prone, unhealthy environments that many children are nurtured, the incessant abuse they face and the absence of food, drinking water and adequate healthcare, one would begin to appreciate the frightful clarity of the bleak future befalling Nigerian children. For Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, this is calamity befalling the children of the north. The point could not have been better made by one of the leading lights in the region, Governor el-Rufai.

The Kaduna State governor was recently quoted as saying: “Looking at the statistics, Nigeria appears to be a middle income country but if we segregate those statistics across states and zones, you will see that in terms of human development indicators, Nigeria consists of two countries. There is a backward, less educated and unhealthy Northern Nigeria and a developing, largely educated and healthy southern Nigeria.”

No cultural practice captures this grim reality of northern Nigeria than the Almajiri system. In the faith-based education practice, for all the value it portends, one beholds in one clear relief the backwardness this system courts, after all. This system of Quranic education, which stated seven hundred years ago in the Kanem-Bornu empire, is so entrenched in the socio-cultural life of many states in northern Nigeria that it has now drawn government attention. So controversial has the  system been that it has also attained notoriety for being touted as one of those institutional problems financed by the government, just like the wasteful nomadic education project of former education minister, Professor Jubril Aminu.

Whereas in prominent Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the elite send their wards to the Ivy League institutions in Europe and America, it is interesting to note that Nigeria is the only country where this practice is being promoted in this modern time. It is also paradoxical that some of the elite who support the system have their own wards educated and trained in some of the best educational institutions in and outside the country. This is hypocritical, unjust and callous.

Despite the glaring state of deprivation and abuse being faced by the Almajiris, some academics, supportive of Almajiricin (the Almajiri type of education) due to ethnic bias, have laboured to provide intellectual backing and search out beneficial justification for this practice. Some have argued that this Spartan training of Islamic acolytes have raised up some of the holy Mallams that have become spiritual directors to politicians and business men. Others have argued that the Almajiricin is a school of life that inculcates discipline, self-mortification and religious education. Such pundits have also explained that the value of the extremely austere living condition of the children and somewhat subterranean curriculum of the Almajiricin have been greatly misunderstood by the westernised mind.

Notwithstanding, the northern elite should not live in denial and breed an uncritical mass that would be used as cannon fodder for ethnic bigotry and religious intolerance. They should bear in mind that Nigeria is the only country where this obscure religious educational system is being encouraged. Well-meaning Nigerians, especially those from the north, should hold their state and local governments to ransom, and commit them to enforce free, quality basic education. It is for this reason that political actors from the north should give heed to the counsel of progressive leaders like the former Governor of Central Bank and now an Emir in Kano, Lamido Sanusi, who has consistently decried the poor quality of education of the children in the north, the widespread poverty and widening rich-poor gap in that part of the country.

Therefore, Nigerians should support the government in hastening the proscription of the anachronistic education system not mainly because of the abuse of the children themselves but also because of the consequences that educational disparity between the north and south pose for the security and overall well-being of the country.

If Quranic education is necessary to the socio-cultural wellbeing of its people, stakeholders should call for the establishment of standard educational centres where genuine, positive and transformational values of self-development and national growth could be achieved. They should adapt the models of progressive nations where this form of qualitative education has been adjudged beneficial to the overall development of a country.

Given that free basic education is a right, civil society organisations, faith-based associations and cultural groups should educate parents and parents-to-be on the task of responsible parenthood. Parenting is not only about the capacity to bring forth an offspring; it also entails the demand of parents to be responsible for the choices made. Often, many parents have resorted to religious injunctions and some misunderstood African traditions as justifications for the wanton violation of the rights of children. It, therefore, behoves the civil society to question the social value of such practices when they provide justifications for abuse under the guise of providing moral education.

To this end, government and relevant authorities should effectively enforce the Child Rights Act by ensuring that parents, caregivers and formal guardians who infringe on the rights of children are prosecuted. The right thing therefore at this time is enforcement of free basic education as guaranteed by even the organic law of the land.

Source of the notice: https://guardian.ng/opinion/free-basic-education-not-almajiri-system/

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Australia: Call for national mobile phone ban in public schools to face resistance

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Oceania/ Australia/ 26.07.2019/ Source: www.theguardian.com.

 

The federal education minister, Dan Tehan, is expected to face resistance when he asks some state counterparts to consider a ban on students using mobile phones during school hours, at a meeting in Melbourne on Friday.

The meeting comes just days after Victoria’s decision to ban mobile phonesat public schools from next year, in an effort to tackle cyberbullying and distraction in the classroom. The NSW government announced a ban on phones in public primary schools late last year.

Tehan is asking his counterparts in states without a ban to consider a similar move in their states and territories, which would stop all Australian public school students using phones during school hours.

But Queensland, the Northern Territory and the ACT have no plans to implement a similar rule.

The ACT education minister, Yvette Berry, says banning phones in school may not be the best way to support the development of children and young people.

“Helping students understand what appropriate behaviour is both on and offline should be part of the learning journey,” she said.

“It’s important that children and young people are taught how to live alongside devices appropriately because this is a big part of our life now.”

The NT education minister, Selena Uibo, believes technology can be used in a positive way in classrooms and schools, while the Queensland education minister, Grace Grace, says the decision to implement such a ban is up to principals.

Mobile phones are banned in French schools and Canadian provinces are considering the policy.

Experts from both countries will visit Australia in coming months to discuss the issue.

Tehan says phones are a distraction in the classroom and make teaching difficult.

The ministers will also dissect exactly what went wrong with the online Naplan tests this year, with NSW calling for a complete overhaul of the national assessments.

When the testing took place across the country in mid-May, some students lost connectivity and others were unable to log in at all.

Those affected were able to resit the tests, managed by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.

Tehan remains hopeful Naplan testing can go online from next year but admits more work is needed to resolve technical issues.

But the NSW education minister, Sarah Mitchell, will use the meeting to call for a review of the national assessment, which could consider alternative options to the Naplan test.

She says it’s time to design a new test that is “genuinely useful”, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Source of the notice: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/28/call-for-national-mobile-phone-ban-in-public-schools-to-face-resistance

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Africa: The role of research in boosting education

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Africa/ 26.07.2019/ Source: www.newtimes.co.rw.

 

A group of six students from African Leadership University, during their first year at the campus, were challenged by their leaders to work on a business idea that will see them create job opportunities for other young people out there.

According to them, because of the skills, the ideas, resources and the time they had as students, they were going to make it, or so they thought.

Surprisingly, when they started working on the idea, which was using certain raw materials to produce papers, they ended up making more than six trials without coming up with the desired product.

This consumed their time, resources and energy.

Later, it came to their attention that they had less knowledge about how things were supposed to be done and at the same time hadn’t done enough research about what they were going to do.

Educators should ensure that learners are assisted in educational research. File.

“First of all, we didn’t have knowledge on how to develop a business plan, market our products and convince people to buy what we were to make,” says Kevin Shema, one of the students.

Although teachers cannot provide everything to learners when it comes to research, educators believe that students can’t handle everything by themselves either.

The question is, how should educators ensure that learners are assisted as far as doing educational research is concerned?

According to Aime Prince Lionel Murara, the deputy national coordinator in charge of operations and partnership in Education for Nations and Humanitarian Africa (ENHA), educators are one of the key elements in academic institutions, especially when it comes to effective teaching.

He notes that one of the major roles of educators is to help students learn how to solve new and emerging  problems, as well as be able to combine multiple perspectives to reach students’ goals.

“They should focus on finding and using information successfully, which is an essential skill for life and work to any learner inside and outside the school environment,” he says.

However, Murara says the good news is that in this 21st Century, students can be ahead of teachers in terms of discovering new things.

Learners have more information at their fingertips than before, which means the teacher can just come in to guide them, he says.

Depending on the age of the student, Diana Nawatti, the head teacher at Mother Mary Complex School in Kigali, believes that opting for an activity that involves all the students in class is important, adding that a teacher can decide on whether it will be teacher or student-centred learning.

She explains that this is important because it helps the teacher find out what is really needed for their students to work and come up with something meaningful.

She points out that teachers should understand that schooling students on research is paramount, and when the above is observed, it makes things easier on both sides.

Besides, Nawatti notes that it’s vital to create time for this particular activity.

This, according to her, helps and gives ample time for students to focus on analysing and synthesising information, rather than the mechanics of the research process.

Another point, the head teacher says, is that it’s also common to find out that most learners end up trusting everything they get from the internet, as most of them don’t take time to fully evaluate their sources.

When enough time is given with guidance from teachers, she says it’s easy for students to come up with relevant and well-researched ideas that will help not only at school but also when they face the real world.

She adds that depending on the age of a student, it’s the role of the teacher to make sure whatever the students are searching is secure and educative.

Freedom Kabera, a law student at University of Kigali, is of the view that educators should thrive to help learners by finding and getting them good and reliable sources for research.

When it comes to secondary research, he says it’s easy to find information that is not accurate and sometimes may not have the facts, and this is where an educator comes in to guide students.

Alternatively, he says, it’s important for institutions to subscribe to learning materials for their students and even have a well-equipped library that will see students succeed as far as educational research is concerned.

“Educators should learn how to be patient and resilient, keeping in mind that there are challenges when it comes to such assignments,” adds Kabera.

In order to achieve good teaching, Nawatti points out that the skilful use of well-chosen questions to engage and challenge learners, and to consolidate understanding, is an important feature, as is the effective use of assessment learning, especially when it comes to research.

Murara says Rwanda’s education is perfectly observed to be on a progressive advancement. Students in primary and secondary schools are able to carry out different research methodologies by the aid of computers, tablets, and libraries.

The main purpose of the research, he says, is to get deep into the topic so that something helpful can be churned out, which can be helpful for everybody and used in that particular niche sector.

Way forward

“Many students do not understand that research is an important aspect in their academic enrolment,” Murara says.

This is why teachers should try their best to build up a wall of inspirational encouragement to support students in their path of carrying out different research measures.

This, he says, can be done by providing periods meant for research, especially regarding various courses.

“Research is not only helpful to students because teachers are also able to easily understand the students’ views, which is, therefore, simultaneously beneficial,” he says.

Alphonse Uworwabayeho, a lecturer of mathematics at University of Rwanda, says teaching students with no idea regarding the topic is more complicated than having at least some knowledge on what is to be taught.

He says this is why teachers should, therefore, facilitate students in enhancing themselves towards various research methodologies with a firm enclosure.

Meanwhile, Murara notes that insufficiency of research materials is the first challenge that prohibits research from developing further.

In some schools, he says, there is low or no access to libraries as well as computer devices to support them with research.

Moreover, Uworwabayeho points out that accuracy is also a challenge due to the fact that the information, mainly on websites, is provided by people and there is no guarantee of relevance or accuracy.

“This is why analysis and critical thinking are both necessary in carrying out research,” he notes.

As far as research among students is concerned, the lecturer says inaccuracy and insufficiency of resources take the lead in gaps intended to restrict the efficiency of research.

On the other hand, Murara says teachers are also considered among the major beneficiaries of research.

He says this can be highlighted under the fact that there is a big difference between the yield of a teacher who does research and a teacher who doesn’t do research.

“Knowledge has no limitations; different sources can, therefore, be gathered to shape smart students, ready to stand against different challenges facing the world, under the surveillance of an educator,” adds Murara.

Source of the notice: https://www.newtimes.co.rw/lifestyle/role-research-boosting-education

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The Guardian view on special educational needs: segregation is not the answer

The Guardian

By: The Guardian.

As the proportion of SEN children in alternative schools continues to rise, it’s time to stand up for inclusion

A showdown between parents of children with special needs and the government is coming. Three families from different parts of England have won the right to a judicial review of the funding allocated to local authorities to fulfil their obligation to educate the 253,680 young people in England with an Education, Health and Care plan (EHC) – or “statement” – and the 1,022,535 other children also entitled to some form of SEN support. Such budgets have been stretched beyond breaking point, while the number of children assessed as having special needs has increased for two years in a row until these groups now form 14.6% of the school population – with autistic spectrum disorders the most common type of need for pupils with a statement.

In December the Local Government Association predicted a funding shortfall of £1.6bn by 2020/21. Paul Whiteman of the National Association of Headteachers believes the code governing special needs education has been reduced to an “empty promise”. Yet so far the response from ministers has served to underline the problem rather than solve it. This is because, while additional resources are urgently needed, there is another aspect to the special needs crisis in England. Namely, that decades of progress towards an inclusive model in which, as far as possible, all children are educated together, are being rolled back.

In many ways, life for children with special needs and disabilities has improved immeasurably since Baroness Warnock’s seminal 1978 report. Gone is the discriminatory, prejudicial language of the past, while advances in child psychology and teacher training mean that children struggling with emotional or learning difficulties are less likely to be written off in primary school as simply naughty. But recent evidence shows that a decade of cuts has led to segregation once again increasing, with the percentage of EHC pupils attending state secondary schools falling 8% between 2010 and 2018, the bill for councils funding private special school places rising, and exclusions and unofficial “off-rolling” of hard-to-teach pupils both on the up.

It is not clear to what extent these shifts are the unintended consequence of policy changes and funding reductions that have increased pressures across the system, and to what extent they were ministers’ aim. But last week’s announcement that the government plans to open 37 new special free schools appears to confirm that the direction of travel has changed – in defiance of the UN, whose disability convention asserts the right of disabled people to learn with everyone else.

Clearly, mainstream schools are not for everyone and high-quality alternative settings are required for children who do not thrive in them. But moves to divide children according to their needs more frequently rather than less should be vigorously opposed. Inclusive education is not a liberal piety. Properly resourced, it benefits not only the children being included, but everyone else. That there is an unignorable socioeconomic dimension, with pupils with SEN more than twice as likely to be eligible for free school meals than those without, only serves to reinforce how undesirable segregation is.

As well as building special schools, ministers should focus on boosting inclusion. This is a fragmented system in which vulnerable children are falling through the cracks, and councils are loaded up with duties they lack the resources to fulfil. That families are taking ministers to court shows it has reached breaking point.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/the-guardian-view-on-special-educational-needs-segregation-is-not-the-answer

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Egypt shifts education focus to improving quality

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Africa/ Egypt/ 24.07.2019/ Source: www.al-monitor.com.

 

Malak Abdel Hakim, 15, was doing well at school before her parents forced her to drop out several months ago. The family lives in Mallawi, a city in the southern Egyptian governorate of Minya. Her father works in the Greater Cairo area as a doorman at a residential building in the Giza neighborhood of Mohandessin and barely earns enough money to support his family of nine. He turned a deaf ear to pleas from Malak’s teachers to let her finish her education, and decided it was time for her to stay home and help her mother with chores. Her older sisters had all dropped out of school at even younger ages to get married, and Malak, too, would have to «conform to social norms,» he insisted.

While the legal minimum age to get married is 18 in Egypt, child marriages are not uncommon in the poor marginalized southern communities, where girls are often married at early ages to alleviate their families’ financial burdens. Some families circumvent the law by postponing the registration of the marriages until the girls turn 18. A 2017 census by CAPMAS, Egypt’s national statistics agency, showed that 15% of Egyptian girls are married before they turn 16. But child marriage has been on the decline in recent years, largely due to awareness campaigns about the health implications of early marriage, including pregnancy and childbirth complications and higher risks of domestic violence.

Girls who marry early are also more likely to drop out of school. Yet in Egypt’s rural south, many girls drop out of school to earn daily wages for their families, many times working in agriculture, or staying home to look after siblings. Poor families often choose to invest in their sons’ educations with the hope they will grow up to become breadwinners.

Girls are also deprived of education due to gender-based violence. Parents worry their teenage daughters will be subjected to sexual harassment on their way to or from school, and some girls choose to drop out after experiencing abuse at the hands of their teachers.

An education program launched by CARE, an international humanitarian organization that has worked in Egypt since 1957, aims to change this grim picture and ensure safe education for all children, particularly girls.

«Thanks to a strong political will and donors’ contributions, there has been tremendous progress in recent years in closing the gender gap in education,» Hazem Fahmy, CARE’s country director, told Al-Monitor

In 2012, more than 95% of Egyptian children aged between 6 and 18 were enrolled in school, according to UNICEF. The quality of education, however, remained «a major challenge.» Last year, Egypt ranked 129th globally in terms of quality of education, according to the Spectator Index. Five years earlier, a report by the US Agency for International Development found that one in five third-graders in Egypt could not read a single word and 50% of students with five years of schooling were functionally illiterate.

Due to such statistics, the Egyptian government faces pressure to reform the education system. Overcrowding, poor teaching skills and violence in schools are among the problems the government is addressing as part of its plan to overhaul the system.

«The focus has now shifted from numbers to quality education,» Fahmy said. «We want to ensure that all students are benefiting from attending school and to prepare them for jobs and career opportunities.»

CARE has adopted a multifaceted approach to improve the learning environment and promote behavioral change in the Upper Egyptian governorates of Bani Sweif, Minya and Assiut. The program, launched in 2016, seeks to develop the infrastructure of schools, build the capacity of teachers and advance literacy in 32 targeted elementary schools. Engaging the local community in education is also part of the ambitious initiative.

Al Zeitoun Primary School in Bani Sweif, 145 kilometers (90 miles) south of Cairo, is one of 10 schools in the governorate that have undergone renovation financed by the Dubai-based philanthropic organization Dubai Cares, which works to improve children’s access to quality primary education in developing countries. The renovation has included upgrading the school’s electrical system, replacing windows and light fixtures, repairing water pipes and painting the walls and ceilings in bright colors. A fence has also been built around the school to curb truancy and protect students from trespassers.

«Something as basic as having bathroom doors fitted can make a huge difference, rendering the school student-friendly and a safe learning environment for the children, especially girls,» said Fahmy.

«We have also built small kitchens in some of the schools to ensure that the students get healthy meals,» he added.

Of the 1,100 students (half of them girls) at Al Zeitoun, 109 have been identified by teachers as having learning difficulties. They are attending an afterschool class to improve their reading and writing skills. The headquarters of the Community Development Association, a local nongovernmental organization, was chosen by the parents as the preferred venue to host the class due to its central location and proximity to the homes of many of the students. The class is part of a 36-session course that uses engaging reading material and fun activities to build the reading abilities of the students who are third- and fourth-graders. Each class is devoted to learning a single letter of the alphabet and to spelling words that begin or end with that letter.

Eleven-year-old Ne’ma Ali Omar shouts out the Arabic letter «Jeem» as she dribbles a basketball with one hand, getting ready to throw it into the hoop. When she misses, 10-year-old Rahma Farrag steps in and starts bouncing the ball while shouting out words that begin with the letter. She succeeds in throwing the ball through the hoop, much to the delight of the other children who cheer and clap.

«Activities of this kind help boost the children’s self-confidence and teach them team spirit while improving their reading skills. Some of the children were awfully shy and could hardly read or spell any words before attending these readability sessions. Now they come to the school library looking for new books to read,» Mohamed Abul Fadl, an Arabic-language teacher at the school, told Al-Monitor.

«Besides acquainting the teachers with the various methods and tools to improve children’s reading skills, we also gave them tips on how to develop their teaching skills,» Mona Kotb, field supervisor at CARE’s Education Program in Bani Sweif, told Al-Monitor.

«We advise them against using violence of any form to punish the students,» she said.

In remote southern communities where poverty is rampant, some teachers have been known to use violence and other excessive disciplinary measures, including beating children with canes, as a means of punishment. In one case, a teacher in Luxor cut the hair of two 12-year-old schoolgirls to punish them for not wearing a veil to school.

«The creation of school-based child protection committees has gone a long way in curbing bullying and other forms of violence in the targeted schools,» said Ali Khalaf, general manager of the Nasser Education Directorate in Bani Sweif. The directorate, a local branch of the Ministry of Education, has been partnering with CARE to implement the program.

The activation of student unions in some of the targeted schools is also helping change behavior by boosting students’ self-esteem.

«We have witnessed firsthand the impact the student unions have had on some of the students, giving them a voice and allowing them to communicate their needs to teachers and headmasters while helping develop their leadership skills,» said Khalaf.

Michelle Nunn, the president and CEO of CARE, is confident that Egypt’s education reforms will have far-reaching effects on the entire society.

«Girls’ education is part of the empowerment of women,» she told Al-Monitor after a recent inspection tour of some of CARE’s projects in Cairo, Minya and Assiut. «By accessing education, girls can potentially increase their family’s earnings by up to 20% annually. When women access education, they achieve greater productivity and well-being from a health perspective.»

«I hope that girls and women can realize their full potential and have the capacity to feel their own power in education, health and economic opportunities. There is so much potential still; if realized, it can be transformational for the entire society.»

Source of the notice: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/07/care-tackles-girls-education-in-egypt.html

 

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Japan: Explore more efforts to stop school bullying

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Asia/ Japan/ 23.07.2019/ Source: www.japantimes.co.jp.

Six years after a law on measures to stop bullying in schools was introduced, school officials and boards of education continue to come under criticism for inappropriate responses to bullying cases that have prompted the victims to take their own lives. We still see cases in which the lessons from the 2011 suicide of a junior high school boy in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, as a result of bullying by his classmates — which led to enactment of the legislation — do not appear to have been learned. Attempts by lawmakers to give more teeth to the efforts to stop bullying have stalled. It’s time to review if the anti-bullying measures under the law are serving their intended purpose.

In early June, a 14-year-old student at a junior high school in the city of Gifu fell to his death from a condominium after leaving a note hinting that he had been bullied by others at school. About a month earlier, a classmate handed a memo to their teacher charging that the victim was being bullied by other students. The teacher cautioned the students identified as bullies, but he did not share the information with senior officials at the school.

Concluding that the problem was resolved, the teacher then “lost” the memo — it was likely shredded. After the boy’s death, the school’s principal said the tragedy could have been prevented if the information about his bullying had been shared so the school could take organized action, and accused the teacher of not properly addressing the accusation made by the classmate.

The mother of a 13-year-old girl at a city-run junior high school in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, who committed suicide in December 2017 filed a damages suit against the municipal government last month, charging that the school neglected to take adequate steps against bullying of her daughter by fellow students. A third-party probe launched by the city’s board of education concluded in March that bullying by her classmates led to the girl’s suicide — and that a teacher in charge of her class had failed to take action when she complained of the bullying in a school survey.

On the other hand, many families of bullying victims who killed themselves are left dissatisfied with such probes by boards of education and file for re-investigation of their cases. In some of the cases, the conclusion of the initial investigation that there was no causal link between bullying and the victim’s suicide has been overturned, with school officials accused of covering up evidence of bullying.

The 2013 law to promote measures against bullying was enacted based on lessons from the 2011 suicide of the Otsu schoolboy, in which his school came under fire for not intervening to stop the boy’s torment even though its officials were aware of the problem, and for refusing to accept that the bullying cornered the victim into taking his own life.

The law requires teachers and officials to detect and stop bullying in its early stages. When bullying has resulted in “grave situations” in which the victim has suffered severe physical or psychological damage and has been forced into an extended absence from school, the school and local board of education are mandated to launch an independent probe and report relevant facts to the victims and their family.

As the education ministry urged schools nationwide to take steps against even minor cases of bullying, to prevent them from developing into serious situations, the number of bullying cases reported by schools has significantly increased. However, there remains a large number of cases in which the system to combat bullying under the law does not appear to be functioning as intended — as illustrated by the criticism often hurled against schools and boards of education by victims’ families.

To beef up the effectiveness of the anti-bullying measures, a group of lawmakers across party lines last year drafted an amendment to the 2013 law with an added provision that teachers and officials who learn of bullying at their schools but fail to take action would be subject to disciplinary punishment. In another draft released in April, however, that provision had been dropped out of concern that such requirements would place too heavy a burden on teachers and officials. When that angered families of bullying victims who had committed suicide, discussions on possible revisions to the law ground to a halt.

Whether or not the disciplinary measures are appropriate, it seems clear that serious cases of bullying continue to plague our schools, leading many victims into taking their own lives, despite the legislation that sought to prevent tragedies like the Otsu case. All parties involved need to think about what is lacking in the current efforts to stop bullying and help the victims, and explore what more can be done.

Source of the notice: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/07/19/editorials/explore-efforts-stop-school-bullying/#.XTdugOgzbIU

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