Education

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France detains 32 students protesting education reform

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Europa/ Francia/ 12.11.2018/ Source: www.aa.com.tr.

Protests erupt after Macron administration unveils plans to change education system

French police detained 32 students Wednesday who were taking part in protests against government plans to overhaul the country’s approach to education.

Students in a number of cities have been protesting against President Emmanuel Macron’s educational policies. The major reforms by his administration include changes to the Baccalaureate Examination, which students must pass to be eligible to enter university.

Six students were detained in a demonstration in Stalingrad Square in Bordeaux after they damaged vehicles and threw projectiles at police.

In southern Toulouse, another 13 students were detained for harming the environment and attacking police.

Tensions were also high between the police and students in the Henin-Beaumont commune, where students set fire to a large number of waste bins in front of a high school. Thirteen students were detained in demonstrations.

Around 100 high schools throughout the country were blockaded Monday by students protesting the education reform, with lessons at the schools fully or partially disrupted.

Source of the notice: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/france-detains-32-students-protesting-education-reform/1330753

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Uganda: Govt urged to invest more in Early Childhood Development

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Africa/ Uganda/ 11.12.2018/By: Lawrence Mulondo/ Source: www.newvision.co.ug.

Among the other sectors Save the children is championing in is Health and Nutrition, Child poverty, Child protection, Childs rights and governance.

Save the Children has urged the Ministry of Education to invest more in Early Childhood Development (ECD) in order to have quality children joining primary schools.

In an education Act of 2008, the government recognized pre-primary education as the first stage of education for all children below the age of eight.

The ECD education sector policy by the Ministry of Gender Labor and Social Development recognises four programs including day care Centres, Nursery schools, home care Centres and community Centres.

While attending the first day of the three day Save the Children partnership meeting at Royal Suits Bugolobi, partners agreed that a child that joins primary with an ECD background, has basic knowledge on literacy, giving them a good start.

Save the Children Head of Advocacy and Communications, Alun McDonald said children that attend ECDs have better social skills compared to those who did not attend.

“We recognize that ECD is critical in every child’s life as it determines the kind of adult they will be in future,” he said.

He pointed out that if children do not go through ECD, they find it difficult to learn skills in primary school.

McDonald said Uganda has made a lot of improvement in primary education due to the existence of Universal Primary Education (UPE).

He however said that the country is still weak in terms of ECD due to lack of enough public ECD Centres.

“Uganda has good policies on ECD, however they are not well implemented around the country especially in villages,” he said.

Statistics on ECD

According to Save the Children, only 13.4% of children in Uganda are enrolled in ECD/pre-primary.

Families with the highest income, 53% of children attend ECD, 21.6% of children from middle income families, and only 6.7% of children from the poorest families attend.

Save the Children says, there is also a big difference between urban and rural areas in terms of access to ECD as 53% of children in urban areas attend ECD, but only 19.5% in rural areas.

According to the 2017 UNICEF report 65 of the children between the age of 3 and 5 are developmentally on track in literacy, numerous and physical, social and emotional development.

According to the 2011 Ministry of Education statistics, ECD Centres  distribution per region is as follows, Central region 783(33%), Eastern 554 (24%), North East106 (5%), North 354 (15%), South West 128 (5%), and West 436 (19%).

McDonald called on the government to sensitize the public more on the importance of ECD and also put in place a special budget for the construction of free ECD Centres in UPE schools.

The 2016 National ECD policy of Uganda has it that 80% of the ECD centers around the country are privately owned and financially out of reach from most Ugandans, adding that a few children benefit from institutionalized ECD centers leaving many toddlers to stay home with their parents of which many parents have are not experienced to offer ECD programs to their children.

While meeting a delegation from Canada on ECDs in January, the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. John Chrysostom Muyingo said: “Government realised that ECDs are very critical to the children’s education.

A review is being conducted by Curriculum Development Centre to provide an assessment that will fit with the demands of our educational market.”

Muyingo added that ECDs are the essential areas for child upbringing that introduce a child to learning new things in life.

He noted that it is at this stage that learners are introduced to writing, listening and also learning how to play with friends.

“In the past, the government was concentrated on funding primary education and Early Childhood Education (ECE) was left to the private sector and non-governmental organisations.

Save the Children involvement in ECD

Save the Children is currently constructing primary schools around the country that have an ECD complement. Last year, the NGO worked in 91 ECD Centres across Uganda.

McDonald revealed that as Save the Children commemorates 100 years in 2019, the country Directors will focus more on improving ECD in the countries where they are serving.

He said among the things they will be fostering is training ECD care givers and other necessities needed.

Partnerships

To implement their goals in the country, Save the Children works with partners Like New Vision in the Education sector and others.

Among the other sectors Save the children is championing in is Health and Nutrition, Child poverty, Child protection, Childs rights and governance.

Save the Children is partnering with New Vision to extend newspapers to children in different schools around the country like Karamoja, Nakasongola Nakaseke and others through the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) project.

The move is to inform children of what is going on in the country and the whole world as well as improve on their reading skills.

Challenges

McDonald said that limited funding is always a challenge to them as they extend services to children. He said their areas of operation are usually over whelming.

He added that the fact that Uganda is hosting a number of Refugees from different countries strains services offered by the organization in the areas where they are.

He however said the existence of refugees is also an opportunity as they contribute to the economy of the country.

Meeting objectives

Save the children partnership coordinator, Janet Nambuya said that they called for a meeting with their partners to share experiences and also to share areas where there is need for improvement.

Nabafu added that they called on partners to create a platform for reflection, learning, accountability and networking.

She added that in the meeting they are to disseminate the country strategic plan of 2019-2019.

Source of the notice: https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1491038/govt-urged-invest-childhood-development

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Why do dyslexic students do worse at university?

Christopher Byrne

By: Christopher Byrne.

The proportion of UK university students who are dyslexic has increased markedly in recent years, rising to around 5%. Yet there remains a significant dyslexia attainment gap: around 40% of dyslexic students achieve a 2.1 or above, compared to 52% of non-dyslexic students. Dyslexia is unrelated to intelligence, so why does this gap persist?

Unfortunately, outdated attitudes towards dyslexia among university staff prevail. Too many view it as something made up by middle-class “helicopter parents” to gain unfair advantages for their children entering university, and not the valid medical diagnosis that it actually is. Even where it is accepted as a condition rooted in an inability to match spoken sounds with their written forms, the accommodations made to level the playing field for dyslexic students are often inadequate.

Most universities do little else than allow dyslexic students extra time (usually around 25%) to complete their assessments and ensure that their work is “marked for content”. This means that markers are instructed to not penalise dyslexic students for poor presentation of their written work, such as spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. While such accommodations are helpful, they fail to take into account that dyslexic students can struggle with a wide range of commonplace tasks, such as reading, spelling, note-taking, organising essays, timekeeping, expressing ideas verbally, concentrating and using short-term memory.

So how do we close the dyslexia attainment gap? We need a determined effort on the part of UK universities to make their institutions more dyslexia-friendly across the board. Lecturers can help by thinking more carefully about the effectiveness of their teaching and assessment methods for all of their students. For example, how many university teachers are familiar with research showing that the reading accuracy of dyslexic students can be significantly improved by using fonts such as Helvetica, Courier and Arial?

Equally, dyslexic students indicated in a survey I recently carried out at the University of Exeter that they highly value being given teaching materials in advance of sessions, and not being overloaded with information. They also wanted variety in both teaching and assessment methods, access to marking criteria written in plain English and, most importantly of all, easy access to recordings of teaching sessions, so that they can digest teaching materials at a suitable pace.

Every year, students with undiagnosed dyslexia arrive at UK universities. The number of these missed diagnoses could be greatly reduced if institutions received support to cover the costs of professional dyslexia assessment. Clear procedures would enable lecturers to refer students they suspect have undiagnosed dyslexia for a timely dyslexia screening. Universities can also establish guidelines for teaching staff, so that there is greater awareness of their specific needs. They should be monitoring the implementation of action plans for dyslexic students to ensure that they receive necessary adjustments in all of their modules.

Given that dyslexia is a highly variable condition, and one better thought of as a continuum than a categorical diagnosis, it is not possible to specify in advance which accommodations individuals might need. What we do know is that promoting a wider range of accommodations will help level the uneven playing field for dyslexic students.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/dec/06/why-do-dyslexic-students-do-worse-at-university

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Australia: Student protests show Australian education does get some things righ

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Oceania/ Australia/ 10.11.2018/ Source: theconversation.com.

Australia’s education system often suffers a barrage of criticism – claims of stagnant or declining NAPLAN results, slippage in international comparisons and rankings, and an irrelevant curriculum, tend to draw the attention of politicians, the media, and the Australian public.

It’s not often we are able to celebrate what’s right in Australia’s education system. But yesterday’s student presence at Parliament house and Friday’s protests where more than 15,OOO Australian students skipped class to demand greater action on climate change should be cause for celebration.

Far from being concerned about an afternoon off school, parents should feel satisfied schools and teachers are doing their job. Participation in these protests meets many of the key goals of our current education system, including students’ capacity to engage in, and strengthen, democracy. Rather than proof of a flawed education system, politically active and engaged students are evidence many aspects of our education system are working well.

Students want action on climate change

Protests called out the federal government’s lack of action on climate change during the protests. Wednesday’s parliament house rally specifically targeted the Adani coal mine project. Students were also seeking an audience with the prime minister to have their concerns heard.

The government’s response to these protests has been, at best, dismissive. Students’ actions have not been recognised as a genuine attempt to engage in robust democratic debate about climate change. Before Friday’s walk-out, Scott Morrison relegated students to the confines of their classrooms, “what we want”, he argued, “is more learning in schools and less activism”.

The students are right: activism is learning. Lukas Coch/AAP

Other members of government have been equally off-hand. Senator James McGrath was more concerned with a spelling error on a single student’s placard than the basis of their grievance. Resources minister Matt Canavan deemed protests as nothing more than a quick ticket “to the dole queue”.

The government’s response is both misinformed and misdirected. Beyond the obvious lack of recognition of political protest as a fundamental pillar of democracy, and means to political change, it also demonstrates a lack of recognition of the goals of Australian schooling, as outlined in our Melbourne Declaration.

The Melbourne Declaration and the role of education

The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australiansis a document signed by all Australian education ministers which outlines the mandated knowledge, skills and values of schooling for the period 2009-2018. The declaration is a national road map for education and a statement of intent by both federal and state governments, across partisan lines.

The declaration outlines two key goals:

  1. Australian schooling promotes both equity and excellence
  2. all young Australians become: successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens

It’s the first goal that gathers public attention as excellence and equity, in the form of measurable academic outcomes, dominates public discussion (think NAPLAN, My School, and PISA). More often than not, we’re told it’s here we’re getting things wrong.

In the second goal, the declaration attends to the broad purpose and significance of education. That is, the democratic purpose of education, as an avenue for students’ successful participation in civil society. If events of the last week are anything to go by, our students are all over goal two.

Students at a rally demanding action on climate change in Sydney, Friday, November 30, 2018. Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Sustainability is a stated priority in the Australian curriculum. Beyond understanding sustainable patterns of living and impacts of climate change, students are expected to develop skills to inform and persuade others to take action. Through these protests, relevant sections of the Melbourne Declaration read like a tick-list of student achievement. Students have demonstrated:

  • the ability to think deeply and logically, and obtain and evaluate evidence
  • creativity, innovation, and resourcefulness
  • the ability to to plan activities independently, collaborate, work in teams and communicate ideas
  • enterprise and initiative to use their creative abilities
  • preparation for their roles as community members
  • the ability to embrace opportunities and make rational and informed decisions about their own lives
  • a commitment to participate in Australia’s civic life
  • ability to work for the common good, to sustain and improve natural and social environments
  • their place as responsible global and local citizens.

The Melbourne Declaration is a recognition that education is more than a classroom test and more than measurable results. This is not to suggest the much lauded 3R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) are not important in education – they are. Rather, it’s an understanding that education and learning is also, and importantly, social, and sometimes immeasurable in nature and practice.

Australian students’ activities over the past week evidence their knowledge and capabilities in an education system valuing both economic and democratic functions of education.

Rather than dismiss students’ actions as ill-informed or misdirected, or deny their capacity to effectively participate in democratic processes, we should recognise their learning and achievements. Let’s celebrate this achievement in Australian education, and encourage their capacity as active and informed citizens within our democracy.

Australian students understand progress happens when individuals join together to demand change. Politicians, take heed.

Source of the notice: http://theconversation.com/student-protests-show-australian-education-does-get-some-things-right-108258

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Mali: Le comportement des enfants au Mali en cause

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Africa/ Mali/ 10.12.2018/ Source:maliactu.net.

Comportement des enfants au Mali devient de plus en plus inadmissible à cause d’un système éducatif inaccessible à tous les niveaux, estiment des concitoyens dans un micro-trottoir réalisé en fin de la semaine dernière.

L’éducation, le bon comportement des enfants, le respect de personnes âgées comme catalyseur de développement d’un pays, est loin d’être une priorité pour beaucoup de parents. Elle se fait sur une base de négligence, déplorent plusieurs personnes interrogées sur la question.

“Le comportement des enfants a changé au Mali depuis un certain temps. Et cela est dû au laisser-aller de beaucoup de parents. A notre temps, un enfant ne pouvait pas insulter un aîné. Et le respect des personnes âgées était obligatoire. Mais aujourd’hui, des milliers d’enfants, n’ayant pas l’accès à l’éducation, se voient priver d’outils nécessaires, susceptibles de leur permettre d’appréhender l’espace, dans lequel ils évoluent. Un handicap tellement grave qu’y passer outre serait un abus (…)”, avance Moussa Dao, un père de famille aux 759-Logements de Yirimadio.

“Il faut redynamiser l’éducation des enfants dans les familles. Nous devons apprendre aux enfants à respecter les personnes âgées pour une meilleure éducation à l’école. Le plus grand besoin pour aujourd’hui n’est pas simplement la déclaration de l’intention d’une nouvelle, mais que l’on tienne à ce que la scolarisation des enfants ne soit plus une utopie”, poursuit Adama Diarra de Banankabougou.

Et déjà, plusieurs parents plaident  pour un enseignement technique et professionnel généralisé, un accès aux études supérieures, ouvertes en pleine égalité à toutes et à tous, en fonction de leur mérite, car dit-il, l’éducation constitue le véritable catalyseur de développement durable d’un pays.

“Parler d’éducation au Mali renvoie à un faible taux de scolarisation. Beaucoup d’enfants ne jouissent pas, malheureusement, de ce droit fondamental, reconnu par la Convention internationale relative aux droits de l’enfant”, souligne-t-il.

Selon ses explications, le comportement des enfants d’aujourd’hui est caractérisé par un déficit de qualité de l’éducation, un manque de gouvernance ainsi qu’un rendement interne et externe, inefficace et inefficient.

Source of the notice: https://maliactu.net/mali-education-le-comportement-des-enfants-au-mali-en-cause/

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I’m a Democrat and a Feminist. And I Support Betsy DeVos’s Title IX Reforms.

Lara Bazelon

By: Lara Bazelon.

There is an uncomfortable truth in the current system. No one wants to talk about it.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s proposed regulations overhauling how colleges handle sexual assault, which may become law in January, are far from perfect. But there is a big reason to support them: I’m a feminist and a Democrat, and as a lawyer I have seen the troubling racial dynamics at play under the current Title IX system and the lack of due process for the accused. Ms. DeVos’s proposals take important steps to fix these problems.

Consider this scenario: A young black man enrolls at a state university in California on an athletic scholarship. He’s the first person in his family to go to college. His teammate’s white ex-girlfriend matches with him on Tinder, comes to his apartment, has sex with him and, they both agree, returns three days later to have consensual sex.

Weeks later, the young woman, who has reconciled with her boyfriend, claims the Tinder match raped her during the first sexual encounter. The Tinder Match adamantly denies this. Her boyfriend, who is also black, says she is lying. There is no hearing, no chance for the accused to ask her questions.

But the Title IX investigator concludes that he committed sexual assault by finding her more credible than him under the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, under which the accuser must prove there is a greater than 50 percent chance her claim is true. He’s one of a few black students on campus and worries he may get killed after word spreads.

This happened in early 2018 to a client in the pro bono clinic I direct with my law students. We represent low-income students of color in California who face expulsion based on allegations of sexual assault.

We see what the Harvard Law School professor Janet Halley described in a 2015 law review article: “The general social disadvantage that black men continue to carry in our culture can make it easier for everyone in the adjudicative process to put the blame on them.” That’s why the DeVos regulations are a step forward.

Here is how they would work. Cross-examination would be conducted by an adviser for the accused (not, as some coverage has erroneously said, by the accused.) The accuser may sit in a separate room or participate via videoconference. The right to cross-examine goes both ways: The accused must also answer questions posed by the accuser’s adviser.

The changes would also do away with the problematic “single investigator system” where the person who interviews the witnesses and gathers the facts also serves as the judge and jury — a method the California State University System uses for its 485,000 students across 23 campuses.

The revisions are in line with court decisions that have characterized the current system as unfair. In August, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, ruling in a case from Michigan, declared that if a public university adjudicates what is essentially a “he said, she said” case, “the university must give the accused student or his agent an opportunity to cross-examine the accuser and adverse witnesses in the presence of a neutral fact-finder.” This year, two California appellate courts have overturned university decisions to suspend students for committing sexual assault because their procedures were so lacking in basic due process.

Meanwhile, my client has been barred from campus for more than nine months. (His suspension was based on this allegation and a second allegation by another accuser, which was found to be unsubstantiated by the evidence; that accuser is appealing.) The DeVos regulations and the two California appellate rulings are most likely his only hope of avoiding an expulsion that would tar him as a campus sex offender and most likely prevent him from getting into another school.

The current system of adjudicating sexual assault complaints is broken. Under the rules set up by the Obama administration, hundreds of colleges, including many in California, were placed under federal investigation and threatened with the loss of funding for failing to adequately investigate sexual assault complaints. The definition of what constituted an assault was vastly expanded. Nonpunitive resolutions such as mediation were forbidden, even if that is what both sides wanted.

The Obama rules were written to address a real problem: a tendency by colleges to sweep sexual assault allegations under the rug. But it also gave risk-averse schools incentives to expel the accused without any reliable fact-finding process.

The Office of Civil Rights does not collect data on race in Title IX cases, but the little we know is disturbing: An analysis of assault accusations at Colgate, for example, found that while only 4.2 percent of the college’s students were black in the 2012-13 school year, 50 percent of the sexual-violation accusations reported to the school were against black students, and blacks made up 40 percent of the students who went through the formal disciplinary process.

We have long over-sexualized, over-criminalized and disproportionately punished black men. It should come as no surprise that, in a setting in which protections for the accused are greatly diminished, this shameful legacy persists.

“I’ve assisted multiple men of color, a Dreamer, a homeless man and two trans students,” Professor Halley told me. “How can the left care about these people when the frame is mass incarceration, immigration or trans-positivity and actively reject fairness protections for them under Title IX?”

We can fix this. The DeVos reforms are in their public comment period, which gives people on all sides of this debate a chance to weigh in. That is a good thing. I know my allies on the left will criticize my position, but we cannot allow our political divisions to blind us to the fact that we are taking away students’ ability to get an education without a semblance of due process. What kind of lesson is that?

Source of the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/opinion/-title-ix-devos-democrat-feminist.html

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It stops the scary stuff’: pupils thrive with mindfulness lessons

Rob Walker

By: Rob Walker. 

Schools in deprived areas teach meditation to help those affected by violence

English Martyrs Catholic primary school in Litherland is a stone’s throw from one of Merseyside’s most notorious areas for gangs and gun crime, and most children at the school have been affected by the violence.

It is an unlikely place, perhaps, to find a thriving mindfulness teaching programme. But English Martyrs is one of a growing number of schools in deprived parts of Britain that are embracing meditation techniques to help vulnerable children cope.

“We see a lot of pressure put on children’s shoulders due to family circumstances, parents losing their jobs, financial stress, anxiety about crime, fear about homelessness,” said headteacher Lewis Dinsdale.

“Children internalise things, but what mindfulness has done is bring a number of quieter children to the surface – children who we’d never have known were going through such anxiety and stress at home. They haven’t wanted to speak to their mum and dad about it but it’s coming out in these sessions.”

One nine-year-old-boy confided that “petal breathing” – where the children open and close their fingers in time with their breath – helped him to forget about “all the scary stuff”.

“If I concentrate on my breathing, the worrying thoughts just go ‘pop’ and disappear,” he said.

Nationally, the Mindfulness in Schools Project said it had trained nearly 2,000 teachers this year, a jump of 40% on last year, and much of that growth came from schools with higher than average proportions of vulnerable children.

But for cash-strapped schools, it’s not cheap. Dinsdale said that he had to find £2,500 to train one member of staff. “As a head teacher you’re always looking at the bottom line, and that’s a lot of money,” he said.

The investment had paid off, he said, not just helping with children’s mental health but improving their academic performance too. He described how some children used to have panic attacks when sitting Sats. One girl had been physically sick on her test paper. He was critical of Ofsted inspectors for not being more tuned in to the benefits of mindfulness. “It’s frustrating because it isn’t a box that they have to tick,” he said.

English Martyrs headteacher Lewis Dinsdale is enthusiastic about the benefits of meditation for young children.
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 English Martyrs headteacher Lewis Dinsdale is enthusiastic about the benefits of meditation for young children.

Dinsdale has been so convinced by the positive effect that the school has now introduced mindfulness workshops for parents too. “Some mums and dads are at breaking point and they’re taking it out on the children. They don’t know who to turn to,” he said.

Steele said children at his school were probably among the most difficult young people to care for because they were used to pushing people away. Mindfulness, though, had built their self-esteem and was now a hugely positive force in their lives.

“It’s helping them to engage with the present rather than worrying about the future or blaming the past for everything,” he said.

Many of the teenagers have missed years of schooling; most have never sat exams before. He said that before mindfulness became part of the curriculum, they would do everything they could to avoid taking tests.

“They would just run around school slapping people, calling them Muppets, ripping paper, just really low-level behaviour,” he said.

That type of disruptive behaviour has not gone away, but it has tailed off. It happened because they were scared of failure, he said. That had been their life experience. “But showing them how to do meditation is helping them learn about relaxation, it’s given them a confidence they never had.”

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