More Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on education are expected to be inked between Qatar and Malaysia in the coming days, according to the Southeast Asian nation’s ambassador Ahmed Fadil bin Shamsuddin. He was speaking after opening the Study in Malaysia counselling session at Movenpick Hotel yesterday.
Recalling the visit of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to Malaysia last year, Shamsuddin said a series of initiatives, including those in education, were launched immediately afterwards and some MoUs were reached between the two countries. Malaysian students could avail of scholarships to pursue education at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, he said.
Yesterday, Malaysian educational authorities had meetings with the Qatar’s Minister for Education and Higher Education HE Mohamed Abdul Wahed Ali al-Hammadi and other senior officials and discussed the possibility for more MoUs. Ambassador Shamsuddin said their government, headed by Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamed, is committed to the vision of turning Malaysia into a high-quality education destination for students from across the world. “Our Ministry of Education and other educational agencies continue to monitor and ensure that Malaysian higher educational institutions adhere to the highest educational standards,” he said.
While answering a query, the ambassador said in some of the government-run universities in Malaysia, there are a few scholarships for international students, based on their academic performance.
Source of the notice: https://www.gulf-times.com/story/605205/Malaysia-expects-more-education-tie-ups-with-Qatar
Hoda Samra, porte-parole de l’agence onusienne au Liban, fait le point sur l’impact, pour les réfugiés dans le pays, de la réduction drastique du financement américain.
En juillet dernier, l’Unrwa, qui emploie 20 000 personnes au Proche-Orient, annonçait le licenciement de 250 employés à Gaza et en Cisjordanie occupée. Et ce après la forte réduction de l’aide américaine qui a chuté de 360 millions de dollars en 2017 à seulement 60 millions pour l’année 2018. Résultat, le 8 août, des employés de l’agence onusienne occupaient partiellement le QG de l’organisation à Gaza, un mouvement qualifié de « mutinerie » par la direction locale de l’Unrwa. Ces développements surviennent après les révélations du magazine américain Foreign Policy, le 4 août, sur le contenu d’un courriel envoyé le 11 janvier dernier par Jared Kushner, conseiller et gendre du président américain Donald Trump, au représentant spécial du président américain pour les relations internationales, Jason Greenblatt, et à d’autres diplomates américains actifs sur les dossiers du Proche-Orient : « Il est important de poursuivre un effort sincère et honnête pour interrompre les activités de l’Unrwa », disait-il, poursuivant que « cette agence perpétue le statu quo, (qu’)elle est corrompue, inefficace et n’aide pas à la paix ».
Malgré ces attaques, le commissaire général de l’Unrwa, Pierre Krähenbühl, annonçait hier que les 711 écoles de l’Unrwa au Liban, en Jordanie, en Syrie, à Gaza et en Cisjordanie incluant Jérusalem-Est ouvriront leurs portes « à temps », à la prochaine rentrée scolaire. Les fonds d’urgence collectés ne permettent d’assurer les services d’assistance aux réfugiés palestiniens « que jusqu’à fin septembre », a-t-il néanmoins averti lors d’une réunion extraordinaire de la Commission consultative de l’Unrwa, à Amman. Dans ce contexte, il a annoncé des « mesures robustes pour sauvegarder la situation financière de l’agence », basées « sur des réformes et sur l’identification des efficacités », avant d’insister sur « l’important mandat de l’Unrwa de préserver la dignité des réfugiés palestiniens ».
L’Orient-Le Jour a contacté le bureau régional de l’Unrwa au Liban, dirigé par Ibrahim el-Khatib, afin de connaître les répercussions de cette crise sur l’aide apportée aux réfugiés palestiniens du Liban. Hoda Samra, porte-parole de l’agence onusienne au Liban, fait le point sur la question.
Quel est le budget annuel du bureau régional de l’Unrwa basé au Liban avant et après la décision américaine ? Quel est le budget de l’agence pour le Liban ? Qui sont les principaux donateurs actuels ?
Le budget global de l’Unrwa pour l’année 2018 s’élève à 1,397 milliard de dollars. Il est centralisé et redistribué de manière hiérarchisée aux domaines d’intervention, en fonction des besoins de santé, d’éducation, de secours, de services sociaux. Le budget pour le Liban est donc une partie du budget central et n’est pas estimé séparément.
Avant la Conférence ministérielle extraordinaire tenue à Rome le 15 mars 2018 (de soutien à l’Unrwa, NDLR), le déficit cumulé total était de 446 millions de dollars. Nos efforts globaux et notre campagne « Dignity is Priceless » (La dignité n’a pas de prix) ont permis à l’Unrwa d’obtenir un soutien supplémentaire considérable. De mars à juin 2018, l’Unrwa a réuni 238 millions de dollars de nouveaux fonds et avec la clôture de la conférence des donateurs de New York le 25 juin, le déficit de 446 dollars a été ramené à 217 millions de dollars. Une réalisation monumentale, mais nous sommes toujours en crise. Nous poursuivons nos efforts pour combler le déficit financier et assurer le financement nécessaire pour nos opérations en 2019. Et ce compte tenu que les principaux donateurs de l’Unrwa pour l’année 2018 sont l’Union européenne (100 millions USD), l’Arabie saoudite (100 millions USD), la Suède (65 millions USD), les États-Unis (60 millions USD), les Émirats arabes unis (50 millions USD) et le Qatar (50 millions USD).
Quel est l’impact de la décision américaine sur le bureau, les activités et le personnel local et régional de l’Unrwa au Liban ?
En dépit de cette crise financière sans précédent, l’Unrwa n’a pas réduit ses services aux réfugiés palestiniens au Liban. L’agence lutte pour éviter d’avoir à le faire. Elle intensifie ses efforts pour mobiliser des donateurs.
L’Unrwa a donc pris des mesures d’austérité. Au Liban, si l’effectif global du personnel a été maintenu, en dépit de la fermeture d’une centaine de postes liés à des projets, les augmentations de salaires du personnel de l’Unrwa ont été reportées. À l’échelle régionale, les employés retraités n’ont pas bénéficié d’extension de leur mandat. Les postes vacants n’ont pas été pourvus. Et les déplacements sont désormais limités.
Combien de réfugiés palestiniens dépendent de l’Unrwa aujourd’hui, au Liban et dans la région ? Cette aide est-elle menacée ? Quel est l’impact de la crise sur les réfugiés ?
Au Liban, c’est l’enseignement qui est aujourd’hui en danger, plus particulièrement les services d’enseignement primaire, préparatoire et secondaire offerts à environ 37 000 enfants réfugiés palestiniens inscrits dans 66 écoles, dont environ 5 500 enfants palestiniens réfugiés de Syrie (PRS). Est également menacé l’enseignement professionnel et technique d’un millier d’étudiants. Les étudiants PRS sont bien logés et intégrés dans les écoles de l’agence au Liban. Ils sont engagés avec les réfugiés de Palestine dans des activités scolaires et parascolaires, récréatives, sportives et psychosociales. Ils pourraient faire les frais du déficit financier de l’Unrwa. L’assistance médicale fournie à près de 160 000 patients par an est aussi menacée, ainsi que les soins de santé secondaires et tertiaires financés par l’organisation dans les hôpitaux conventionnés, de même que le soutien financier à plus de 61 000 réfugiés vivant sous le seuil de pauvreté.
À plus large échelle, le manque de financement met en péril tous les services fournis par l’Unrwa et pourrait avoir un impact considérable sur la vie quotidienne de millions de réfugiés palestiniens vulnérables en Jordanie, en Syrie, au Liban, à Gaza et en Cisjordanie, incluant Jérusalem-Est. À commencer par l’accès à l’éducation de base pour 526 000 garçons et filles dans 711 écoles de l’organisation. Sont également menacés l’aide alimentaire d’urgence et financière à 1,7 million de réfugiés palestiniens extrêmement vulnérables, ainsi que l’accès aux soins de santé primaires et prénataux pour 3 millions de réfugiés. Sans oublier que cette crise représente une atteinte à la dignité et la sécurité humaine de 5,3 millions de réfugiés qui ont enduré 70 ans d’injustice et d’incertitude.
L’Unrwa a-t-elle un plan B, si les États-Unis maintiennent leur décision ?
Le commissaire général, Pierre Krähenbühl, a clairement annoncé que l’organisation travaillera sans relâche pour veiller à ce que les services ne soient pas interrompus. Mais la tâche est énorme parce que le déficit de financement est énorme. Nous avons lancé une campagne mondiale #Dignity_Is_Priceless pour atteindre d’autres donateurs non traditionnels, des organisations caritatives islamiques, des fondations et des particuliers.
L’Unrwa est-elle en danger aujourd’hui ?
Le mandat de L’Unrwa est fixé par l’Assemblée générale des Nations unies, dont les membres appuient largement la mission humanitaire et de développement de l’agence. Ils rendent aussi hommage à notre contribution indispensable à la paix et à la sécurité, avec certaines des communautés les plus marginalisées du Moyen-Orient. L’Unrwa continue de bénéficier d’un large soutien parmi ses membres. Ni elle ni aucun État membre de l’ONU ne peut modifier unilatéralement son mandat. Cela ne peut être fait que par l’Assemblée générale en tant qu’organisme. En attendant, nous continuerons à mettre en œuvre le mandat avec les ressources disponibles.
Source des nouvelles: https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1130216/au-liban-cest-lenseignement-qui-est-aujourdhui-en-danger-avertit-lunrwa.html
Education has been at the forefront of the political battles and conflicts that have plagued Afghanistan over the past few decades.
Changing political ideologies have taken a toll on all students as the entire Afghan education system including its staff, buildings, curricula, and attendance, was wiped out.
The current Afghan government has made service delivery a priority to promote social cohesion and trust in public institutions and pave the way for growth and jobs.
But despite these efforts, Afghanistan has been experiencing increased fragility.
The report Afghanistan: Promoting Education During Times of Increased Fragility provides an up-to-date analysis of the Afghan education sector, including the use of public money spanning over a period of six years.
Further to that, The report offers new insights on the performance of the education system and recommends reforms to improve learning outcomes and maximize public expenditures.
Key Findings
Afghanistan has made great strides in improving access and enrollment in primary schools, but access outcomes are not equitable. In 2016, out of a population of 34.66 million, more than 9.2 million Afghan youths and children were enrolled in school, representing a 9-fold growth since 2001. But provincial analysis shows a high proportion of out-of-school children, including girls exceeding 50 percent in 15 of the 34 provinces. Rural children and youth are 10 percent more likely to be out of school compared to the national average.
There is also a big gap between enrollment and attendance, witnessed by the fact that nearly half of enrolled students do not show up regularly at school. In Afghanistan, schools typically keep a student on the enrollment rolls for three years after the student stops attending. These are called “permanently absent” students and these numbers have implications for calculating unit costs per student as they are calculated based on official enrollment figures.
In addition to considerable access challenges, the education system in Afghanistan is facing a learning crisis. Many young Afghans do not know how to read and write. Only half of the population between the ages of 15 and 24 is literate. Other factors contributing to low learning outcomes and thus the learning crisis include the low qualification of teachers and inadequate learning environment, with the teacher force remaining generally underqualified.
Education spending in Afghanistan has reduced over the past five years; only considerable donor financing has kept the sector afloat to deliver basic services.However, substantial resources are needed to prepare for the increase in students attending secondary education. Despite enrollment growth, education spending in Afghanistan has declined over time as a proportion of the government budget. During the period of 2010-2015, thanks to the growing economy, the total government budget tripled, but this growth did not translate into a larger share of the budget being allocated for education.
Although Afghanistan’s average education spending is higher than education expenditures in comparable countries, due to the lack of or inefficient use of resources, the country’s current spending trajectory is not sufficient to support expected enrollment growth, particularly in lower and upper secondary education. There are significant challenges that the country must overcome to ensure that funding is maintained at an adequate level. Without new resources or improvements in the efficient and effective use of available resources, the current system would not be able to support (expected) student growth.
Unit cost analysis, on its surface, does not suggest that there is significant waste at any particular subsector. However, it is important to remember that there is a significant gap between attendance and enrollment rates. Adjusting this unit cost using attendance rates instead of enrollment rates, Afghanistan spends about 25 percent of per capita gross domestic product (GDP). This is higher than most low-income countries for which data exist. Higher education unit costs are closer to the low-income country averages: 141 percent of per capita income in Afghanistan compared to 125 percent across low-income countries. Other sources of inefficiency include low budget execution, especially in capital projects, high overhead spending and thus few resources for learning materials.
The benefit incidence analysis shows that public spending across all education levels, from primary school to higher education, benefits more children from higher income quintiles.Among primary school students, children from the highest income quintile constitute one-fourth of all students while students from the lowest income quintile account for only 15 percent. The bottom two income quintiles combined represent 26 percent of students at the lower secondary level (compared to the top quintile students that account for nearly a third of all students). At the upper secondary level, the bottom two quintiles can claim only a fifth of the students, and at the university level, only 12 percent. More than half the students who attend university are from the higher income quintile in the country.
Recommendations
To improve the performance and equity of the education sector, Afghanistan must reform the sector policies and funding priorities. Afghanistan should target investments towards improving equity. Given that poor learning conditions are linked to repetition, attrition and dropping out, Afghanistan must invest in improving the quality of education by increasing spending on teaching and learning materials.
Expand/stabilize access and attendance through community-based education, especially in rural and conflict-affected areas where school attendance comes at a considerable risk.However, given the variety of approaches and costs, designing a harmonized and cost-effective package of services should be a priority.
Develop a long-term needs projection for the education budget.Afghanistan must focus on developing multi-year budget projections adjusted for the current and future needs of the education system. As the pressure for expanding school infrastructure at the national level slows down over time with the eventual reduction in the school-age population, long-term budgeting should consider an increasing need for school repairs and maintenance as well as much needed school materials and supplies.
Make better use of the existing budget structure and the information systems for more transparency on allocation and use of public resources.Analyses of education sector performance and its financing point to the necessity to strengthen the comprehensiveness of data provided through the multiple management information systems. Institute integrated information management systems for better monitoring and reporting on outcomes and evaluation.
Source of the review: https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/afghanistan-promoting-education-during-times-increased-fragility
L’Unesco entend faire de la reconstruction de Mossoul, la deuxième ville d’Irak, une démonstration de la force du multilatéralisme, à l’heure où son principe est «parfois remis en cause», a déclaré lundi sa directrice générale, Audrey Azoulay.
Basée à Paris, l’organisation des Nations unies pour l’éducation, la science et la culture, est chargée notamment de choisir et protéger les sites culturels ou naturels à «valeur universelle exceptionnelle».
Il y a un peu moins d’un an, le retrait des Etats-Unis et d’Israël, qui accusaient l’Unesco de parti pris contre l’Etat hébreu, a porté un coup à l’organisme fondé à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et plongé dans l’incertitude sa mission de financement.
Bien que les missions de l’agence échappent pour la plupart aux polémiques, l’organisme a été miné ces dernières années par des différends internes entre les 195 pays membres, des tensions qui ont paralysé son travail, notamment en Israël et dans les Territoires palestiniens.
Audrey Azoulay, nommée directrice générale peu après la sortie des Etats-Unis de l’organisation, entend calmer la tempête en revenant à ses missions fondamentales.
La reconstruction de Mossoul, ancien fief de l’Etat islamique en Irak, où les djihadistes ont détruit des sites remarquables comme la grande mosquée Al Nouri et son minaret penché, sera au centre de cette stratégie.
«A l’heure où le multilatéralisme est parfois remis en cause, l’objectif et l’ampleur de cette initiative – «faire revivre l’esprit de Mossoul» – démontre à mon sens tout l’intérêt des organismes multilatéraux comme l’Unesco,» a déclaré la directrice générale à Reuters, avant l’ouverture d’une conférence sur le sujet à Paris.
VALEURS UNIVERSELLES
Avec le gouvernement irakien, l’Unesco espère devenir le principal coordinateur de la reconstruction des monuments emblématiques de la ville millénaire située sur les rives du Tigre, détruits lors des combats qui ont opposé les djihadistes aux forces de la coalition internationale soutenue par les Etats-Unis.
«Nous mobilisons et coordonnons la communauté internationale autour des valeurs universelles d’humanité, là-même, en Irak, où celles-ci ont été bafouées», a souligné Audrey Azoulay, qui entend «restaurer le tissu social, éducatif et culturel» de la ville, sa diversité, notamment par des programmes de prévention de l’extrémisme.
Le gouvernement irakien estime à au moins deux milliards de dollars (1,7 milliard d’euros) le montant de l’aide nécessaire à la reconstruction de Mossoul. La reconstruction de la Mosquée sunnite Al Nouri bénéficiera pour l’heure d’un financement de 50 millions de dollars des Emirats arabes unis.
Deux églises chrétiennes ainsi qu’un temple yézidi seront aussi reconstruits, tout comme le marché central de la ville et sa bibliothèque.
Mais les tensions politiques à Bagdad depuis les élections législatives du 12 mai, les heurts récents à Bassorah, dans le sud de l’Irak et la persistance de la menace liée à l’EI jettent une ombre sur la faisabilité du projet.
«Nous avons bien entendu pleinement conscience des spécificités de Mossoul et des difficultés sur le terrain (…) Mais c’est justement parce que la situation est encore fragile que nous devons agir», assure Audrey Azoulay.
Sourche of the review: https://www.boursorama.com/actualite-economique/actualites/la-reconstruction-de-mossoul-erigee-en-symbole-par-l-unesco-2e365c3280d7999e730a2afb6e2d0c61
Kinsley Academy may officially be less than three years old, but its redbrick buildings stand as a reminder that there has been a primary school here, serving this rural, former mining community in West Yorkshire, for well over 100 years. Jade Garfitt didn’t hesitate to send her son, aged five, to the school: Kinsley born and bred, she felt she’d got an excellent education there herself.
But since he started she has become increasingly concerned. “He’s received one piece of homework this academic year,” she tells me over a cup of tea in the community cafe across the road. “He’s only done PE once since November. At one point, his class went two weeks without having their reading books changed. If you tried to say, ‘Look, there’s issues here’, you’d be shooed away.”
She says her son was for months taught by a revolving door of supply teachers. “They never introduced themselves. We never knew their name. The children were really unsettled, crying, not wanting to go to school.”
Kinsley is part of a wave of schools that have converted into academies – state-funded but independent of local authority control. In 2015, it left the auspices of Wakefield council to become Kinsley Academy, joining one of the hundreds of charitable companies the government calls “multi-academy trusts”, which between them run thousands of schools across England. This is a key plank of the government’s schools strategy under which high-performing schools in each trust help the struggling ones improve.
But in Kinsley, the reverse has happened. Lauded by Ofsted a few months before it joined the Wakefield City Academies Trust, Kinsley has seen standards plummet to well below the national average. “I’ve had to go to teachers to ask for homework. I’ve had to argue with them to change my son’s reading books. I’ve taught him all his times tables at home,” Sarah Jones, who has two children at the school, tells me.
Jade and Sarah are just two of thousands of parents in West Yorkshire affected by a large-scale educational failure, whose ripples have been felt far beyond Kinsley. In fact, their worries are being echoed across England amid growing concern that something may be seriously amiss with the government’s academies experiment.
In July 2016, the Education Funding Agency investigated the trust. Its draft report, leaked to the TES, found that its interim chief executive, the businessman Mike Ramsay, had paid himself £82,000 over a three-month period. It concluded that the trust was in an “extremely vulnerable position as a result of inadequate governance, leadership and overall financial management”. Later that year, it was reported that the trust had paid almost £440,000 to IT and admin companies owned by Ramsay and his daughter.
The trust was nevertheless allowed to carry on. Then, in September last year, it suddenly announced it would be looking for new sponsors for all 21 of its schools – but not before it had transferred more than £1.5m of reserves from its schools to its central coffers, entirely permissible in the current system. Some of this was funds raised by parents. It’s not clear whether any of this money will be left when the trust winds up, or whether those schools will see it again.
Kinsley Academy a member of the Wakefield City Academies Trust, West Yorkshire. Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer
“The collapse of Wakefield City Academies Trust has sent shockwaves through our area,” says the local Labour MP Jon Trickett, who has for months been seeking answers from the government. “For many parents, it has been disturbing to find that their children’s futures could be threatened by the recklessness of people with very limited educational experience.”
Wakefield City is one in a series of high-profile failures of trusts forced to give up all their schools. The magazine Schools Week reported just last week that Bright Tribe, the trust with the lowest-performing secondary schools in the country, would also be closing and handing back its 10 schools.
Are these failures the inevitable consequence of a quasi-market system, predicated on the idea of takeovers? Or a sign of something deeply rotten at the heart of the government’s flagship education policy?
Academies have been a jewel in the education policy crown for both Labour and Conservative governments in the past 25 years. According to Professor Becky Francis, director of the Institute of Education at University College London, Labour’s academies programme was “focused on the revitalisation of schooling as an engine of social mobility in deprived areas”. She says the idea of bringing in business and philanthropic sponsors – including big names such as the London-based French financier Arpad Busson – “not just for money but for expertise” was controversial from the start.
But although the Labour government hugely talked up its academies programme, there were only around 200 of them – 1% of all English schools – by the time it left office in 2010. It was Michael Gove, the incoming Conservative education secretary, who put turbo boosters under the policy. By the time he left the job in 2014, the number had rocketed to almost six in 10 secondary schools, and one in five primaries.
What drove this? Not the evidence, according to Francis. Even as the explosion was taking off, “the DfE’s own evidence showed there was hardly any difference in outcomes between academies and local authority schools, once you controlled for their pupil intakes,” she says. She puts it down to “a strong ideological dislike of local authority influence, and a faith in autonomy and marketisation”.
The first academy chains were born out of the Labour government’s effort to introduce more stability into the system when it realised that there were significant risks to setting up independent, state-funded schools. They were embraced by the coalition government for similar reasons.
Mark Lehain, interim director of New Schools Network, is a champion of this model. “In Bedford, where I used to teach, there were failing local authority schools left to fail generation after generation of kids,” he says. For him, a big advantage of academy chains is that you can remove a school from a failing trust and give it to one better placed to turn it around.
There’s also an intuitive advantage to the chains: if someone is running one school brilliantly, isn’t it a waste not to get them involved in running more? “If you’ve got a school that’s functioning well you can develop a group of schools that can learn and build from that,” says Sam Freedman, a former special adviser to Gove.
That’s the theory. The problem is that it hasn’t quite happened like that in practice. There have been several studies in the past few years that have invariably reached similar conclusions: there doesn’t appear to be an inherent benefit to a school being run by an academy chain instead of a local authority. “There are a handful of trusts achieving amazing things, but a much longer tail of trusts performing really poorly,” says Francis. Her analysis shows six in 10 academy chains have below-average attainment for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
What’s gone wrong? “I think there was certainly a mistake in the early days of the coalition, where we let so many schools convert at once, and allowed some chains to build too fast and unsustainably,” Freedman says of his time at the DfE. According to the Commons public accounts committee, there were simply too few checks on schools wanting to become academies: the government rejected just 13 out of more than 2,000 applications in three years. Trusts haven’t had to prove themselves before taking on new schools in difficult straits: Wakefield City Academies Trust took over 14 schools in special measures in under three years. “There was a period after 2011 where the academy system felt like the wild west, with big personalities coming in and changing things with little educational justification,” says Francis.
Some of those personalities took big financial liberties, paying themselves far in excess of what a local authority head could earn, and spending taxpayer cash on services provided by companies linked to themselves or family members.
President Barack Obama and David Cameron at Ark Globe Academy in south London, 2011. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images
“In the case of Wakefield City Academies Trust, related-party transactions look like a convenient way to sidestep laws that prevent people profiting from schools,” says Trickett. “If the reports of financial problems at other chains are true, the government may find its plans to give trusts millions to expand have the effect of pouring water into a leaky bucket.”
Once a school joins a trust, there’s no going back: its reserves and buildings are absorbed into the legal entity of the trust. “If a school thinks it is getting poor services from its academy trust, there isn’t much it can do about it,” says Laura McInerney, former editor of Schools Week.
The only way out is in the case of serious failure. But that can take a long time to get noticed. Parents are often the first to spot it, but it can be hard for them to be heard. Even MPs can meet a wall of silence. “A culture of secrecy prevailed,” says Trickett. “The letters I wrote to the trust elicited wholly inadequate responses.”
Even when failure is eventually recognised, finding a trust to take over struggling schools can be difficult. The government has no power to compel trusts to take over schools. Lots of these schools will also have serious financial problems, whether as a result of mismanagement, falling pupil rolls, or long-running unmanageable PFI contracts. This makes them an unattractive proposition to other trusts, who themselves have to stay afloat at a time when schools funding is getting tighter.
But takeover regardless remains the main school improvement game in town: since 2016, the government has required all schools rated “inadequate” to become academies. The pipeline of schools in limbo is growing: over six in 10 rated inadequate by Ofsted in 2016-17 had not opened as an academy nine months later.
The takeover process is overseen by eight regional school commissioners. “Parents have no right to a consultation on who should sponsor their school, let alone any kind of veto or vote,” says McInerney. “The meetings where decisions are made are secretive, with only the barest of minutes.”
Potential conflicts of interest abound within opaque, interconnected circles: the Conservative peer Lord Nash was for years a schools minister while chairing an academy chain accountable to the government department he helped to run.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that an incredible amount of time and energy – not to mention at least £745m, according to the National Audit Office – has been invested in a huge reorganisation that has delivered patchy benefits at best. “I fear this exclusive focus on structures has led to policymakers taking their eye off the ball in relation to the most important element of the education system, quality of teaching,” says Francis.
There are plenty of fixes on the table. McInerney thinks there should be a clampdown on high pay, a lock on school assets, and that local authorities should be able to spin out their own academy trusts. Others have suggested banning related-party transactions. The question is whether Theresa May’s government has the inclination or bandwidth to do any of this against the backdrop of Brexit.
As the summer holidays begin in Kinsley, Jade and Sarah tell me they are hopeful things will improve now that their children’s school has transferred from Wakefield City Academies Trust to a new trust. But could it all happen again somewhere else?
“No lessons have been learned,” says Laura McInerney. “Pressure is still being put on academy chains that are too small and fragile to take on board tricky schools. There are no consequences for people who flout financial regulations. It’s not a case of whether there’ll be further collapses, but simply of when and where.”
Trusts that failed the test
Ever since Tony Blair opened England’s first academy, the Business Academy Bexley, in 2002, these schools have been the Marmite proposition in education: loved by some, hated by others. It was under a Tory education secretary, Michael Gove, that their numbers really took off. In 2015, David Cameron, then prime minister, told his party conference that he wanted every school in England to be an academy by 2020. But the past two years have been marked by a series of high-profile failures.
July 2016
The Lilac Sky Schools Academy Trust is forced to give up its nine schools. Its accounts reveal that it used public funding to pay consultants more than £1,000 a day even as it was drawing on emergency public funding to ensure classrooms could open with basic equipment and furniture.
March 2017
The Education Fellowship trust, founded by Sir Ewan Harper, a key influencer of Tony Blair’s academies policy, says that it will be giving up its 12 schools. The move follows a series of damning Ofsted judgments and serious financial problems.
November 2017
The Wakefield City Academies Trust makes a shock announcement that it would be is pulling out of all 21 of its schools, having been plagued by questions over its finances. Revelations include the payment of more than £400,000 for services to companies connected with its chief executive and his daughter.
January 2018
The Perry Beeches Academy Trust, which David Cameron once praised as “a real success story”, says it will hand over its five schools after reports of financial mismanagement. The trust paid an additional salary of £120,000 over two years to its former chief executive on top of his £80,000 annual salary.
Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jul/22/academy-schools-scandal-failing-trusts
Israel’s passage of the nation-state law brought another round of barrages across the Atlantic underlining the growing alienation of the world’s two largest Jewish communities. The issues are increasingly familiar: American pluralism versus Jewish exceptionalism, Orthodox versus Liberal, nationalism versus enlightenment.
Yes, we have a problem. Israel and American Jewry are growing apart from one other. It would be wrong to put the responsibility of this growing schism only on the Israeli government, or Israeli civil society, since Diaspora denominations have changed, too. The American Reform movement, for example, unilaterally introduced patrilineal descent, redefining Jewishness.
These tensions were aired in Ronald Lauder’s recent op-ed in The New York Times, in which the president of the World Jewish Congress argued that the nation-state law betrayed Israel’s universalist values and that the country’s religious establishment was alienating non-Orthodox Jews in the Diaspora. Reading between the lines, I sensed the anguish of a father and grandfather who sees his children distancing themselves from their people and ancestral homeland.
Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education and Diaspora minister, responded to Lauder’s op-ed with one of his own in the same newspaper, pushing back in defense of Israel’s right to pass such laws. Bennett seems uninterested in bettering relations with the Diaspora — in direct contradiction to his title and portfolio. He did not understand that the main question posed by Lauder was not “who is right and who is wrong,” but what can we do to minimize the divide between Israel and American Jewry.
As American Jews are grappling with the direction their country is taking, and struggling to identify with a non-utopian Israel, the search for fresh waters from the well of our Jewish sources is called for.
Liberal Diaspora denominations count fewer followers in the U.S., and the Jews there are being assimilated into an increasingly secular country. The empty synagogues will have to be replaced with the classrooms of Jewish schools. The challenge of giving over 1 million Jewish children a minimal Jewish education can and should be tackled if the government of Israel will take a lead and major Jewish philanthropists will join.
In the beginning of the 1990s, when the Jewish Zionist establishment vehemently opposed the idea of establishing schools in the former Soviet Union, Lauder was among the first to understand that Jewish continuity, especially in the secularized post-Soviet countries, can only be guaranteed by formal Jewish education. The establishment of two dozen schools in Eastern and Central Europe in the beginning of the ’90s by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation guaranteed a positive Jewish identity for tens of thousands of children of Jewish families.
(Full disclosure: My wife, Dara, is the head of the Lauder Etz Chaim School in Moscow, the largest Jewish day school in the former Soviet Union with currently almost 600 children.)
Having the honor to meet and speak to many of the thousands of graduates of our schools in Moscow, I can attest to the impact on the identity and personal commitment to the Jewish cause of the students of the Lauder school. These children’s lives are forever changed.
What Lauder has achieved in Central and Eastern Europe should be applied now in the United States, where the continuity of the largest community outside of Israel is in danger.
Communities such as the United Kingdom, Australia and France have achieved great strides in recent years toward this goal. The great majority of their children receive a formal Jewish education; there is no reason why this should not be attainable in the U.S.
Every Diaspora Jew is the carrier of dual identities — the national one and the Jewish one — trying to juggle and reconcile and build a symbiosis. Trying to strike the balance between enlightenment and tradition has not been easy.
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, in his latest book “Enlightenment Now,” argued that the Enlightenment improved humanity by replacing “dogma, tradition and authority with reason, debate and institutions of truth-seeking.” Yoram Hazony of The Herzl Institute, in a response to Pinker, said that if the response of the Jews to the Enlightenment had been absolute, then the Zionist movement — which drew its passion and strength from the vast sources of Jewish tradition and history — would never have been born and we wouldn’t have had a Jewish state today.
We as a people are out of balance. The world is out of balance. The climate is out of balance, and geopolitics are increasingly shrill and simplistic, polarizing friends and family members. Let us try to regain some balance and perspective for the sake of our future, of our children — before it is too late.
Source of the article: https://www.jta.org/2018/08/20/news-opinion/jewish-education-can-help-bridge-israel-diaspora-divide
Asia/China/05.09.18/Por Kelly Olsen/Source: www.cnbc.com.
Chinese education stocks in Hong Kong came under pressure on concerns the central government is considering limited acquisitions.
Draft legislation for a new education law released Friday «spooked the market.»
The Chinese education sector is growing rapidly.
Stock prices in Chinese education companies listed in Hong Kong have come under pressure after the central government issued a draft proposal that would tighten regulations.
Shares in a number of the companies plunged on Monday, with some closing nearly 40 percent lower, though they began clawing back some of the losses in Tuesday trading.
Prompting the declines was a release Friday from China’s Ministry of Justice regarding draft legislation for changing a law on private education that some saw as potentially instituting curbs on mergers and acquisitions activity in the space.
«Imprecise terms and language in the recently reviewed draft legislation for the amendment of the Promulgation of Private Education Law» were blamed for unnerving investors, Jefferies’ stocks analyst Johnny Kin Man Wong said in a Monday report.
Confusion largely centered on one section of the draft that suggested larger listed companies that control more than one school could be banned from engaging in mergers and acquisitions of non-profit private schools.
«We believe this is the article that has spooked the market as it is new and on the surface appears to block the route for M&A by listed companies,» Wong said.
He stressed, however, the article lacks an exact definition of group-based education and that was likely to be remedied.
‘Clarify the definition’
«We expect the next updated version of the draft to clarify the definition,» Wong said, stressing that education companies are expected to have their opinions heard.
Chinese education stocks in Hong Kong rebounded somewhat on Tuesday after the steep declines the day before.
Wisdom Education International gained 17 percent after Hong Kong trading began, while China New Higher Education Group rose 10 percent after skidding more than 30 percent on Monday.
Other companies also recovered some of the previous day’s losses. Tianli Education International gained a more modest 1.5 percent.
The Chinese education space has been closely followed by some investors, and Deloitte in a 2016 report painted a rosy picture of the sector’s future.
«China’s education industry is ushering into its ‘golden age’ with expansion in terms of both industry size and market activity,» the report said.
The education sector in China is expected to grow to nearly 3 trillion yuan ($435 billion) in 2020 from 1.6 trillion yuan in 2015, the report said.
A key driver in the sector is early childhood education, which is set to get a boost from China’s relaxation of policies that had limited family sizes.
Source of the notice: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/14/chinese-education-stocks-in-hong-kong-hit-by-regulatory-concerns.html
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