Education

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UK announces major investments in future of African youth through education and voluntary family planning

Noticias

Africa/05.09.18/Source: www.gov.uk.

New UK aid programmes to help millions more young people to plan their families, stay in education and get better jobs

  • UK aid to help 5,000 young Kenyan girls who have dropped out of school due to early marriage, motherhood and gender-based violence get back into education
  • UK will also improve affordability and accessibility to voluntary family planning and vocational skills training for millions across Africa
  • This will save girls’ lives and allow young people to plan their families, stay in education and get better jobs to support Africa’s future prosperity

UK aid will help millions more young people across Africa to access vital family planning services, receive a quality education and help them get better-paid jobs, it was announced as the Prime Minister was in Kenya today (30 August 2018).

This will empower young people to have better control of their health and futures, allowing them to choose whether to have children and when, while tackling inequality and improving youth education and employment for a strong and prosperous continent.

New UK aid programmes through the Department for International Development will:

  • support up to 5,000 girls to start or get back into school for a brighter future – including girls who have dropped out due to early marriage or motherhood, or being the victim of gender-based violence – through UK aid’s new Leave No Girl Behind programme in Kenya;
  • help hundreds of thousands more Kenyans access to safe, voluntary modern contraception over the next five years – particularly young people who want but currently struggle to access family planning services;
  • help to create much needed, high quality jobs for young Kenyans by providing advice and grants to innovative start-ups or technology ventures that have most potential to create high numbers of jobs through the new Kenya Catalytic Jobs Fund;
  • launch the Women’s Integrated Sexual Health (WISH) programme that will ensure six million couples can use voluntary contraception every year of the programme, and prevent the deaths of around 20 women every day; and
  • launch a global Skills for Prosperity programme, including major investment to help young Africans access skills training and vocational courses focused on getting them into better paid, future-proof jobs in industries struggling with skills gaps.

Minister for Africa Harriett Baldwin said:

It is a tragedy that so many young girls are needlessly robbed of their education and career aspirations. We will only lift people out of poverty by ensuring that every child can access quality education, healthcare and employment regardless of circumstance or gender.

By tackling these issues together, UK aid will save countless girls’ lives, while allowing young people to plan their families, stay in education and get better jobs, building better lives for millions of young Africans for now and the future.

In Kenya, 18% of girls have had or are pregnant with their first child by the age of 19. Improved access to family planning services will empower girls and women to plan when or whether to have a child, giving them the opportunity to complete their education and pursue a career, while contributing to sustainable economic growth in Kenya. It will also save thousands of lives by averting preventable maternal deaths.

Leave No Girl Behind will tackle other common barriers to girls’ education by helping girls that cannot afford to go to school due to poverty or poor accessibility for girls with disabilities. Up to 1,000 of the girls supported through the programme in Kenya will have a disability.

Skills for Prosperity will not only improve employment rates among young people, including in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt, it will also strengthen core industries in those countries and allow them to trade more prosperously with the UK.

Kenya’s young tell us they want opportunities, choices and jobs; we want to empower them with the means to ensure greater prosperity for themselves, their families and their country. The Kenya Catalytic Job Fund will support better paid, sustainable employment for Kenya’s youth by providing technical advice and grants to innovative business ideas with high potential to create a large numbers of jobs. This will give the country’s young people opportunities to leave poverty behind and stimulate economic growth and investments that will benefit the UK too.

A huge number of African women want to use contraception but do not have access to it, with 58 million women in sub-Saharan Africa wanting to avoid or delay pregnancies. WISH will prioritise the poorest and most in need, particularly young and marginalised women, increasing the number of ways and places they can access the vital family planning services they need, and helping to avert tens of thousands of maternal deaths.

This will empower millions of women with control over their bodies and support the future prosperity of young people in some of the world’s poorest countries by allowing them to plan when to have children, stay in education and get better jobs, to contribute to their country’s economic development.

This is why, as part of the UK’s new and distinctive offer to work alongside, invest in and partner with African nations, we will be bringing in more specialist health advisers to work with African governments and civil societies to enable women and girls to access the voluntary family planning that is right for them.

Notes to editors

Leave No Girl Behind

  • Leave No Girl Behind is a UK aid project (up to £6.6 million) that will support up to 5,000 out-of-school girls get the vital education they need to lift themselves and their families out of poverty – and to play a transformational role in their communities and societies.
  • It will help an estimated 2,000 girls get back into mainstream primary or secondary school, and help give a further 3,000 girls education and training opportunities. Up to 1,000 of the girls supported by the project in Kenya will have disabilities.
  • The UK is also strengthening Kenya’s education system, through support to the Global Partnership for Education. This will make Kenya less dependent on aid, as it moves towards a modern partnership with the UK.
  • This is part of the UK’s commitment to ensure every girl across the globe can receive 12 years of quality education.
  • Getting girls into school, and then into good employment, allows them to play a transformational role lifting their communities out of poverty, growing their economies and shaping the future of their countries. Globally, if all women had a quality primary education we could:
  • Reduce maternal deaths by 2/3, saving 98,000 lives
  • Reduce the number of child deaths by 15%
  • Save 1.7 million children from stunting
  • Avert 14% of child marriages

Family Planning in Kenya

  • By the age of 19, 18% of girls in Kenya have had or are pregnant with their first child. Early pregnancy carries significant health risks and limits girls’ life choices and their ability to fulfil their potential.
  • The Government of Kenya recognises family planning as an essential tool in reducing poverty, particularly by stabilising population growth and allowing young people to choose when to finish school and get a job, which will help to stimulate economic growth and prosperity in Kenya.
  • The UK will provide £36 million between January 2019 and January 2024 to support the Government of Kenya to increase access to modern family planning services in 19 counties (out of 47) where fewer than 45% of women use any modern contraceptive. This will support at least 320,000 additional users of safe, voluntary, modern contraception in Kenya.

Kenya Catalytic Job Fund

  • Africa’s young people tell us exactly what they want: opportunities, choices and jobs. We want to empower them with the means to ensure greater prosperity for themselves, their families and their country.
  • The Kenya Catalytic Job Fund will invest £5 million over the next four years with a focus on creating jobs for young people in agriculture and manufacturing; for the most marginalised such as youth with disabilities; and those outside of the formal economy, such as in small-scale farming and microenterprises.
  • The programme will provide technical assistance and grants to test innovative business ideas with the most potential to create jobs at scale and remove barriers to growth, such as start-ups providing new solutions to unmet problems or technologies that will overcome current barriers to growth.

Skills for Prosperity

  • Countries with growing economies are often frustrated by a lack of skilled workers. Young people in these economies are at risk of being left disenfranchised and unemployed because they cannot access the skills they need to get quality jobs.
  • The UK is investing up to £75 million in the Global Skills programme to support nine countries to tackle the key skills gaps in their most important areas, which are holding back growth and prosperity. These countries will include Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
  • The programme will look to improve the affordability, quality, relevance and equity of Higher Education (HE) and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).

WISH

  • The UK is investing £200 million in a new flagship programme ‘WISH’ which will ensure three million extra girls, women and men, to consistently gain access to life-saving voluntary contraception in some of the world’s poorest countries.
  • Globally there are an estimated 214 million women who want to delay or prevent pregnancy but who are not able to access or use contraception. Unintended and early pregnancy is a key cause of high maternal death rates in Africa. Having access to contraception is critical for women continuing their education and being able to take up employment opportunities.
  • The programme will operate across at least 18 countries in Africa and Asia, to ensure previously unreached people, especially young and poorer women, are able to access contraception and have the choice on whether, when and how often to have children. This includes more accessible sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) sites, mobile clinics into rural and poorer areas, community outreach services and family planning commodities.
  • To ensure sustainability beyond the life of the programme, WISH will work with national governments to bolster their own capacity to provide longer-term services.
  • Voluntary family planning – with women’s choice at the centre – contributes to wider development by bringing down fertility rates. This could enable African countries to unlock economic growth and prosperity.

Source of the notice: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-announces-major-investments-in-future-of-african-youth-through-education-and-voluntary-family-planning

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Africa Now Has An Online Database With Research On Education Within The Continent

Farai Mudzingwa

By Farain Mudzingwa

The Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the University of Cambridge has partnered with ESSA (Education Sub Saharan Africa) to develop the online African Education Research Database (AERD).

What is this AERD?

AERD is a collection of research undertaken in the past decacde by scholars based in sub-Saharan Africa. It includes social science research, peer-reviewed articles, chapters, PhD theses and working papers identified through structured searches of academic and grey literature databases, expert consultation, and pearl-growing techniques (the act of using one relevant source, or citation, to find more relevant sources on a topic).

The database is searchable by country, research methods and keywords such as education, early childhood education, higher education and school feeding. The database contains about 2000 papers from 49 different countries.

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The database has 3 overarching aims;

  • Raising the visibility of African research
  • Consolidating the evidence base for policy and practice
  • Inform future research priorities and partnerships

Making sure people get to the research…

One of the biggest issues this database will address is that of visibility of research. A researcher at the REAL centre –Rafael Mitchell- alluded to this:

There are some existing inventories and databases for specific contexts but no central location to access [education] publications by African-based researchers, which has contributed to a lack of visibility and use of this research. We hope that the database will facilitate greater use of research written by those in African universities and research institutions to ensure it is drawn upon and cited, and to be used to influence policy and practice. This should also help to ensure that research by African-based researchers is taken into account in global debates. There is a lot of important work done by researchers in the region that is currently overlooked and undervalued.

Informing future research

AERD is also meant show the progress that has been made when it comes to African research. The database will help researchers and others to know what education research has already been conducted on Sub-Saharan Africa and identify gaps for more research.

A work in progress

Initial work on the database started in May 2017 and took around 12 months to complete as the database was launched in May this year. The document will continue to updated and more research files will be added to the database.

Source of the article: https://www.techzim.co.zw/2018/08/africa-now-has-an-online-database-with-research-on-education-within-the-continent/

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Nigeria: Herdsmen attacks have forced 20,000 children out of schools into IDP camps – SUBEB

Noticias

Africa/Nigeria/03.09.18/Source: www.pulse.ng.

Attacks by herdsmen have forced at least 20,000 schoolchildren out of their classroms with many of them ending up in camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), according to the Chairman of State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Reverend Philip Tachin.

While inspecting primary school projects that were constructed by the Benue State Government and the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) intervention fund, Rev. Tachin said the state houses at least 16,000 schoolchildren in IDP camps.

He said the destruction of schools by the attackers is presenting a huge challenge for the government.

He said, «20,000 children forced out of school while over 16,000 of these pupils are now housed in various Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps across the state.

«The renewed herdsmen attacks in 2018 also led to the complete destruction of structures in over 50 public primary schools in the affected areas and communities of the state.

«The development is quite a huge challenge for the state government, given the amount of resources that would be required to rebuild the affected structures.»

He assured that the state government is undeterred and will continue to execute rehabilitation projects to combat the problem.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Benue State this year alone as attacks mostly attributed to herdsmen grew as a result of an escalation of simmering tension with local farming communities.

Source of the notice: https://www.pulse.ng/news/local/herdsmen-have-forced-20-000-children-out-of-school-in-benue-id8804352.html

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Dozens of secondary schools exclude at least 20% of pupils

Frances Perraudin

By Frances Perraudin and Niamh McIntyre

Call for government to act after Guardian investigation reveals high suspension rates in England

The government has been urged to address “deeply concerning” rates of exclusion in England’s secondary schools after a Guardian investigation revealed dozens had suspended at least one in five of their pupils.

Of those 45 schools handing at least 20% of their pupils one or more fixed-period exclusion in 2016-17, the overwhelming proportion were academies, with one of them, the Outwood academy Ormesby in Middlesbrough, excluding 41%. Five were run by local authorities and six were free schools.

Fixed-period exclusions are when a pupil is formally suspended from school for a set time, usually up to three days. A student may have multiple exclusions in the same year.

Nine of the 45 schools were part of the Outwood Grange academy trust, a multi-academy trust that runs 30 schools across Yorkshire, the Humber and the east Midlands.

The national average of pupils receiving at least one suspension in the last academic year is 4.6%. Outwood academy Ormesby excluded 41% of pupils, giving out 2,405 fixed-period exclusions to 274 pupils in a single year.

Outwood academy Bishopsgarth, a 10-minute drive away in Stockton-on-Tees, had the second highest rate, excluding 34% of pupils last year. This amounted to 1,268 fixed-period exclusions given to 182 pupils.

A spokesman for the trust said it had taken over “some of the toughest schools in England” and repeatedly turned around their performance. He said that in many cases, the schools it had taken over had previously been excluding high numbers of children informally, meaning the increase in the number of official exclusions was misleading.

The trust said pupils at Outwood academy Ormesby had beaten the school’s GCSE record for the last three years and that the school was oversubscribed. It pointed to an Ofsted report that praised the school for “bringing about change and improvement successfully, and at remarkable speed”.

The trust also said Outwood academy Bishopsgarth had seen a 7% increase in what were already record GCSE results this year.

“Fixed-term exclusions are never issued for ‘minor’ incidents, but may result from a student’s poor choice of reaction or response to a reasonable request,” it said.

Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, said the fact that some schools were recording such high rates of suspension “should be a matter of huge concern to the government, and to the schools affected”.

Some people believe schools are increasingly “playing” the system – getting rid of students who might do badly in their GCSEs and compromise the school’s performance in league tables.

In June, an Ofsted investigation into the practice of “off-rolling” – where pupils disappear from the school register just before GCSEs – found that more than 19,000 pupils who were in year 10 in 2016 had vanished from the school roll by the start of year 11, the year when pupils sit their GCSEs.

Figures published by the Department for Education last month found that there were more than 40 permanent exclusions a day (total of 7,700) during the 2016-17 school year, compared with a little over 35 a day the previous year. Fixed-term exclusions increased by about 40,000, to a total of 382,000, meaning nearly one in 20 pupils were given a fixed-period exclusion in that school year.

In March the DfE launched a review into school exclusions, led by the former Conservative MP and children’s minister Edward Timpson. The government said the review would “explore how head teachers use exclusion in practice, and why some groups of pupils are more likely to be excluded”, but that it would not examine exclusion powers. It is expected to report by the end of the year.

The launch of the review came after Cathryn Kirby, Ofsted’s regional director for the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, wrote to secondary headteachers in the region to complain about the high rates of fixed-period.

“Schools should only ever use exclusions as a last resort,” she said. “If not properly applied, being removed from school can disrupt a child’s education and affect their future life chances.”

Secondary schools in Middlesbrough gave the highest number of fixed term exclusions of any local authority area in the last academic year, handing them to 11.67 pupils in 100. Doncaster and Barnsley also excluded more than one in ten pupils from secondary schools.

Yorkshire and the Humber saw the most fixed-term exclusions of any region in the country, with an overall rate of 5.8 per 100 pupils. Inner London had the second highest rate (5.3 in 100) and the north east the third highest (4.9 in 100).

South Leeds Academy, now operating as Cockburn John Charles Academy, came third on the list for rates of fixed-term exclusions, suspending 30% of their pupils in the last academic year. Outwood Academy Shafton, in Barnsley, came fourth, suspending 29.8%, and the Telford Park School in Shropshire, came fifth, suspending 28.1%.

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said that it was deeply concerning to hear that so many schools were excluding such high numbers of pupils.

“Real-terms funding cuts have forced schools to make behavioural and specialist learning support assistants redundant, many of whom supported pupils at risk of exclusion, including those with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND),” he said. “Alongside this, schools have lost external support because of the funding cuts to local authority specialist support services.

“The reasons for a huge variance in rates of permanent and fixed term exclusions need to be examined carefully. However, it is clear that the competitive and fragmented system produced by the academy reforms encourages schools to compete for the pupils most likely to get high grades and increase exclusions of pupils who may be more challenging to teach.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said the decision to exclude should be reasonable and fair, and that permanent exclusion should only ever be used as a last resort. “Statutory guidance also states that schools should consider the underlying causes of poor behaviour before excluding a pupil,” they said.

“While we know that there has been an increase in exclusions there are still fewer than the peak ten years ago. We have launched an externally led review to look at how exclusions are used and why certain groups are disproportionally affected.”

Source of the notice: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/aug/31/dozens-of-secondary-schools-exclude-at-least-20-of-pupils

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A New Push Is On for Afghan Schools, but the Numbers Are Grim

Mujib Mashal

By Mujib Mashal and Najim Rahim

Before the start of another Afghan school year, about 200 tribal elders in the southeastern district of Laja Mangal gathered in a schoolyard for an important declaration: Any family that did not send its children to school would be fined $70, about half a civil servant’s monthly salary.

The district of about 50,000 people had built seven schools over the past 15 years, yet it had struggled to attract students from the mountainous area where the Taliban also have influence. The elders, feeling old tribal customs were holding back their children, thought the drastic measure was necessary.

“They see those people who go to school and become important people in the government and international organizations, so they have tasted the value of education,” said Khayesta Khan Ahadi, who was the headmaster of the first school built in the district.

Mr. Ahadi said local Taliban, after outreach by the tribal elders, announced their support for the decision from the loudspeakers of local mosques.

The tribal elders’ decision has gained attention across Afghanistan not just because it could help more children get an education, but also because it comes at a time when many remain deprived. Violence and corruption have overshadowed what was once a remarkable success story.

3.5 million children are unschooled.

That 3.5 million figure is according to Unicef. Seventy-five percent of them are girls.

The reasons vary. Violence remains high and widespread. There are too few female teachers, and many families will only let girls be taught by women. For many, going to school means a walk of many miles each day.

In certain parts of the country enjoying relative peace, however, female enrollment seems higher than that of boys.

In the central Bamian Province, 58 percent of the 162,000 students are female, according to Ayyub Arvin, the provincial director of education.

1,075 schools remain closed.

The country’s Education Ministry says it has 17,500 schools across the country, but 1,075 remained shut last year, largely because of raging violence. The south of the country, where violence has been relentless over the past decade, has been disproportionately affected by the school closures.

Activists say the number of closed schools is even higher. Mattiullah Wesa, who leads the organization the Pen Path, said they have counted 1,600 shuttered schools.

Of Afghanistan’s approximately 400 school districts, there are 48 districts where not a single male student has graduated from high school in the past 17 years, Mr. Wesa said. There are around 130 districts from where not a single girl has graduated from high school in the same period, he added.

Nearly half of schools lack buildings.

A survey of 32 of the country’s 34 provinces by The New York Times shows close to half the schools lack buildings. Provincial officials in these areas reported that more than 7,000 schools either teach in open air or have worked out temporary arrangements for classes in rental homes.

The provinces of Ghor and Herat in the west, Badakhshan in the northeast, and Nangarhar in the east had the highest number of schools without buildings, each with at least 400.

“Even inside the city, and the centers of the districts, we have schools that lack buildings,” said Rohullah Mohaqeq, the provincial director of education in Badakhshan.

Corruption hits every level.

Despite huge donor investment in Afghan education, corruption remains one of the major causes for its abysmal infrastructure.

The country’s education system is marred by corruption — from the smallest procedures of modifying school certificates, to the appointment of teachers and the handling of school construction contracts — a damningreport by the country’s independent corruption monitor said last year. People seeking a teaching job could pay as much as a $1,000 in bribes, nearly five months’ salary, to secure a position.

Recently, the government has tried to tackle corruption in the hiring of teachers by introducing a more rigorous process through its civil service commission. The Education Ministry is the country’s largest civil service employer.

Corruption has also been seen as a major reason for discrepancies in enrollment numbers. The country’s previous government had claimed more than 11 million children were in school, with allotted resources often going into the pockets of local and central officials. But the new government has placed that number anywhere between 6.2 million to a little over 9 million.

Pressure on Taliban works, sometimes.

Across the country, as violence has become the daily reality, elders have tried to figure out local arrangements that would reopen schools.

“The good news is that the Taliban now want schools in their area of control because of local pressure,” said Dawood Shah Safari, the head of the education department in Helmand, whereas many as 30 school buildings are used as cover by fighters on both sides. “Villagers keep coming to me with letters of approval from the Taliban, asking us to open schools.”

In northeastern Warduj district, which is largely controlled by the Taliban, officials said 16 schools that had been closed for two years were reopening this spring after talks with the group.

The 13 schools in the Nawa district of Ghazni Province have been closed since 2001, with no child able to attend, according to Mujib-ur-Rahman Ansar, the provincial director of education. But recently, local elders convinced the Taliban to allow the schools to reopen. As many as 25,000 children could attend if the Taliban allow both boys and girls, Mr. Ansar said.

“I must tell you that there isn’t any professional teacher for these students,” Mr. Ansar said. “I will hire one to two teachers, and the guy may only be able to read and write, with a ninth or 10th grade education, not much more.”

Other times, Taliban still threaten.

Last week, as schools prepared to open in the northern province of Kunduz, the official ceremony in the capital city had to be shifted because of Taliban threats.

Only a quarter of Kunduz city’s 130 schools have opened their doors to students. The rest, even those under nominal government control, are waiting for the Taliban to give the green light.

The dispute seems to be over the mechanism of paying the teachers. The Taliban say they are not opposed to education but will keep the schools shut until the government changes the method of paying teachers from bank deposits to cash.

On Saturday, hundreds of teachers marched in Kunduz city, saying they hadn’t been paid for five months.

Mawlawi Bismillah, the Taliban’s head of education for Kunduz, said the group’s position was intended to reduce the headache for teachers, who need to make long trips to the provincial capital to withdraw their money. It’s easier if the money is delivered by middlemen, he said.

Government officials say the Taliban are pushing the change because they want a cut.

“They should come and monitor the payment process,” Mr. Bismillah said. “In our areas of control, we have very active attention and monitoring.”

Source of the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/world/asia/afghanistan-schools-taliban.html

 

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Transgender students in Japan break barriers to women’s colleges

Nikkei Asian Review

By Nikkei Asian Review

Prestigious Tokyo school sets example with new admissions policy for 2020

Women’s universities across Japan are gradually opening their doors to transgender students, reversing long-held policies of accepting only female applicants.

Ochanomizu University broke new ground on Tuesday, when it announced it would start enrolling transgender students in the year that begins in April 2020. Kimiko Murofushi, the university’s president, told reporters this is a «natural» decision in a diverse society.

Murofushi said the Tokyo school will revise its application qualifications to include «people who identify themselves as female,» in addition to «people who are listed as women on their family registers.» As recently as 2016 and 2017, the university had responded to inquiries about transgender admittance by saying it would accept only the latter.

Nevertheless, the school began to seriously consider changing the policy, as prestigious women’s universities in other countries have been doing so one after another. Now, Ochanomizu University’s move is expected to encourage other women’s colleges in Japan to accept students who were assigned the male gender at birth but identify as female.

Some universities are already headed in the same direction.

Ochanomizu University President Kimiko Murofushi, center, explains the decision to reporters in Tokyo on July 10. (Photo by Konosuke Urata)

In 2015, a transgender child expressed a desire to attend a junior high school affiliated with Japan Women’s University. Upon consideration, the university decided it was «too early to accept» the child. Yet, prompted by the case, the university set up a committee last year to consider admitting transgender students.

Tsuda University also set up a committee for the same purpose in 2017. Nara Women’s University is weighing the matter as well.

A panel of experts under the Science Council of Japan’s law committee pointed out last year that denying transgender students admission to girls’ schools and women’s universities constitutes «an encroachment on their rights to learn.» The panel includes representatives from women’s colleges.

Ochanomizu University said it will ask transgender students wishing to take the entrance exam to explain their identity in advance. The university will then check whether they meet the application requirements. The school plans to establish a new committee to work out the details of the system before formally changing the policy.

Itsuki Dohi, a 56-year-old transgender woman who teaches at a Kyoto Prefecture-run high school, has held meetings with transgender youths. She said Ochanomizu’s move is «significant because [transgender] students will also have their existence recognized.»

Of the students who attend the meetings, Dohi said: «I want to tell them that there will be no problem if transgender people enter universities.»

Source of the article: https://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Life/Transgender-students-in-Japan-break-barriers-to-women-s-colleges

 

 

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Education Watchdog Revokes License of Top Russian University

Noticias

Europa/Rusia/ 27.08.18/ Source: themoscowtimes.com.

A state education watchdog has revoked the accreditation of a prestigious Russian private university in what critics fear could further erode independent education in the country.

Founded in 1995 as a project to bring British and Russian education models together, the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, also known as Shaninka, reportedly boasts some of Russia’s highest-earning graduates and is highly competitive among management students. It’s the second privately-run university to face high-profile censure by education authorities in the last two years.

Russia’s education watchdog Rosobrnadzor ordered the school’s education accreditation be revoked this week after it said inspections this spring found 11 of its master’s and bachelor’s programs in violation of state education standards.

The school’s rector Sergei Zuyev assuaged fears of a shutdown in an online statement, saying “a withdrawal of accreditation doesn’t mean a suspension of educational activity.”

Accreditation gives the university the right to issue state diplomas, reported Russian business website The Bell, which Shaninka has only had for the past decade.

The Bell quoted a senior administrator at Shaninka as saying that geopolitical tensions with Britain and security services’ concern about its connections abroad could have influenced the watchdog’s decision to withdraw accreditation.

“There was an impression that the FSB considered the school too independent and too often in contact with foreign universities, a ‘real hotbed of liberalism’,” the anonymous source told The Bell. Other university sources dismissed this concern as a conspiracy theory.

The move comes two years after Rosobrnadzor stripped the European University in St. Petersburg, one of Russia’s leading private post-graduate schools for the social sciences and humanities, of its license over building code violations. The move narrowed the university’s educational scope primarily to research, rather than teaching.

Source of the notice: https://themoscowtimes.com/news/education-watchdog-revokes-license-top-university-61952

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