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Monday, November 9, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Education
EDUCATION-JAMAICA: Schools Pay Price of Foreign Recruitment
When schools reopen next week, more than 300 teachers -some of them, the country's most experienced - will be absent, having taken new jobs in London and New York.EDUCATION-CHINA: School Offers Rare Hope to Special Children
He has a far-off look in his eyes as he munches on some biscuits, and his mother still bears the bruises he gave her a month ago.EDUCATION-CHINA: School Offers Rare Hope to Special Children
He has a far-off look in his eyes as he munches on some biscuits, and his mother still bears the bruises he gave her a month ago.CULTURE-COLOMBIA: Circus School Offers Poor Kids New Hope
A circus school in which youngsters from a <161>>aCULTURE-COLOMBIA: Circus School Offers Poor Kids New Hope
A circus school in which youngsters from a poor neighbourhood in the Colombian capital have learned new skills goes through its baptism of fire this week, when it takes part in the celebrations of the 496th anniversary of the founding of the city.EDUCATION-VENEZUELA: Book Bank Foments the Reading Habit
Nearly 10,000 children in Venezuela satisfy needs for educational or entertainment materials through the Banco del Libro' (Book Bank), an entity whose sole objective is to stimulate the habit of reading.EDUCATION-VENEZUELA: Using the Radio to Fight Illiteracy
Radio in Venezuela has gone beyond its traditional mission of entertaining and informing to become an important tool in the fight against illiteracy, through a government-backed Catholic Church organisation.EDUCATION-VENEZUELA: A Museum Where Children Learn, Play, Dream
A children's museum in Venezuela that broke new ground in Latin America highlights outstanding scientific and artistic milestones of the 20th century, with the aim of complementing the education youngsters receive in school and awakening interest in technical careers that boost the country's development.EDUCATION-SERBIA: Schools to Teach Religion After a 55-Year Break
Much to the chagrin of independent experts, the Serbian government has decided to introduce religious teaching in elementary and secondary schools beginning September 1.EDUCATION: UN Literacy Decade Could Falter, World Body Warns
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warns that a proposed United Nations Literacy Decade could falter if there is no significant decline in the number of illiterates worldwide.EDUCATION-CUBA: A Computer in Every Classroom
Children in Cuba will begin to familiarise themselves with communications and information technologies in primary school under a government initiative, despite the fact that strict limitations on private use of the Internet remain in place.EDUCATION-VIETNAM: Test time Ahead for University Graduates
Just as in previous years, more than 2 million senior secondary school graduates took their national university entrance examinations in early July.POLITICS-PERU: Torn between Globalisation and Indigenous Roots
Peru's president-elect, Alejandro Toledo, an economist of indigenous origins, will take the helm Jul 28 of a nation that is being pulled in the seemingly opposite directions of globalisation and the affirmation of Andean identity.EDUCATION-NIGERIA: Tertiary Strike Ends Students Resume Studies
More than 200,000 students of Nigeria's 37 Universities are scheduled to resume studies this week following the end of a three-month strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).EDUCATION-COLOMBIA: A Boost for Rural Schools
Some 186,000 children in Colombia's rural areas will be incorporated into the country's education system by 2003 as part of the first phase of a government initiative that bears a price tag of 40 million dollars.LABOUR-ARGENTINA: Protests Decry Gov’t Failure to Keep Promises
Workers from the education and health sectors protested Thursday in the streets of the capital against the Fernando de la Rúa government's policies, which they say have fallen far short of promises to strengthen these two areas and to fight unemployment in general.ROMANIA: Education a Pipe Dream for Many Romanian Children
Facing a shortage of financial and human resources, Romania needs to update and improve all aspects of primary and secondary education in order to raise the quality of education and to stop the continuous increase in the number of school drop-outs, according to specialists.EDUCATION-CARIBBEAN: Trinidad and Tobago Vexed by School Violence
Waynisha Candy Williams was looking forward to celebrating her birthday later this month even as she studied for school exams. Instead, the 17-year-old was to be buried after succumbing to wounds allegedly inflicted by a 15-year- old who now faces murder charges.EDUCATION-SERBIA: Bringing Education System to European Standards
The wave of reforms that is sweeping Serbia after the decade-long rule of former president Slobodan Milosevic includes the country's education system, which is being reviewed so as to bring it to the European standards.EDUCATION-NIGERIA: Free Meal to Attract Children to School
Every school day, nearly one million children in primary schools in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, get a free meal, courtesy of the state government of Lagos.EDUCATION-MEXICO: Suicide Weakens Opposition to Backpack Searches
The bullet with which a middle-school student shot himself in front of his classmates and teachers in Mexico City has diluted the opposition to a nationwide programme in which students' backpacks are searched for weapons or drugs.« Previous Page — Next Page »
Two teachers work in a classroom in Forces Vives School in Dori, Burkina Faso. Credit: UNICEF/UNI978361
Safe and uninterrupted education is a fundamental right for all children. Education is paramount to global development, as it has been proven that investing in education – especially for girls and children – contributes significantly to economic growth and prosperity. Although more than 1 billion children go to school, many are subjected to conditions that are not conducive to a proper learning environment, including makeshift facilities, a lack of supplies, violence in classrooms, inadequate sanitation, untrained instructors, and widespread school closures. Since 2015, there have been immense gains in education with an increase of 109 million children in school. However, as of 2023, 272 million children are still out of school.
High poverty levels in developing countries also impede children’s access to a proper education. For example, from the early to mid 2000s, Sub-Saharan African nations witnessed a dramatic decline in trained teachers due to inadequate funding in the education sector. Furthermore, major cuts to United States international aid threaten an estimated 23 million additional children's access to education, as USAID‑funded school programmes across Africa and Asia face closure.
Various other factors contribute to the decline of education, notably hunger, which has increased as conflict and climate change interfere with global food production and dissemination. Meanwhile, certain social and cultural practices also impede children’s access to education, with gender inequality, discrimination, child labour, and child marriages preventing millions of children from attending school. Economic conditions such as the inaccessibility of higher education also affect disenfranchised communities across the world. In extreme situations, such as warfare where educational facilities are destroyed in their totality, notably in Gaza and Sudan, entire generations of children might grow up without access to education. Rebuilding educational infrastructure is a long and arduous process, especially when violence persists across generations, and this significantly stunts the development of societal prosperity and stability.
IPS is dedicated to telling the shocking truths about worldwide education through impassioned opinion pieces and comprehensive articles, highlighting global issues that impede worldwide education and the courses of action being taken by organizations such as UNICEF and Education Cannot Wait.
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