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Monday, November 9, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Education
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: Teachers’ Protest Felt Outside the Classroom //REPEATING//
What do freedom of the press, cricket and carnival have in common?GRENADA-EDUCATION: New School Gets The Thumbs Up
Twenty years after the first batch of students stepped off the aircraft carrying them from the United States to the St. George's University School of medicine, the institution has reached a new level in its short history.HONG KONG-EDUCATION: Anti-Corruption Classes on the Curriculum
Hong Kong children as young as four years old are to be taught that accepting bribes is wrong in a bid to nip corruption in the bud and promote a stronger sense of ethical behaviour intended to carry through to adulthood.SOUTH AFRICA-EDUCATION: Rugby Champs Are Minnows in Math
When it comes to rugby and soccer South Africans are world and continental champions respectively, but in the fields of mathematics and science, their performances are anything but oustanding.LATIN AMERICA: Declaration Demands Higher Education for All
Representatives of 24 Latin American and Caribbean nations made a declaration calling for the lifelong right to higher education for all, on a basis of discrimination- free individual merit here Friday.CHINA-EDUCATION: Shenzen Students Study With Hong Kong in Mind
With the transfer of the British colony of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in mind, a number of schools have opened up in the modern and booming Chinese border town of Shenzhen to teach the Hong Kong curriculum.CHINA-EDUCATION: Shenzen Students Study With Hong Kong in Mind
With the transfer of the British colony of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in mind, a number of schools have opened up in the modern and booming Chinese border town of Shenzhen to teach the Hong Kong curriculum.LATIN AMERICA: Merit-Based Higher Education For All
One of the big challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean in the 21st century will be to make higher education a possibility for all, with a foundation of equality based on merit and individual ability.DEVELOPMENT: Britain Challenged To Rejoin UNESCO
The British government is being urged to rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) more than a decade after it joined the U.S. in walking out, protesting mismanagement and political bias.TURKEY: Calls For Independent Universities Silenced By Riot Police
Thousands of university students across Turkey took to the streets Wednesday in protests to mark the 15th anniversary of the creation of Turkey's Higher Education Council (YOK), the state agency that runs its top seats of learning.VIETNAM-EDUCATION: System Struggles in Post Soviet Era
A shortage of teachers and facilities and even natural disasters, are having a severe impact on Vietnam's education system, particularly in the post Cold War era when scholarships to the former Soviet Union have all but dried up.INDIA-EDUCATION: Targets are Out; Literacy the Only Goal
Even two years later, Bhoori Devi can recall the thrill of reading, for the first time, the number of a city bus in the Indian capital, after a lifetime of depending on other people for help.AUSTRALIA-EDUCATION: ‘No, No, Mr. PM, Let True History be Taught’
Australia's aboriginal community is angry and disappointed because they say that just when the country was coming around to facing up to its "racist, bigoted past", the prime minister has made an untimely and unwarranted intervention.GHANA-EDUCATION: Ambitious Plans Versus Harsh Reality
Plans by Ghana's government to have every child of school age in school by the year 2010 could be stymied by the poverty that keeps many children out of the education system.BURUNDI-EDUCATION: They Should Be in School
The little girl who peeps through the bamboo walls of a classroom here as other children go through their paces in French, Burundi's official language, is of school age.PERU-EDUCATION: Government and Church Advise on Sex
The government and the Roman Catholic Church in Peru have failed to agree on a common approach to sex education and are both introducing booklets for distribution to school children.GHANA-EDUCATION: Mainstreaming African Languages in Education
For decades, millions of children in Sub- Saharan Africa have had to learn from algebra to physics in tongues that are not their own, but now some education officials aim to mainstream African tongues in African schools.ZIMBABWE-EDUCATION: University for All!
Fortune Mguni, a third-year Law student here is worried that a government decision compelling university students to meet half of their annual fees may cut short his studies.TURKEY: High Priced Private Schools No Answer To Education Crisis
The 12 million Turkish primary and secondary school students lucky enough to find a classroom in 1996 are deep into a new school year with no improvement in the standards of the country's public education system in sight.COTE D’IVOIRE-EDUCATION: Local Languages Gain Entry into Schools
A decision by Cote d'Ivoire's authorities to reintroduce local languages in primary schools has met with protests from some educators.PANAMA-EDUCATION: “City of Knowledge” in Place of Military Bases
Panama's Education Ministry has developed a plan to transform the area currently occupied by U.S. military bases into a "City of Knowledge" when control is ceded to Panama between 1997-1999, according to reports here.« 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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