Education

THAILAND: Malay-Muslim Insurgency – Lessons Learnt

Teachers’ Day on Jan. 16 was a sombre affair in Thailand’s troubled southern provinces where memories are strong of 155 educators killed over the past eight years in an insurgency led by Malay-Muslim separatists.

EUROPE: Separate Schools for Roma Challenged

A school in Slovakia has defended its decision to segregate Roma children from other students after a court ruled the practice breached equal rights laws.

SRI LANKA: Female Unemployment Rises With Education

Every weekend it has been the same ritual for so many months. Buying the newspaper, going through the classified and the employment sections inch by column inch, marking job offers that could offer a chance, even remotely.

PAKISTAN: Girls Defuse This Taliban Bomb

Suicide bombing is down, bomb attacks are fewer, but the Taliban are keeping up attacks on girls’ schools. In retaliation, a growing number of girls are going for school education – without school buildings.

A Somali youngster walks past a ruined building in Hodon district in Mogadishu.  Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS.

SOMALIA: Rebuilding Among the Rubble

With vehicles and donkey carts packed with their belongings, Somalis are returning, four years after they fled, to their partially standing, bullet-scarred and mortar-shelled neighbourhoods in former Al-Shabaab controlled areas of Mogadishu.

SOMALIA: Taking Schools Back From Militants

Schools are beginning to re-open slowly in areas of capital Mogadishu that were until recently controlled by the militant Islamic group al-Shabaab. But an estimated 80 percent of students have not yet returned.

Malawi

MALAWI: Women’s Education the Path to the Presidency

On an elegant veranda adorned with a red carpet, Malawi's Vice President Joyce Banda recalls how her childhood friend Chrissie Mtokoma was always top of their class and how she struggled to beat her. But now decades later Banda is a likely contender for the country's presidency in 2014, while Mtokoma lives in poverty.

Although the Toronto public school board has approved a second

CANADA: Alternative School Sparks Fears of Division and Isolation

The Toronto public school board has approved the second 'Africentric' Alternative School despite persistent criticism that the format attracts mainly black students and is equivalent to segregation in a country that prides itself on national unity regardless of ethnic differences.

At the Nexus of Agrofuels, Land Grabs and Hunger – Part 1

While the United Nations climate talks in Durban enter their ninth day of political feet-dragging, researchers and peasants around the world are busy connecting the dots between so- called "green climate solutions", industrialised agriculture and chronic hunger.

Opening Virtual Doors for People with Disabilities

As the International Day for Persons with Disabilities approaches this Saturday, one institution is working to remove some of the barriers that prevent disabled people from taking a leading role in policies that affect their lives.

Global Fund for Education Gathers Momentum

If the international community can successfully raise billions of dollars to fight deadly diseases, why not a similar fund to promote education, asks Gordon Brown, former British prime minister.

Celebrity Power Boosts U.N.’s New Anti-Trafficking Campaign

It happens every day across the globe, with many of its young victims lured by false promises into the world's third most profitable criminal activity. This is human trafficking.

CHILE: Student Protests Spread Throughout Region

In support of Chile's ongoing student protests, and voicing their own demands, thousands of people took to the streets in more than a dozen cities in Latin America Thursday demanding quality public education.

Occupy Oakland Rallies Amid Anger over Pepper-Spraying of Students

Twice evicted from its encampment just outside city hall, Occupy Oakland sprung back to life Saturday, erecting a new three-dozen-tent camp and defying multiple city warnings that lodging in public spaces would not be tolerated.

EL SALVADOR: Giving Young Slum Dwellers a Chance

In a country where hard-line policies have failed to make a dent in soaring levels of violent crime, Salesian priest José María Moratalla has produced good results by offering educational and vocational opportunities to juvenile offenders and young people at risk of falling into crime.

U.S.: The ‘School to Prison Pipeline’: Education Under Arrest

Metal detectors. Teams of drug-sniffing dogs. Armed guards and riot police. Forbiddingly high walls topped with barbed wire.

U.S.: Occupy Cal Students Revive Camp After Police Clubbing

Occupy Cal students were clubbed by baton-wielding university police Nov. 9 - with beatings captured on video - when they linked arms and refused to disband the tent camp they had erected on the University of California, Berkeley campus.

U.S.: 2010 Saw Record Number of International Students

For the fifth consecutive year, the number of international students studying in the U.S. increased, hitting an all-time record high, according to a report released Monday by the Institute of International Education (IIE) at the start of International Education Week.

Protesting in the rain in Bolívar Square.  Credit: Helda Martínez/IPS

COLOMBIA: Student Protesters Demand Quality – and Equality

The "occupation" of Bogotá by students, backed by parents and professors as well as social and cultural sectors, is continuing even after the Colombian government offered to withdraw its controversial bill to reform education if the protests were called off.

The National Library of Uganda needs improved technology.  Credit: Andrew Green/IPS

AFRICA: Failure to Adopt Technology in Libraries Results in Fewer Users

Simret Mebrahtu has been an infrequent visitor to the National Library of Uganda in the centre of Kampala for nearly two years. A student, she stops by every couple of weeks to use the cheap internet connection if one of the few computers is available.

XO laptop Credit: Geoff Parsons - CC BY-SA 2.0

ARGENTINA: Digital Revolution Hits Secondary Schools

Every student and teacher has a laptop with Internet connection in half of the public secondary schools in Argentina, even in remote rural villages or on islands.

« Previous Page — Next Page »
*#*