NEPAL: Education Shouldn’t Be A Casualty in Emergencies

Nepal may be doing well in providing complete primary education to boys and girls, but has quite a bit of catching up to do when it comes to ensuring that their schooling does not become a casualty during disasters and emergencies.

Culture Vulture Kids on Argentine TV

A public children’s television channel broadcasting high quality fiction, animation and documentary programmes designed by the Argentine Education Ministry for the two-to-12 age range can now be viewed elsewhere in Latin America via the internet.

CULTURE-CUBA: Night of One Thousand and One Texts

The legendary Scheherazade has exchanged her enthralling tales of "One Thousand and One Nights" for a compact disc with 1,001 academic articles, essays and books, giving Cubans access to materials that would otherwise be very difficult to obtain.

ARGENTINA: New Campaign Calls Dropouts Back to School

Convincing young people who have dropped out of school to resume their studies is no easy feat. Which is why a group of social organisations in Argentina are joining with the government to launch a different kind of campaign to bring young people back into the classroom in 2011.

PHILIPPINES: Cash Grants Get Youngsters Back into School

Give the poor cash and they will spend it on things other than their most basic needs. Or with no thought for their future, let alone their children’s, they just might indulge in wasteful spending. Right?

PHILIPPINES: Students Turn Trash into Tuition

Most people would not think twice about throwing out old plastic bags, empty soda cans, scrap metal and used shampoo bottles. But for the students of Cavite Institute in the Philippines, trash like these have become their ticket out of poverty.

Preparing for a Chinese Eton

Zhou Hongxia thought the King’s Scholars classroom was cold and damp and rather dark, the wooden benches carved and stained with the ink of hundreds of students that have filed through it over the centuries.

LATIN AMERICA: More Education and Cash Transfers Needed to Fight Inequality

As the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean get back on track with the economic growth and poverty reduction they were achieving prior to the global economic crisis, improvements in education and cash transfers to households with children are emerging as key tools to begin to defeat inequality.

U.S.: Clock Ticks on Immigration Reform Bill

Democratic lawmakers will attempt to summon up their waning power by using the so-called "lame duck" session of Congress to pass what will likely be the closest they will get to comprehensive immigration reform.

Promise of Elbow Room for Malawi Students

The announcement that 5,000 new classrooms will be built thanks to a $140 million World Bank loan would come as welcome news at the Chitowo Primary School - if only the children sitting on the floors, perched on doors and in windows, even taking lessons in the dust beneath trees in the yard could hear it.

NEPAL: School Initiative Making the Grade

Four years ago, Ramita Bhujel was a bit reluctant to go back her school after a year's absence. This Grade 4 student of Shree Saraswati Secondary School here had been down with pneumonia, failed to clear her nursery exams and as a consequence stayed at home.

No Sex Education Please, We’re Arab

Civil society has warned of adverse social and health consequences after the Egyptian government ordered the removal of content related to male and female anatomy, reproductive health and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) from the school curriculum.

BANGLADESH: School’s In To Drive Poverty Out

Since her admission in January 2009 into Kurmitola government primary school in the Khilkhet district of capital Dhaka, 10- year-old Anju Aktar has never missed a day of class. In fact, Aktar’s mid-term report card shows that she is one of the school’s top students.

Chinese Lead Record Year for Foreign Study in U.S.

Led by a whopping 30 percent increase in Chinese enrollment, U.S. institutions of higher learning attracted a record number of foreign students during the 2009/10 academic year, according to the latest in an annual series of reports released here Monday by the Institute of International Education (IIE).

CUBA: Popular Knowledge Can Transform People’s Worlds

Valuing and sharing common people's knowledge and experience, awakening critical consciousness and finding paths for effective social participation are the processes used by more than 1,000 people in Cuba working in Popular Education, a liberating approach to education developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in the 1960s.

SYRIA: Iraqi Kids Struggle on Dangerous Edges

Leila, 17, presses her hijab-clad head against the front door and strains to hear outside. "There's nothing," she says cautiously, turning towards her mother Rawda, the head of the household, in their quiet basement apartment. Along the brocade couch sit her two sisters, Mona, 19, Nadja, 15, and 10-year-old brother Khaled.*

INDIA: Dalits Turn to the Goddess of English

India's Dalits are turning to the ''Goddess of English'' for deliverance from centuries of religiously-sanctioned caste oppression.

Nicaragua on Obstacle Course to Women’s Equality

Nicaragua has made some progress promoting gender equity and the empowerment of women, but it will have to step up efforts and overcome a number of hurdles if it is to eliminate inequalities between the sexes at all levels by 2015.

HAITI: Quake Refugees Seek Moratorium on Evictions

The children standing at the tent beside the filthy pool of water put their needs simply when asked what they wish for: "À manger; l'école," they said, practically in unison. In English, "We want to eat; we want to go to school."

MIDEAST: Past Fails to Pass Barriers

A Swedish attempt to bridge conflicting historical narratives has failed to bring Israeli and Palestinian educators together in teaching the other side's views on history.

Challenge to Retain Zambia’s Teachers

Zambia's efforts to strengthen its education system will come to little if no way is found to retain skilled teachers like Caroline Chisenga.