SRI LANKA: Primary Education in Crisis

The dismal results of Sri Lanka's school-leaving General Certificate of Education (GCE) exams this year, which showed only 48 percent of the 525,000 candidates passing, have left educationists wringing their hands and asking where they went wrong.

THAILAND: Schools Prime Targets for Malay-Muslim Rebels

The soldiers assigned to provide security for students and teachers at a school in the violence-torn southern province of Yala on Friday were part of a new plan by the military-appointed government in Bangkok. But they never made it.

EDUCATION-AFRICA: Will eLearning Make Teachers Redundant?

Does electronic learning (eLearning) threaten to displace the teacher?

EDUCATION-US: A Rough Road From Boot Camp to College

Derek Adams played with his two-year-old son on the grounds of Veterans Upward Bound, an outreach and education programme for former U.S. military service members outside the campus of California State University, Humboldt.

EDUCATION-AFRICA: Learning at the Flick of a Switch

The role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in improving education throughout Africa has been in the spotlight over recent days at the e-Learning Africa Conference.

SINGAPORE: ‘Education Hub’ Plans Take a Knock

An ambitious plan by the Singapore government to attract reputable foreign universities to set up off-shore campuses on this island nation took a knock this week when Australia's University of New South Wales (UNSW) announced the closure of its campus here.

PAKISTAN: Cleric Turns Heat on NGOs

''These foreign agents are against our religion. How can we allow them to work here when we know they come with an American agenda and support Israel?" asked Maulana Fazalullah, the pro-Taliban cleric, referring to non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

BOLIVIA: Faster Internet Connections – For the Few

A varied crowd of academics, civil servants, and university and high school students gathered in the hall of the vice-presidential building to celebrate Internet Day. The main event was the launching of Internet II, a project to incorporate Bolivia into the cutting-edge Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks (CLARA).

PAKISTAN: Despite Odds Village Girls Get an Education

Shumaila is sitting for her school certificate exam this month. But that does not relieve her from daily chores that include tending to dozen or so head of cattle.

VENEZUELA: Museums Throw Open Their Doors to the Disabled

"We drew a fat woman with little dots. I like learning to draw. Maybe I'll be an artist later on," Lisette, a 15-year-old mentally disabled girl who goes every Friday from her school in the south of the Venezuelan capital to the Alejandro Otero Museum, told IPS.

RIGHTS-ANGOLA: Beauty Is in the Eye of the Evictor

The Angolan government forcibly evicted 20,000 poor people, including small-scale farmers, and destroyed 3,000 homes between 2002 and 2006 in the capital, Luanda, "to facilitate development and 'beautification' in the public interest".

CHINA: Public Health Education Sorely Missing

China's government is trying to fix its ailing rural health-care system by pouring millions into medical infrastructure for the countryside, but its neglect of basic health education for the public could condemn these efforts to failure, health experts here warn.

DEVELOPMENT: More in School, But Not Learning Enough

Poor countries are making progress in sending more children to primary school, but the quality of what they learn often leaves much to be desired, according to the World Bank Global Monitoring Report 2007 published Friday.

POLITICS-IRAN: Campus Cartoons Trigger Wave of Suppression

A new wave of suppression, following the publication of a cartoon of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei in several campus newspapers run by students of the prestigious Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT) ten days ago, has landed several student editors in jail.

EDUCATION-BOLIVIA: Literacy Drive on Full Steam

Coipasa is ahead, with Chipaya on its heels. Right behind them are Urubichá and Guarayos. The competitors are not race horses but rural villages and towns in Bolivia racing to declare themselves free of illiteracy.

CUBA: Children Use Art to Learn About Hunger

A Cuban child is drawing a train, heavily loaded with emergency food supplies that are about to be airlifted and dropped into areas where hunger is just a normal part of life. The drawing will be entered in an annual international competition called "WFP in Action," organised by the World Food Programme.

GUATEMALA: Indigenous Women Last in Line for MDGs

Guatemala is making slow, uneven progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with maternal mortality and illiteracy remaining the most persistent problems, mid-way to the 2015 deadline.

RIGHTS-US: Professor Who Charged Racism Gets the Axe

A premier U.S. research institute agreed earlier this year to address possible racial bias in hiring, but now it is firing the person who raised the complaints.

DEVELOPMENT-BOTSWANA: ”Will the MDGs Help Me Find a Job?”

Batswana are divided about the viability of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In random interviews, IPS found some arguing that the MDGs are elitist ideas unattainable in reality while others contend that the MDGs can be used to address socio-economic problems.

HEALTH-LATIN AMERICA: Limiting the Junk Food Banquet

Amidst a little pushing and shoving, dozens of girls and boys order fried potatoes, soft drinks, hotdogs and candy at the shop in a private school in Mexico. Similar scenes can be found across Latin America, where junk food sales are strong.

TRADE-AFRICA: Microfinance Tackles AIDS Head On

With two-thirds of the world's HIV/AIDS victims living in sub-Saharan Africa, sickness and death is too often a part of doing business in the region. But now microfinance institutions have found ways to reduce financial risk while attacking new infections.