Protecting Education from Attack

Students and educators in situations of armed conflict face violence every day. Schools and universities should be safe havens, where communities can work toward a better future. Instead, in many places, these institutions have become the targets of violent attacks for political, military, ideological, sectarian, ethnic, religious or criminal reasons.

Attacks on education are any intentional threat or use of force—carried out for political, military, ideological, sectarian, ethnic, religious, or criminal reasons—against students, educators, and education institutions. Attacks on education may be perpetrated by:

• State security forces, including armed forces, law enforcement, paramilitary, and militia forces acting on behalf of the state.
• Non-state armed groups.

Attacks on education include attacks on:

• Students of all ages.
• Educators, including school teachers, academics, other education personnel, members of teacher unions, and education aid workers.
• Education institutions: any site used for the purposes of education, including all levels of education and non-formal education facilities, and buildings dedicated to the work of ministries of education and other education administration.

The occupation or use of education institutions by armed forces or other armed groups can lead to attacks on education institutions and can displace educators and students, denying students access to education.

Learn more by following the GCPEA website and their postings on Twitter.

5.4 Million Primary Teachers Required

According to UNESCO there is a global shortage of trained and motivated teachers and in particular in primary education. In order to meet the Education For All goal of achieving Universal Primary Education by 2015, 5.4 million primary teachers are needed. UNESCO's Institute for Statistics suggest that one solution is to harness the power of mobile technologies in meeting this need - both in supporting teachers and their professional development, and in retaining existing teachers.

This continues to remain an interest of mine and UNESCO are due to report back on four projects that they will implement with teacher training organisations in Nigeria, Senegal, Pakistan and Mexico in 2012 to further explore and understand this area.

International Literacy Day

Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan are the nine most highly-populated countries. They represent more than 60 per cent of the world’s population, over two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults and over half of the world’s out-of-school children. 

Find out more by following the UNESCO International Literacy Day link and the Twitter Feed for Room to Read.

Education: A Human Right

I begin this posting with a quote that I used this summer for my thesis:

"Hope dims for universal education by 2015 … The total number of children out of school is … 69 million in 2008. Almost half of these children (31 million) are in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than a quarter (18 million) are in Southern Asia." (see The Millennium Development Goals Report, United Nations, 2010).

In their 2010 analysis, The Global Campaign For Education reported that if “current trends continue, the slowdown in progress in enrolments will mean that in 2015 there will be more children out of school than there are today. In addition, too often the quality of education on offer is very poor, leading to early drop-out and illiteracy”.

As we lead up to International Literacy Day, UNESCO report that in 2008, 796 million adults (15 years and older) could not read or write. The Right to Education Project state what many of us have come to expect from education, but one that we don't always see in real numbers.

"As well as being a right in itself, the right to education is also an enabling right. Education ‘creates the “voice” through which rights can be claimed and protected’, and without education people lack the capacity to ‘achieve valuable functioning as part of the living’. If people have access to education they can develop the skills, capacity and confidence to secure other rights. Education gives people the ability to access information detailing the range of rights that they hold, and government’s obligations. It supports people to develop the communication skills to demand these rights, the confidence to speak in a variety of forums, and the ability to negotiate with a wide range of government officials and power holders."