EDUCBLOG

Google are inviting South African children and teenagers (4 - 17) to design their own interpretation of the Google homepage logo, a "Google doodle."     This is around the theme "I love football".

The winning doodle will be featured on http://www.google.co.za for 24 hours during June 2010, and will be entered in the worldwide Doodle 4 Google - I love football contest. 

Here are the full details (including the official rules.) 

The Sunday Times (4 April 2010) reported that three million learners in public schools will have to write national exams in key subjects in an attempt to improve literacy and numeracy skills.  

 <snip>

All pupils in grades 3 and 6 will write tests in numeracy and literacy that will be externally set and independently moderated in November this year, while Grade 9s will be tested in maths, English and Afrikaans.

The new National Education Evaluation and Development Unit (NEEDU) will be responsible for the administration of the tests.

 <snip>

...  her department would ensure that teachers spent enough time on reading lessons.

Her department was working with non-governmental organisations such as Read and Molteno to help re-skill teachers on methods of teaching reading and writing.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has released its 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report: Reaching the Marginalized.  (download pdf) 

Education systems in many of the world's poorest countries are now experiencing the aftershock of the global economic downturn.

The 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, released on 19 January, argues that the crisis could create a lost generation of children whose life chances will have been irreparably damaged by a failure to protect their right to education.

The Report examines who these children are and why they are being left behind, and shows that the cost of providing Education for All is much higher than previously estimated.

The report looks at concrete solutions for making sure that no children are excluded from schooling.

 

Spotted on IOL

 Public hearings will be held into South Africa's schools curriculum in coming months as it remains the subject of endless complaint, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said on Tuesday.

"We will be doing both investigations and holding public hearings on this matter in the next four months, to make sure that we identify areas of further work and interventions and address them once and for all within the coming months and years," she told MPs in her department's budget vote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SA Child Gauge 2008, released by UCT's Children's Institute,  "paints a bleak picture of roughly two thirds of junior primary school children being functionally illiterate and innumerate, a statistic that grows to 73 percent innumerate when pupils reach Grade 4."   

IOL reports that the report shows that while the country has a very high rate of enrolment in grades one to nine, they are often not receiving "meaningful access to education, or meaningful learning outcomes". 

<snip>

Meaningful access to education, said the Children's Institute's Shirley Pendlebury, requires among other things access to well-conceived text books and other learning materials; competent and prepared teachers who are able to use a range of appropriate classroom practices; a curriculum that builds a strong basis in the foundation phase; teaching facilities and resources such as laboratories and well-stocked libraries; and a safe and supportive environment.

"Ninety-six percent of children of compulsory school age are enrolled in school, yet poor national averages for language and mathematics in grades 3 and 6 show that most learners do not acquire the skills and understanding that give substance to the right to education."

Only 36% of grade 3 pupils passed the literacy and 35% the numeracy assessments in 2007, according to the preliminary findings.

Spotted this morning on Educblogger's Google alerts:-

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, has written an opinion piece in which he asks why California's public school students are still learning "from instructional materials in formats made possible by Gutenberg's printing press" when they "get their information from the Internet, downloaded onto their iPods, and in Twitter feeds to their cell phones."

He was writing about the digital textbooks initiative that California has just launched, starting with high school math and science books.    He has issued a call for educators and content developers to submit digital texts for review -  the plan is that everything is ready for Fall 2009.

 <snip>

If California is to remain competitive in an increasingly global economy, this initial focus on math and science texts is critical.

And here's the story as told in the Guardian.

 

      

Quoting from this morning's State of the Nation Address by His Excellency JG Zuma, President of the Republic of South Africa.   (Full text is available on Amandla blog; also thanks to Kate Hunter at the GSB Library)

Compatriots,

Education will be a key priority for the next five years. We want our teachers, learners and parents to work with government to turn our schools into thriving centres of excellence.

The Early Childhood Development programme will be stepped up, with the aim of ensuring universal access to Grade R and doubling the number of 0-4 year old children by 2014.

We reiterate our non-negotiables. Teachers should be in school, in class, on time, teaching, with no neglect of duty and no abuse of pupils! The children should be in class, on time, learning, be respectful of their teachers and each other, and do their homework.

To improve school management, formal training will be a pre-condition for promoting teachers to become principals or heads of department.
I will meet school principals to share our vision on the revival of our education system.

Fellow South Africans,

We will increase our efforts to encourage all pupils to complete their secondary education.

The target is to increase enrolment rates in secondary schools to 95 per cent by 2014. We are also looking at innovative measures to bring back into the system pupils who dropped out of school, and to provide support.

Honourable Members, we are very concerned about reports of teachers who sexually harass and abuse children, particularly girls.

We will ensure that the Guidelines on Sexual Harassment and Violence in Public Schools are widely disseminated, and that learners and teachers are familiar with and observe them.

We will take very serious, and very decisive, action against any teachers who abuse their authority and power by entering into sexual relationships with children.

To promote lifelong learning, the Adult Basic Education and Training Kha ri Gude programme will be intensified.

Compatriots, Honourable Members,

We have to ensure that training and skills development initiatives in the country respond to the requirements of the economy.

The Further Education and Training sector with its 50 colleges and 160 campuses nationally will be the primary site for skills development training.

We will improve the access to higher education of children from poor families and ensure a sustainable funding structure for universities.

Spotted on IOL.

Quoting:-

Teachers are spending less time in the classrooms, and instead are confused and swamped by paperwork and administration, a ministerial panel has found.

The culture of teaching and learning has disappeared in most rural and township schools, the panel found.

The committee, set up last year by former minister of education Naledi Pandor, was appointed to recommend methods by which schools could be evaluated and developed.

The rest of the story is here.

Spotted on IOL ...

Department of Education shuts out open source

Quoting:  

Despite a national open source strategy and a well-publicised set of minimum interoperability standards for government, the South African education department has launched a teacher laptop project that excludes free and open source software (FOSS).

The Teacher Laptop Initiative, which was launched by the outgoing education minister Naledi Pandor last week, will grant teachers a monthly allowance to purchase and maintain a laptop that meets minimum specifications set out by the education department.

The specifications laid out by the department, however, specify that qualifying laptop computers must run “Windows XP or higher”, include Microsoft Office as well as use Windows Live.

A round-up of some of the stories in the local media.

"The contentious outcomes-based education policy could be reviewed, government student loans could be turned into a full bursary scheme and the autonomy of universities could be under threat if they resist transformation.

These are the views of newly appointed ministers, Blade Nzimande, for higher education and training, and Angie Motshekga, for basic education. "   Read more from IOL. 

"Access to higher education a priority"  according to an interview in the Times with Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande.

Mail and Guardian reports that "the splitting of the education department made sense but the problems in basic and higher education were immense, the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) said on Monday."

Story as covered by allAfrica.com, reporting on mixed reactions to the appointments.

UPDATE 18 May 09:  On IOL, Graeme Bloch comments that "A good minister is not going to make problems go away, but is perhaps an indication that we can address the challenges with hope. With the new ministerial education appointments, there is the appropriate expertise and commitment at the top."

 

(Posting will be updated with links to other stories)

 

Spotted in the Guardian 

The controversial new GCSE science papers, which feature multiple choice questions, have been accused of 'dumbing down' the subject.

An example of a question:

Sunbeds give off ultraviolet rays. They are used to get a suntan. Sara says: "I know I shouldn't really use them, but I'm going on holiday soon and I don't want to be the only one on the beach without a tan." How could you explain Sara's decision?

1. She is aware of a risk but decides to go ahead
2. She believes the benefit outweighs the risk
3. She is aware of a risk and decides not to go ahead
4. She believes the risk outweighs the benefit

Rest of the questions here.

 

Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal is a free, Web-based scholarly publication about academic advising in higher education.     The journal is published by the Penn State's Division of Undergraduate Studies.    According to the website the goal of the journal is to provide a mechanism for the rapid dissemination of new ideas about advising and for ongoing discourse about advising issues.  

From the Guardian  

Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in Primary School.

Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.

However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.

The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow  schools greater flexibility in what they teach.

It emphasises traditional areas of learning - including phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic - but includes more modern media and web-based skills as well as a greater focus on environmental education.

The plans have been drawn up by Sir Jim Rose, the former Ofsted chief who was appointed by ministers to overhaul the primary school curriculum, and are due to be published next month.

The papers seen by the Guardian are draft plans for the detailed content of each of six core "learning areas" that Rose is proposing should replace the current 13 standalone subject areas.

 The proposals would require

• Children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain "fluency" in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell.

• Children to be able to place historical events within a chronology. "By the end of the primary phase, children should have gained an overview which enables them to place the periods, events and changes they have studied within a chronological framework, and to understand some of the links between them." Every child would learn two key periods of British history but it would be up to the school to decide which ones. Schools would still be able to opt to teach Victorian history or the second world war, but they would not be required to. The move is designed to prevent duplication with the secondary curriculum, which covers the second world war extensively.

• Less emphasis on the use of calculators than in the current curriculum.

• An understanding of physical development, health and wellbeing programme, which would address what Rose calls "deep societal concerns" about children's health, diet and physical activity, as well as their relationships with family and friends. They will be taught about peer pressure, how to deal with bullying and how to negotiate in their relationships.

The six core areas are: understanding English, communication and languages, mathematical understanding, scientific and technological understanding, human, social and environmental understanding, understanding physical health and wellbeing, and understanding arts and design.

Full story, and comments here  

 

Spotted in the Guardian

The Tamer Institute for Community Education,  an organisation which works with children  promoting reading across the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been awarded the £422,000 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

The prize, which is intended to increase interest in children's literature around the world, is given annually to an author, illustrator or an organisation that encourages reading.

Set up in 1989 in response to the educational needs of the Palestinian community during the first intifada, the Tamer Institute for Community Education works across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with children and young people to develop alternatives and supplements to formal education.

 

Spotted on several alerts including BuaNews Online, Newstoday and AllAfrica.com,  is the news that the Presidency has a new website aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 13, aiming to " educate young minds about government and encourage them to use the internet" (AllAfrica.com). The link to the official statement from the Presidency is here. 

Minister in the Presidency Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said that it was government's intention to continuously improve on the website so that in the future it can include critical information such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Union Charter on the Rights and Welfare of children

Check out the website.