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Rioters to be expelled, warns PS

July 2008: Ten more schools have been hit by student unrest as the Ministry of Education laid down more tough measures to crack down on students accused of burning down dormitories and other school property. Education Permanent Secretary Karega Mutahi on Wednesday said that students involved in organising the unrest would be expelled and prevented from joining other public schools. Among the latest to be hit by the wave of unrest was Nairobi school, a national school. Students from the institution were sent home on Wednesday after some of them were found with four litres of diesel. It is believed they had planned to use the fuel to burn school buildings. Other top schools affected by the unrest included Kabarnet High, Sunshine Secondary and Nyahururu Secondary. Eight secondary schools in Nyahururu and its environs were closed indefinitely after students went on strike.

Strikes: Think beyond simplistic ‘solutions’

July 2008:For months now, the education sector has hurtled from one crisis to another. First it was the Form Four exam debacle in which 40,000 candidates were given the wrong results. Then followed a conflict with teachers over the yet-to-be-explained performance contracts, and lately, the unprecedented school strikes, one of which claimed the life of a student. Yet, until last Sunday, neither Education minister Sam Ongeri, nor his top officials had come out forcefully to comment on the violence in schools. And when they did, they sounded brash and unconvincing.

Let ‘unteachable’ children go home and grow yams

July 2008:A few years ago, we were all gathered in our parents’ countryside home for the end of year holidays, and one day a heated argument broke out about the quality of education. As a general agreement seemed to be emerging that education had gone to the dogs, our old woman, who had said nothing, got up, and as she walked to her kitchen, said: “You people are making too much of this education issue. Just let the children go and grow up in school.” I had never thought of school as a place which, if it didn’t offer a meaningful education, was nevertheless a good one for rural children to go to and while away the time as they wait to become minor village officials, join the army, or become chicken thieves if all else failed.

Private schools now join the mayhem

July 2008:National, private and top provincial schools have not been spared the ongoing orgy of violence in schools.National institution Nairobi School, top provincial Baringo’s Kabarnet High and a host of private schools of repute were sucked into the mayhem. This has changed the decades-long trend where school unrest, violence and arson have been the preserve of poor-performing and small schools. Barely a day after the Government spelt out tough measures to rein in chaos among students, boys at Kabarnet High School set on fire a Sh15 million multi-storied dormitory built with the help of former President Moi.

Education: No longer a tool of upward mobility

July 2008:The big bang approach to expansion of primary and secondary education has created a missing link between improved access to education and learning outcomes. Amid efforts to attain universal primary education by 2015, the main agenda of the Education ministry has been to enrol as many pupils as possible. Consequently, the number of primary schools has risen from 18,900 in 2002 to about 2,500 last year. Enrolment increased from six million pupils to nearly eight million last year. Whereas the bulk of pupils is enrolled in public primary schools, private and non-formal institutions have nearly 700,000 pupils.

Bring back the cane to schools, say lawyers

July 2008:Lawyers want caning re-introduced in schools as one measure to tame lawlessness. They want the provisions in the Children’s Act, which abolished caning in schools, repealed. Law Society of Kenya (LSK) chairman Okong’o Omogeni, said caning was the only way to instil discipline among students. Omogeni regretted that there was no mechanism in schools that made children fear or respect authority. "Students must be disciplined and there is no other way other than caning them," he told The Standard in a telephone interview.

The curse of poor schools

July 2008:Some education players demand reforms in the school curriculum, while others call for caning of errant students. The anger erupted last week after students of Nairobi’s Upper Hill woke up at 3am to find one of their dormitories on fire. Abdi Noor, the deputy school captain, died in the inferno. But as Education Minister Sam Ongeri and Permanent Secretary Karega Mutahi strive to identify the causes of strikes and unrest in schools, it would be foolhardy to assume that the chaos is embedded in subterranean issues such as fear of examinations, overloaded curriculum and absence of caning. The basic problem is that about 100 per cent of the strikes occur in public district, low-cost private and provincial schools that are promoted without injection of extra learning resources.

Mocks and syllabus are innocent

July 2008:Parents with children in boarding schools are spending sleepless nights due to the wave of violent riots sweeping through schools. The strikes have led to loss of life, destruction of property and left security agencies and education officials baffled.Education Permanent Secretary Karega Mutahi blames the wave of indiscipline on a rumour that mock examination results will count in KCSE grading. Kenya National Examination Council (Knec) Secretary Paul Wasanga, who says the two examinations are different, has also dismissed the rumour as a “mock theory”. “Mocks are internal examinations, while KCSE is an external one set by professionals,” he says.

Quest for the perfect grade

July 2008:It is interesting the lengths to which schools will go, just to be ranked among the best in the country. Weeks later, many Kenyans still remember how a courtesy call by Naivasha MP, Mr John Mututho, to the troubled Naivasha Girls turned into a comedy of errors after he and the head teacher lashed out at each other over the school’s dismal performance in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination. Accompanied by his Constituency Development Fund (CDF) officials and the press, the MP was visiting the school following complaints of poor results and a stalled dormitory construction. "I have come in good faith to introduce the new CDF committee and to enquire on the performance of the school," Mutotho begun. "As a parent and the MP," he said, he was entitled "to know what is ailing the school so that we can assist."

Information Technology and the Emergence of New Education Modules

May 2008: Today, conventional teaching and learning methods, have become inadequate in the wake of deepening illiteracy, paucity of well-trained teachers and diminishing resources. Innovative teaching and learning schemes are therefore required if Africa is to move forward as a continent. What is needed is a new form of learning system which will enable Africans to utilise modern communications technology (such as television, radio, telephone, Internet, CD-ROM, and print media), as new learning tools. We believe that training in information technology will provide Africa with access to a steady stream of well-trained, educated and experienced personnel capable of guiding the development of the continent. Without solid and diverse training programmes tailored to the needs of the continent, even the most sophisticated electronic networks are doomed to failure.

Educating the refugees

May 2008: Amid the storm of xenophobia sweeping over South Africa, there is one small haven of hope for refugee children. Sacred Heart College in Observatory, has launched a school for the displaced children called Three2Six, after the times the pupils will attend lessons. The school has had to strengthen its security since the xenophobic attacks in Alexandra. "It was started because of an enormous need for education among refugee children," explained Sacred Heart fundraiser, Elinor Kern. Project manager Jean-Claude Mbaki said that even though children who have asylum-seeker permits are allowed in South Africa's public schools, they are often turned away because they can't afford the school fees or can't speak English.

Pastoralists begin catching up with the rest of the world

May 2008: Their means of communication reminds one of history lessons. Perhaps you will find it hard to believe that there are people who still communicate through messengers, smoke signals and even blowing whistles and horns. This is the way of life in Dertu, a small village in north eastern Kenya, about 120 kilometres from Garissa Town and close to the Somali border. This community uses messengers to communicate between groups of herders.

Debate: the state of education in Uganda

May 2008: The government is likely to achieve the millennium development goal for education in 2015, but what will that achievement represent in terms of human skills? We have just had the 10-year anniversary of the big Jubilee 2000 demonstration in Birmingham. I remember a sweltering hot day and pushing a buggy with my three year old battling through crowds of shoppers to try and make our point on the G7 leaders in 1998. What we wanted was debt cancellation which enabled African countries to invest in their own public services such as health and education.

Education tops govt's agenda —YAR'ADUA

May 2008: AS the present administration prepares to mark its one year in office, President Umaru Yar’Adua weekend declared in Abuja that delivering the nation from the clutches of illiteracy and educational backwardness remains one of the top most priorities of his administration. President Yar’ Adua made this declaration, while officially launching the READ campaign programme initiated by the Federal Ministry of Education, which held at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Abuja during the week-end. Speaking through his Senior Assistant on Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) Haja Amina Ibrahim, Yar’ Adua said, unless the nation gets back to the track of reading again, the chances of its attaining an all-round sustainable development and global competitiveness will be very much slim.

Africa can meet and shoot past MDGs

March 2008: by, TAJUDEEN ABDUL RAHEEM

Can Africa fulfill the Millennium Development Goals by 2015? There is a generalized doubt that the MDGs, may not be met on schedule in a majority of African states. Official reports and anecdotal evidence suggest that at the current pace even by 2050 the goals may still remain unmet by these states. The situation is not helped by the fact that most of the reports available are usually aggregated, hence the negative conclusion that Africa’s progress is at best very slow and patchy. Like all generalizations and aggregated statistics they hide the specific, more positive picture of steady progress on a number of the goals in quite a few countries across Africa.

Universal education, empowering women, impact of climate change on development among issues, as General Assembly continues debate on anti-poverty goals.

April 2008: As the General Assembly continued its thematic debate entitled 'Recognizing the achievements, addressing the challenges and getting back on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015', representatives from around the world today took stock of progress made on everything from poverty and hunger eradication and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS to providing universal education and health care and empowering women. Shedding light on their respective efforts and challenges to achieve the ambitious millennium targets, speakers noted many…

UNICEF-supported programmes bring improved learning facilities to Malawi

Malawi, April 2008 – Blessings Molles, a 12-year-old student at the Thembe School here, tells a story that is all too familiar in Malawi. When he was eight, his father died, leaving his mother to care for her six children. She moved them to the town of Blantyre and found work as a housemaid. But when her salary proved insufficient to support all the children, Blessings had to move back to his home village to live with his grandmother. He is grateful, though, to be attending the Thembe School – one of the schools chosen by UNICEF to receive additional classrooms and furnishings as part of the Schools for Africa initiative.

'Our learners are not completing high school'

April 2008 – The drop-out rate among South African high school pupils is more pronounced after Grade 9, the education department said on Friday. This was the result of the Learner Retention Report released to the public by the department's Ministerial Committee on Learner Retention in the South African Schooling System. "There is a problem of learner retention, which is more pronounced after Grade 9. The drop-out rate below Grade 9 is statistically insignificant, but increases sharply from Grades 10 to 12," the seven-member committee concluded.

Fed-up teachers are jumping the education ship

March 2008 – POOR working conditions and low morale are some of the factors pushing Eastern Cape teachers out of the profession, say teachers and unions. The growing unhappiness among teachers has also been fuelled by the recent deductions from their salaries for participation in the public servants‘strike in June last year. Two more deductions will be made at the end of May and August. Teacher unions sounded warning bells this week of a looming shortage, saying thousands of teachers were “seriously.

Research renaissance in public universities

March 2008: by Wachira Kigotho Kenyatta University (KU) has joined a groundbreaking multi-million shilling research partnership comprising four leading British universities and four from developing countries. The Research Consortium of Educational Outcomes and Poverty (Recoup) coordinated by the University of Cambridge, has the mandate to study how poverty influences educational outcomes in developing countries. Prof Paul Wainaina, Recoup’s research manager at KU, the local chapter, is tasked with studying social and human development outcomes of education. "Our main objective is to research on the impact of poverty, health and fertility and disability on education outcomes," he says. The researcher has received about Sh27 million (200,000 pounds) for the study.

How Mauritian women have evolved over the past 40 years.

March 2008: It was way back in the 1950s that I set foot in Mauritius. Coming from a highly developed country such as South Africa, I found it very difficult to adjust to local conditions during the first few years. At the time an essential service such as electricity was a meagre commodity; indeed most of the countryside remained in complete obscurity whereas the areas occupied by the white community had all the facilities as regards these services. Just to illustrate this point further it was only after two years that our application for an electric cooker was granted. The opportunity of coming into contact with women living in the villages came through the vehicle of the Mauritius Child Care Society which was established in the late fifties. Here I found that most of the women kept cows and goats and went out in the mornings to collect fodder for the animals, leaving toddlers under the care of barely five year olds. The milk obtained from the animals would be sold and the money collected would go towards supplementing somewhat, the family income. Sadly, because of their poverty, the children could not be fed on this precious and nutritive commodity.

Mozambique: 2008 Biennale on Education in Africa to Be Held in Maputo

March 2008: Going Beyond Primary Education. ADEA is actively preparing for the 2008 Biennale on Education in Africa. The event will take place in Maputo, Mozambique, May 5-9, 2008. Post-Primary Education, identified as one of the greatest challenges facing education systems in Africa today, will be at the center of the discussions. Three major areas will be addressed:

KCSE results expose gaps

March 2008: The Kenya Certificate of Secondary of Education (KCSE) examination results released last week showed improvements in terms of transition from primary to secondary education, gender equity and performance in most subjects. But just like other past rankings, critics cried foul over the league tables, citing various forms of examination malpractices. In point, the Principal of Alliance High School, Mr Christopher Khaemba, asked the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) to explain how it dealt with examination irregularities including leakage, external assistance, impersonation and smuggling of foreign materials.

Ministry recalls KCSE exam results

March 2008:The Ministry of Education has recalled Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results in various schools following discrepancies in mean scores. And on Thursday, teachers said the anomalies meant the ranking released last week had disadvantaged some schools and favoured others. School heads in Nyeri North District were asked to return the results and warned not to release them to students after they discovered the traditional clusters of subjects were disregarded when calculating the scores.

Changing fortunes for KCPE winners in KCSE

March 2008: Top students in Class Eight examination are likely to perform just as well in secondary exams, a new report has said. Despite this trend,, statistics however also show that some students who excelled at Standard Eight failed to clinch the top 100 slots in the secondary examinations. In the just released Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination, some students who five years ago did not perform well emerged among the top 100 nationally.

Teaching in local languages good policy

March 2008:The idea of teaching in local languages in lower primary school classes followed recommendations from a number of researchers. The 2004 Tony Reed report on the review of primary curriculum pointed out that “generally children learn faster if early education is conducted in a familiar language”. This report was made more relevant by the fact that its predecessors, the 1989 Kajubi Report and the National Assessment of Progress in Education (NAPE) had confirmed the low levels in acquisition of literacy by primary school goers. These findings raised concerns that the Ministry of Education had to address by putting in place an education language policy. In the policy, the ministry stipulated that:

Study to revive sinking status of varsities

March 2008:Institutions of higher learning in the Sub Saharan Africa are overwhelmed by the influx of students whereby limited resources and facilities result into poor products. Graduates from the region`s universities fail to withstand the current global market competition. Eastern and Southern African Universities Research Programme (Esaurp) is set to dig deep through intensive research in a bid to come up with long-lasting solutions. In the early sixties, the public held great respect for graduates from universities in and outside the country.

Action on poverty leaving women and girls behind – report

March 2008:Systematic discrimination against girls and women in the world's poorest countries will prevent the United Nations meeting its goals to reduce poverty, according to a report published today by the charity network ActionAid. The report says gender inequality must be put at the heart of the development agenda if those aims are to be met. ActionAid said girls and women were more likely to be poor, hungry, illiterate or sick than boys and men, and called on Britain and other governments to tackle the disparities. Amid growing concern that the millennium development goals set by the UN for 2015 will not be met, the charity said a focus on women was vital to put the international community back on track.

World Bank Group Statement on Kenya

March 2008: …In recent years the World Bank Group has been assisting Kenya in activities such as rebuilding infrastructure; providing free primary education; developing small and medium enterprises, including those owned by women; creating livelihood opportunities in arid and semi-arid areas; and strengthening systems to reduce opportunities for corruption.

Why we need a world education bank

March 2 2008 In less than five months Japan will host the next summit of the Group of Eight industrialized countries in Hokkaido. The Japanese prime minister has put climate change and African development high on the agenda, where both belong. But I hope the G8 leaders will give equal attention to education. In particular I hope they will look at setting up a World Education Bank in partnership with all United Nations member states and with business, banks, foundations and non-governmental organizations. Education is a well-established global development priority. This was reiterated in 2000 when, at the UN millennium summit, the goal of “universal primary education for every child” was enshrined as the second of the eight millennium development goals the international community set itself to attain by 2015.

Kenyan leaders sign power-sharing agreement as children hope for peace

29 February 2008:Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odiniga yesterday signed a power-sharing agreement to restore peace to a country that has been engulfed by violence since the disputed presidential elections there in December. The plan, which was brokered by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, calls for the creation of a Prime Minister position for Mr. Odinga, fair and balanced cabinet appointments and a review of the Kenyan constitution.

Secondary education at crossroads

by Simon Gikandi

February 5, 2008: What is the role of the intellectual in times of crisis? Do ideas make any difference in the management of public affairs? Can the imperative to act to change things be reconciled to moral demands? These are questions that many Kenyans, especially the intellectual and professional classes have been wrestling with in the aftermath of the flawed elections of December 2007 and the wreckage of destruction and death that it has left in its wake.

Crisis as schools still closed

February 20, 2008

When the Government introduced free secondary education, Kevin Omollo believed his school fees woes had ended. Believing that the new initiative would make education in public day secondary schools free, the Form Three student at Siaya’s Ambira High, a boarding school, sought for a transfer at Kisumu Boys High School, a day school. Although he aced the entry test, Kevin is yet to report to the school as he cannot afford the Sh15,000 fees. According to the Education ministry directive the free learning fund will allocate Sh10, 265 every year for each student to cater for tuition, repairs, transport, electricity, activity, administration, personal emoluments and medical costs.

Uganda: Kenya Crisis Affecting Education – Don

18 January 2008

THE political unrest in Kenya has had serious impact on university education in Uganda, the vice chancellor of Kampala University has said. Prof Badru Kateregga, who was speaking at the fifth graduation ceremony at the Ggaba campus on Thursday, said many Kenyan students had failed to make it for the function. He added that over 50% of the 530 graduands were Kenyan nationals, some of whom traveled from as far as Mombasa.

Young African Express.

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