Feeding Young Minds

Of the many sad news stories emerging recently from India, the saddest in a long time concerns the deaths of 23 schoolchildren in July in Chhapra, the main town in the impoverished rural Saran district of the state of Bihar. The children were poisoned by their midday meals – a vital part of a government-run nutrition program in schools – which apparently were cooked in oil that had been carelessly stored in used pesticide containers. The sheer horror – parents seeing their kids safely off to school, only to have them be killed there by something intended to benefit them – is unbearable.

The reaction has been predictable breast-beating about the inefficiency of India’s government services (particularly in rural areas), the country’s woeful standards of hygiene, and inattentive implementation of even flagship national schemes by the country’s 28 state governments. The midday meal scheme itself has been trashed in India and abroad as wasteful and counter-productive. “Free school meals kill Indian children,” one headline screamed. Another commentator even went so far as to claim that there is “little evidence to suggest that schoolchildren are actually getting any nutritional value from it at all.”

Critics of the scheme view it as symptomatic of big government run amok and ask why it is necessary for any government to feed schoolchildren. The answer, in India, is that no one else could. While various small school-lunch programs existed, the idea of a massive government-backed scheme originated three decades ago in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

When Tamil Nadu’s chief minister at the time, the film star M.G. Ramachandran, introduced free school meals statewide, the measure was widely criticized as populist and fiscally irresponsible. Children, his detractors argued, go to school to learn, not to eat. But if children do not get enough to eat, they cannot learn: empty stomachs make it difficult to fill minds.

Tamil Nadu’s voters, who supported the scheme at election time, silenced the critics. So did the scheme’s results – improved literacy rates and nutrition levels. Soon, other states were imitating the program, and in 1995, India’s central government followed suit, supplementing state governments’ budgets so that children throughout the country could enjoy the same benefit. Today, 87% of government schools implement the scheme.

The midday meal scheme – which costs India’s government about $2 billion a year, with additional funding coming from state governments – feeds 120 million schoolchildren in more than a million primary schools across the country. By providing free and balanced nutrition to schoolchildren, it has provided a powerful incentive to poor families to send their kids to school and, equally important, to keep them there throughout the day.

Indeed, thanks to the scheme, school-attendance rates have improved, sometimes by as much as 10%, and dropout rates have declined. And obliging children of different castes to eat the same meal at the same time in the same place has broken down social barriers in a highly stratified society.

Children whose families could not afford to feed them properly have benefited significantly. In drought-affected areas, the midday meal scheme has allowed children who otherwise would have starved to overcome malnourishment. Allegations that the scheme lacks nutritional value have been disproved. One scholar, Farzana Afridi, reported in the Journal of Development Economics that the program “improved nutritional intakes by reducing the daily protein deficiency of a primary school student by 100%, the calorie deficiency by almost 30%, and the daily iron deficiency by nearly 10%.”

But, while the midday meal scheme’s benefits have ensured its popularity, the quality of its implementation has varied across states. The national government provides funds for cooks and helpers, and has devised guidelines for the program’s implementation, but schools are under the jurisdiction of state governments, some of which are more capable than others of maintaining the standards required to provide a reliable service. Many northern states, such as Bihar, have lagged in providing kitchens, storage facilities, and utensils. The rule requiring at least two adults to taste meals before they are served to children has often been ignored, as it was in the Chhapra tragedy.

Attempts to enforce the rule have met unexpected resistance from teachers, who are obliged to rotate tasting duty: they object that they are at school to teach students, not to taste food. Some teachers’ unions have refused to perform the task.

Sadder still has been the reaction of some parents in Bihar, who have withdrawn their children from school rather than risk their being poisoned. Such concerns are understandable but manifestly exaggerated. The Chhapra tragedy has at least focused attention on a scheme that public opinion has largely taken for granted. But it would be a great pity if, in examining what went wrong, deficiencies in the program’s implementation were to obscure its accomplishments.

The midday meal scheme has transformed lives and helped educate a generation of poor schoolchildren. It should be emulated by other developing countries, not shunned because of a preventable disaster. Indeed, the Chhapra tragedy would be compounded were it to end up derailing a program that is benefiting millions of children and their families every day.

Writer: Shashi Tharoor

Source: Project Syndicate

Science, Heal Thyself

Science may be humankind’s greatest success as a species. Thanks to the scientific revolution that began in the seventeenth century, humans today enjoy instant communication, rapid transportation, a rich and diverse diet, and effective prevention and treatment for once-fatal illnesses. Moreover, science is humanity’s best hope for addressing such existential threats as climate change, emerging pathogens, extra-terrestrial bolides, and a burgeoning population.

But the scientific enterprise is under threat from both external and internal forces. Now the scientific community must use its capacity for self-correction – based on new information, discoveries, experiences, and ideas (the stuff of scientific progress for centuries) – to address these threats.

A major hindrance to scientific progress is the increasing scarcity of research funding – a trend that has been exacerbated by the global economic crisis. Uncertain funding prospects not only discourage scientists from pursuing risky or undirected lines of research that could lead to crucial discoveries; they also make it more difficult to recruit the best and brightest for scientific careers, especially given the extensive training and specialization that such careers require.

Furthermore, leaders from across the political spectrum are questioning scientifically-established principles – such as anthropogenic climate change, evolution, and the benefits of vaccination – with no scientific basis. At best, such statements serve as a distraction from important issues; at worst, they distort public policy. Although such threats are outside of scientists’ direct control, improved communication with political leaders and the public could help to reduce misinformation and bolster confidence in science.

But the field’s credibility is also being undermined from within, by the growing prevalence of scientific misconduct – reflected in a recent spate of retracted scientific publications – and an increasingly unbalanced scientific workforce that faces perverse incentives. Although the vast majority of scientists adhere to the highest standards of integrity, the corrosive effects of dishonest or irreproducible research on science’s credibility cannot be ignored.

The problems are rooted in the field’s incentive structure – a winner-take-all system in which grants, prizes, and other rewards go to those who publish first. While this competitive mentality is not new in science – the seventeenth-century mathematicians Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz spent more than a decade fighting bitterly for credit for the discovery of calculus – it has intensified to the point that it is impeding progress.

Indeed, scientists today are engaged in a hypercompetitive race for funding and prestigious publications that has disconnected their goals from those of the public that they serve. Last year, for example, when C. Glenn Begley and Lee Ellis sought to reproduce 53 “landmark” preclinical cancer studies, they discovered that nearly 90% of the findings could not be reproduced. While the researchers who originally published those studies may have profited from increased funding and recognition, the patients who need new cancer treatments gained nothing.

Moreover, this winner-take-all system fails to account for the fact that scientific work is largely carried out by research teams rather than individuals. As a result, the scientific workforce is beginning to resemble a pyramid scheme: unfair, inefficient, and unsustainable.

The incentives associated with the winner-take-all system encourage cheating – ranging from questionable practices and ethical lapses to outright misconduct. This threatens to create a vicious cycle in which misconduct and sloppy research are rewarded, undermining both the scientific process and its credibility.

The problems are clear. But addressing them requires a prudent strategy that accounts for the structural fragility of the scientific enterprise, in which scientists must complete extensive training, regulation can easily stifle creativity, and funding limitations can substantially delay progress.

Because of this fragility, few countries have been able to establish highly productive scientific enterprises, even though scientific innovation and technological breakthroughs are crucial to a country’s productivity, economic growth, and influence. Given the challenges implicit in establishing and maintaining a robust scientific sector, reform efforts must be undertaken carefully.

At the same time, the reforms must be comprehensive, addressing methodological, cultural, and structural issues. Methodological reforms should include revised training requirements that allow for less specialization, together with improved training in probability and statistics. Scientific culture must be reformed to abandon longstanding practices, such as those that determine how credit is assigned. And structural reforms aimed at balancing the scientific workforce and stabilizing funding are crucial.

Some reforms should be fairly easy to implement. For example, it would not be difficult to win support for improving education in the ethical aspects of scientific research. But other important reforms, such as creating alternatives to the winner-take-all incentive system, will present enormous challenges.

An effective reform strategy should employ the tools of science – specifically, data collection and analysis. More data are needed to understand workforce imbalances, the peer review system, and how the economics of the scientific enterprise influence scientists’ behavior.

Science has been studied by sociologists, historians, and philosophers, but rarely by scientists themselves. Now, with perverse incentives undermining their credibility and hampering research, scientists must take matters into their own hands. Applying the scientific method to the problems of science could be scientists’ best hope for regaining public confidence and reinvigorating the quest for transformative discoveries.

Writers: Arturo Casadevall & Ferric C. Fang

Source: Project Syndicate

A World of Schoolgirls

 One of the more difficult questions I found myself being asked when I was a United Nations under-secretary-general, especially when addressing a general audience, was: “What is the single most important thing that can be done to improve the world?”

It’s the kind of question that tends to bring out the bureaucrat in even the most direct of communicators, as one feels obliged to explain the complexity of the challenges confronting humanity: how no imperative can be singled out over other goals; how the struggle for peace, the fight against poverty, and the battle to eradicate disease must all be waged side by side; and so on – mind-numbingly.

Then I learned to cast caution to the wind and venture an answer to this most impossible of questions. If I had to pick the one thing that we must do above all else, I now offer a two-word mantra: “educate girls.”

It really is that simple. No action has been proven to do more for the human race than the education of female children. Scholarly studies and research projects have established what common sense might already have told us: if you educate a boy, you educate a person; but if you educate a girl, you educate a family and benefit an entire community.

The evidence is striking. Increased schooling of mothers has a measureable impact on their children’s health, education, and adult productivity. Children of educated mothers consistently out-perform children with educated fathers and illiterate mothers. Given that, in general, children spend most of their time with their mothers, this is hardly surprising.

A girl who has had more than six years of education is better equipped to seek and use medical advice, to immunize her children, and to be aware of the importance of sanitary practices, from boiling water to washing hands. A World Health Organization study established that “in Africa, children of mothers who have received five years of education are 40% more likely to live beyond the age of 5.”

Moreover, a Yale University study showed that the heights and weights for newborn children of women with a basic education were consistently higher than those of babies born to uneducated women. A UNESCO project demonstrated that “each additional year of a mother’s schooling reduces the probability of the infant mortality rate by 5% to 10%”

The health advantages of education extend beyond childbirth and infant health. AIDS spreads twice as fast, a Zambian study shows, among uneducated girls than among those who have been to school. Educated girls marry later, and are less susceptible to abuse by older men. And educated women tend to have fewer children and space them more wisely, facilitating a higher level of care; women with seven years’ education, according to one study, had 2-3 fewer children than women with no schooling.

The World Bank, with its typical mathematical precision, has estimated that for every four years of education, fertility is reduced by about one birth per mother. The reason why the Indian state of Kerala’s fertility rate is 1.7 per couple, whereas Bihar’s is more than four, is that Kerala’s women are educated and half of Bihar’s are not. The greater the number of girls who go to secondary school, the Bank adds, the higher the country’s per capita income growth.

Moreover, women learn from other women, so uneducated women often emulate educated women’s success. And women spend more of their income on their families, which men do not necessarily do (rural toddy shops in India, after all, thrive on men’s self-indulgent spending habits). And, when educated girls work in the fields, as so many in the developing world must, their schooling translates directly into increased agricultural productivity and to a decline in malnutrition. Educate a girl, and you benefit a community.

I learned many of these details from my former colleague Catherine Bertini, a 2003 World Food Prize laureate for her tireless and effective work as head of the UN World Food Program. As she put it in her acceptance speech: “If someone told you that, with just 12 years of investment of about $1 billion a year, you could, across the developing world, increase economic growth, decrease infant mortality, increase agricultural yields, improve maternal health, improve children’s health and nutrition, increase the numbers of children – girls and boys – in school, slow down population growth, increase the number of men and women who can read and write, decrease the spread of AIDS, add new people to the work force, and be able to improve their wages without pushing others out of the work force, what would you say? Such a deal! What is it? How can I sign up?

Sadly, the world is not yet rushing to “sign up” to the challenge of educating girls, who consistently lag behind boys in access to schooling throughout the developing world. An estimated 65 million girls around the world never see the inside of a classroom. Yet not educating them costs the world more than putting them through school.

Certainly, there is no better answer. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan put it simply: “No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, improve nutrition, promote health, including the prevention of HIV/AIDS, and increase the chances of education for the next generation. Let us invest in women and girls.”

Writer: Shashi Tharoor

Source: Project Syndicate

The Lost Generations

 A country’s economic success depends on the education, skills, and health of its population. When its young people are healthy and well educated, they can find gainful employment, achieve dignity, and succeed in adjusting to the fluctuations of the global labor market. Businesses invest more, knowing that their workers will be productive. Yet many societies around the world do not meet the challenge of ensuring basic health and a decent education for each generation of children.

Why is the challenge of education unmet in so many countries? Some are simply too poor to provide decent schools. Parents themselves may lack adequate education, leaving them unable to help their own children beyond the first year or two of school, so that illiteracy and innumeracy are transmitted from one generation to the next. The situation is most difficult in large families (say, six or seven children), because parents invest little in the health, nutrition, and education of each child.

Yet rich countries also fail. The United States, for example, cruelly allows its poorest children to suffer. Poor people live in poor neighborhoods with poor schools. Parents are often unemployed, ill, divorced, or even incarcerated. Children become trapped in a persistent generational cycle of poverty, despite the society’s general affluence. Too often, children growing up in poverty end up as poor adults.

A remarkable new documentary film, The House I Live In, shows that America’s story is even sadder and crueler than that, owing to disastrous policies. Starting around 40 years ago, America’s politicians declared a “war on drugs,” ostensibly to fight the use of addictive drugs like cocaine. As the film clearly shows, however, the war on drugs became a war on the poor, especially on poor minority groups.

In fact, the war on drugs led to mass incarceration of poor, minority young men. The US now imprisons around 2.3 million people at any time, a substantial number of whom are poor people who are arrested for selling drugs to support their own addiction. As a result, the US has ended up with the world’s highest incarceration rate – a shocking 743 people per 100,000!

The film depicts a nightmarish world in which poverty in one generation is passed on to the next, with the cruel, costly, and inefficient “war on drugs” facilitating the process. Poor people, often African-Americans, cannot find jobs or have returned from military service without skills or employment contacts. They fall into poverty and turn to drugs.

Instead of receiving social and medical assistance, they are arrested and turned into felons. From that point on, they are in and out of the prison system, and have little chance of ever getting a legal job that enables them to escape poverty. Their children grow up without a parent at home – and without hope and support. The children of drug users often become drug users themselves; they, too, frequently end up in jail or suffer violence or early death.

What is crazy about this is that the US has missed the obvious point – and has missed it for 40 years. To break the cycle of poverty, a country needs to invest in its children’s future, not in the imprisonment of 2.3 million people a year, many for non-violent crimes that are symptoms of poverty.

Many politicians are eager accomplices to this lunacy. They play to the fears of the middle class, especially middle-class fear of minority groups, to perpetuate this misdirection of social efforts and government spending.

The general point is this: Governments have a unique role to play to ensure that all young members of a generation – poor children as well as rich ones – have a chance. A poor kid is unlikely to break free of his or her parents’ poverty without strong and effective government programs that support high-quality education, health care, and decent nutrition.

This is the genius of “social democracy,” the philosophy pioneered in Scandinavia, but also deployed in many developing countries, such as Costa Rica. The idea is simple and powerful: All people deserve a chance, and society needs to help everybody to secure that chance. Most important, families need help to raise healthy, well-nourished, and educated children. Social investments are large, financed by high taxes, which rich people actually pay, rather than evade.

This is the basic method to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty. A poor child in Sweden has benefits from the start. The child’s parents have guaranteed maternity/paternity leave to help them nurture the infant. The government then provides high-quality day care, enabling the mother – knowing that the child is in a safe environment – to return to work. The government ensures that all children have a place in preschool, so that they are ready for formal schooling by the age of six. And health care is universal, so the child can grow up healthy.

A comparison of the US and Sweden is therefore revealing. Using comparable data and definitions provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the US has a poverty rate of 17.3%, roughly twice Sweden’s poverty rate of 8.4%. And America’s incarceration rate is 10 times Sweden’s rate of 70 people per 100,000. The US is richer on average than Sweden, but the income gap between America’s richest and poorest is vastly wider than it is in Sweden, and the US treats its poor punitively, rather than supportively.

One of the shocking realities in recent years is that America now has almost the lowest degree of social mobility of the high-income countries. Children born poor are likely to remain poor; children born into affluence are likely to be affluent adults.

This inter-generational tracking amounts to a profound waste of human talents. America will pay the price in the long term unless it changes course. Investing in its children and young people provides the very highest return that any society can earn, in both economic and human terms.

Writer: Jeffrey D. Sachs

Source: Project Syndicate

Personalize Learning with Data

Wright Solutions Group is making data personal; they are using technology in a new way to ensure that teachers, administrators and parents have the exact data they need, when they need it to help improve learning outcomes for every child. Utilizing a powerful set of data visualization tools, they provide teachers, principals and district administrators with easy-to-use yet comprehensive analytic tools. This solution allows teachers to drill all the way down to an individual student’s response, while allowing superintendents to view all schools from a mile-high view. These data visualization tools allow users to access rich performance data quickly so they can make informed decisions regarding the design and delivery of instruction, matching individual learner needs almost as they occur. The challenge is gathering, processing, analyzing and then delivering the data in an actionable way in real time. Wright Solutions Group has solved this challenge by creating an elite team of highly skilled data analysts who work remotely in a mission control setting, directing the flow and efficacy of data for schools. This elite Mission Control team creates data-driven intelligence regarding the academic progress and proficiency of students, schools and districts. The information is being used by teachers and school support staff to provide timely and meaningful intervention to ensure ongoing student success. According to Pat Wright, president of Wright Solutions Group, “We know that individualized instruction is the most effective type of instruction and that data—detailed, accurate, daily, and in real-time—is the key to that individualization.” However, in the absence of timely analysis, the value of this data—teacher awareness of the changing needs of each student at any given time (and administration awareness of the circumstances driving school or district-wide progress at any given time)—becomes significantly diminished and student progress falls short of the goal. Wright has found that “Analyzing this data with a team of mission specialists and delivering it through a sophisticated dashboard allows teachers to personally help students how and when they need it, finally fulfilling the promise that actionable data can offer.” Wright Solutions Group is currently helping a number of schools, and their Mission Control solution is getting excellent results. Christopher Zagacki, Head of School at Freire Charter Middle Schools says “Although this is the first year of implementation at Freire Charter Middle School, Mission Control has added great value to the intervention program within the school. The assessments gave the RTII team insight into the students’ strengths and deficits, allowing us to provide an appropriate level of individualized support . The training programs, monitored in real-time, have enhanced our RTII model significantly. We have seen significant progress in student performance, both in terms of grade level equivalent gains and improved confidence in all coursework.” Source: SEEN

Private Education’s Public Benefits

 Africa’s economies are finally beginning to roar. In 2000-2010, after decades of sluggish growth, six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies were in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2060, Africa’s population could reach 2.7 billion, with a billion-strong middle class.

This is no mere rosy scenario. More than 70% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is under 30 years old – a youth bulge that could fuel rapid economic development, as has happened in Asia over the last three decades. Moreover, Africa’s economies have already begun to diversify, placing less emphasis on natural resources relative to thriving tourism, agriculture, telecommunications, banking, and retail sectors.

In order to maintain growth and continue to attract foreign direct investment – which rose six-fold in the last decade – Africa must develop a high-skilled, well-trained workforce. But inadequate education and training are the continent’s Achilles’ heel. Indeed, African business leaders often cite finding people with the right skills as a major challenge to their operations, especially in high-tech industries.

This is not surprising, given Africa’s poor educational provision. Illiteracy levels exceed 40% in several countries. South Africa’s National Planning Commission estimates that 80% of the country’s public schools are underperforming. And, in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, public-school students lack the core skills expected at their age and grade level.

The reasons for poor performance are deep-seated and complex. Inadequate financing means large classes, insufficient books and teaching supplies, poorly constructed schools, and aging infrastructure. Low wages for teachers do little to attract the best and brightest to the profession.

While Africa’s leaders are well aware of these shortcomings, they lack the resources to address them alone – especially given growing demand from the youth bulge. To reach the next stage of development, the private sector will have to fill the gap left by the state and NGOs.

In many developing countries, as the middle class grows, more families seek affordable private education for their children. India’s 2011 Annual Status of Education Report showed that in 2005-2008, private-school enrollment increased by 38%. Likewise, enrollment in private schools – largely low-cost institutions – exceeds 40% in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda.

In emerging economies, the private sector has some clear advantages over NGOs and the state, and this extends to schools. It can quickly scale up and make large investments in new markets – including for education – without bureaucratic delays, while building on proven models and international experience.

Furthermore, the private sector can drive educational achievement at a lower cost than the public sector. A World Bank study on language and mathematics showed that, for the same cost per pupil, private schools in the five participating countries (Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Thailand) performed 1.2-6.7 times better than public schools in terms of student achievement.

The private sector also brings innovation to the classroom. For example, some providers are developing teaching models in which students can watch teacher-created videos online outside of class, so that precious teacher-student face time can focus on interacting rather than lecturing.

Similarly, skilled teachers can now deliver interactive e-lessons to many classrooms at once, even if they are hundreds of miles away. As a result, students in places where schools have not yet been built, or too few qualified teachers are available, can still get an education. After all, a lecture from a good teacher – even if it is broadcast over the Internet – is preferable to face time with an untrained adult.

International policymakers must recognize the private sector’s potential to play a crucial role in educational provision, just as it does in the provision of health care and drugs. Private-sector education – subject to the buying decisions of parents, who will closely scrutinize their investment – is the best long-term guarantor of quality.

That has been a highly controversial proposition in the West, where debates about education are highly politicized and often fall within familiar ideological boundaries. But there is widespread consensus that Africa will need a massive increase in educational capacity over the next few decades. And, as the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) noted in 2010 “The demand for education services (in Africa) is rising at a faster rate than governments can supply.”

In other words, meeting Africa’s need for significantly higher educational capacity over the next few decades will require private providers. But some families will be unable to afford private education for their children, no matter how low the fees are. So the private sector must share expertise with public schools, and, where possible, offer free places to the poorest children.

Moreover, private education providers must be accredited, regulated, and closely monitored. Just as some private companies perform better than others, some schools might shine. But all must adhere to established performance standards.

For decades, education has been the preserve of governments and charities in Africa, cut off from the expertise and investment that private companies can provide. Now Africa has reached the point that, without a drastic increase in private education, its economic transformation could stall.

Writers: OLUSEGUN OBASANJO & SUNNY VARKEY

Source: Syndicate Project

Improve Your Student Outcomes Here’s How

In 2015, schools with students learning under Fontan Relational Education (FRE) saw achievements of: Average of 40 percent increase in reading comprehension 5 percent increase YOY (Year Over Year) in GPA Dropout rates close to zero No student failing Academic performance Ratio of 1.029 against 0.36 of traditional education 37 percent of students finishing a grade in seven months. Total average of students finishing a grade in nine months. According to Erika Twani, CEO of Learning One to One Foundation, “There are many theories on how to improve our education outcomes: increase in-school hours, smaller school/class size, different teachers’ compensation models, introduce technology, and so on. These ideas all have merit, but most only involve investing in old concepts. Unless we change the essence of the learning practice, we will not succeed. That is exactly what the Learning One to One Foundation does –literally transforming education.” Why it’s different Fontan Relational Education (FRE) is a proven model with 58 years of research that focuses on developing cognitive skills along with intellectual, personal, and socio-emotional skills. FRE customizes the learning process for different learners at an individual level based on students’ abilities and interests, relating everything they learn to their own lives while using technology as the platform for personalized learning. It is supported by one-on-one academic guidance and a one-to-one computer system based on cloud technology that efficiently coordinates student achievement and engages students, school staff, parents, counselors and administrators. According to Twani, “We focus on the learning process of each individual student, rather than personalization of content, which is what the vast majority of models do. The main tenet of the Fontan Relational Education model is its defined strategy to create learning autonomy, which happens as students grow and evolve in their learning process.” Why it Works FRE is called “Relational” education because students move to the next topic in all subject areas only when they are able to “relate” everything they learn to their daily lives, increasing knowledge retention and their chances to succeed academically, developing true cognitive skills. Research proves that FRE works equally well with students with disabilities, allowing them to perform as any student. Public schools using Fontan Relational Education have improved performance in as little as one year after adoption. How it Works Under a specific school or an entire school district request, Learning One to One Foundation provides expert guidance for whole-school reform, teacher, parent, and student training to adopt FRE, an on-line app that enhances the students learning experience, and continuous support to improve academic and technology performance every day. FRE evolves every year, allowing educators to be prepared for students learning requirements in this never-ending transformation in the world. The Foundation is available for immediate consultations and to provide more information. Writer: Erika Twani Source: SouthEast Education Network (SEEN)

Education Without Borders

As the third anniversary of the start of Syria’s civil war approaches, there is a race against time to deliver a groundbreaking education project to the conflict’s hardest-hit victims – hundreds of thousands of child refugees.

A shocking three million Syrian children have now been displaced. More than one million of them have fled Syria and are languishing in camps in neighboring countries, particularly Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. These children are now suffering a third winter away from their homes, schools, and friends. Many are separated from their families, and thousands more join the ranks of displaced persons every day in what is becoming the largest humanitarian catastrophe of our time.

But a pathbreaking initiative in Lebanon, involving teachers, aid agencies, and education charities has opened a small window of hope. Amid the chaos of camps, makeshift huts, and destitution, the fight for an important new principle of international aid has begun: even in times of conflict, children must have access to education.

A century and a half ago, the Red Cross established the norm that health care could – and should – be provided even in conflict zones. This principle was carried forward by groups like Médicins sans Frontières, whose doctors have risked their lives for the last four decades to deliver medical care to the world’s most dangerous places.

Now Lebanon is the site of a pilot program to advance the idea that providing education for refugee children is equally feasible – and no less important. Across 1,500 communities in this troubled, divided country, where Syrian refugee children now make up 20% of the school-age population, the aim is to establish children’s right to education as a humanitarian priority.

The typical refugee child spends more than ten years away from home. And every month that a child is out of school makes it less likely that they will ever return. Three years ago, most Syrian children were at school, and the country had near universal primary education. Today, millions of children are being denied any chance to realize their talents. The scars will last for decades.

So, in Syria and the surrounding region, there is already a lost generation in the making: children who are now eight and nine and who have never been to school, children condemned to work as child laborers, and hundreds of girls forced into early marriages. There are gruesome tales of young people who have been forced to sell their kidneys and other organs simply to survive.

Of course, we must provide food, shelter, and vaccinations. But, in conflicts like these, the one thing that children need, beyond the material basics, is hope. And it is education that provides children with hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel – hope that they can plan for the future and prepare for jobs and adulthood.

The pilot project in Lebanon, designed by Kevin Watkins of the United Kingdom’s Overseas Development Institute and led by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), creates the opportunity to establish a right to education irrespective of borders. Indeed, it is designed to cater to all 435,000 Syrian child refugees now in the country. Thanks to a historic agreement with the Lebanese government, places for hundreds of thousands of children can be created within weeks by putting 1,500 of Lebanon’s schools on a double-shift system.

The scheme is already being piloted in a small village called Akroum in the north of the country. Lebanese children are taught during the first shift, and Syrian children in the second. Using the same school for both sets of pupils means that education can be delivered at a cost of only £400 ($670) per child per year.

To secure places for all refugee children, we are seeking $195 million dollars a year for UNICEF and UNHCR, with the plan to be implemented on the ground by NGOs and the Lebanese authorities. The aim is to secure all funding during March, as the world marks the third anniversary of this tragic exodus from Syria.

We have already assembled a coalition of ten donor countries to take the lead, but we need ten more donors to fund the project fully. We are appealing to donors not just to create thousands of school places for desperately needy children, but also to establish a precedent for the 20 million other children driven by violent conflict into displaced-persons camps and shantytowns.

There cannot be universal educational opportunity for the worlds’ children without an agreement that we will cater to children in conflict zones. One million Afghan children are in camps along the border with Pakistan. Thousands of children in South Sudan still await their first chance to go to school, and schools have yet to be provided for a million more children in the war-torn Central African Republic. These children’s chances now depend on showing that we can make progress in Lebanon.

The UN Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000, expire in December 2015, which means that time is running to meet the deadline for achieving the target of universal primary education. That goal will remain unattainable unless and until we establish the long-overdue principle that a child’s right to education knows no boundaries.

Writer: Gordon Brown

Source: Project Syndicate

Big Data for Poor Students

 Countries need skilled and talented people to generate the innovations that underpin long-term economic growth. This is as true in developed as it is in developing economies. But it will not happen without investment in education and training. If we are to end poverty, reduce unemployment, and stem rising economic inequality, we must find new, better, and cheaper ways to teach – and on a vast scale.

This goal may seem to be beyond even wealthier countries’ means; but the intelligent collection, analysis, and use of educational data could make a big difference. And, fortunately, we live in an age in which information technology gives us the right tools to broaden access to high-quality, affordable education. Big data – high-volume, complex data sets that businesses use to analyze and predict consumer behavior – can provide teachers and companies with unprecedented amounts of information about student learning patterns, helping schools to personalize instruction in increasingly sophisticated ways.

The World Bank Group and its private-sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), are trying to harness this potential to support national education systems. A recently launched initiative, called the Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER), collects and shares comparative data on educational policies and institutions from countries around the world.

In the private sector, the ability to collect information about teacher-student interaction, and interaction between students and learning systems, can have a profound impact. In Kenya, for example, Bridge International Academies is using adaptive learning on a large scale. An IFC client founded by three American entrepreneurs, Bridge runs 259 nursery and primary schools, with monthly tuition averaging $6. It is a massive learning laboratory for students and educators alike.

Bridge tests different approaches to teaching standard skills and concepts by deploying two versions of a lesson at the same time in a large number of classrooms. The lessons are delivered by teachers from standardized, scripted plans, via tablets that also track how long the teachers spend on each lesson. Exam results are recorded on the teacher’s tablet, with more than 250,000 scores logged every 21 days. From these data, Bridge’s evaluation team determines which lesson is most effective and distributes that lesson throughout the rest of the Academy’s network.

We know that a host of issues can cause a student’s performance to decline – scorching summer heat in classrooms without air conditioning, problems at home, or poor-quality teachers, to name a few. But when one gathers results on a large scale, variables flatten out, and the important differences emerge. That is the great value of big data.

Another case is SABIS, a provider of K-12 education in the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. SABIS mines large data sets to ensure high standards and enhance academic performance for more than 63,000 students. Continuous tracking of annual student academic performance yields more than 14 million data points that are used to shape instruction, achieve learning objectives, and ensure consistency across the company’s network of schools in 15 countries.

Knewton, an adaptive learning platform that personalizes digital courses using predictive analytics, is another company at the forefront of the data revolution. With tailored content and instruction, even classrooms without private-school resources can provide individual learning. As a result, teachers spend their time in the most effective way possible – solving problems with students – instead of delivering undifferentiated lessons.

These benefits do not come without risk. We are only beginning to grapple with how big data’s tremendous potential for learning can be harnessed while protecting students’ privacy. In some cases, data-collection technology is outpacing our ability to decide how it should be collected, stored, and shared. No matter how rigorously data are secured, there is still a need for a clear licensing structure for its use. In many developing countries, there are no regulations for data privacy at all.

The interface between data and education holds the promise of new educational products for improved learning, with large potential benefits, especially for the poor. To realize those benefits – and to do so responsibly – we must ensure that data collection is neither excessive nor inappropriate, and that it supports learning. The private sector, governments, and institutions such as the World Bank Group need to formulate rules for how critical information on student performance is gathered, shared, and used. Parents and students deserve no less.

Source: Jin-Yong Cai

The secret to calm classrooms? Lose the shoes

Shoes are, as many teachers might tell you, one of the battlegrounds in a school’s uniform policy. Heel height, colour, whether or not a pupil’s shoe could actually be classed as a trainer are all argued over. But research suggests schools should do away with shoes altogether. The issue has been looked at as part of the Learnometer project, examining the physical conditions of classrooms, including temperature, light, sound and CO2. In the project, children surveyed each other at other schools in different countries, and one of the things that appealed to them, particularly after speaking to children at schools in Scandinavia, is introducing shoeless classrooms.

Stephen Heppell, professor of new media environments at Bournemouth University’s Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, who is running the project, has observed many shoeless schools now, and has seen the effects, including better behaviour. Going shoeless also has a particular impact on bullying. “It seems to be difficult to be a bully with your shoes off,” he says. “All the places we’ve been where kids have their shoes off, they report calmness.”

The researchers had asked children where they read at home. “Ninety-five per cent said it was with shoes off, sitting in comfort on a sofa, bed, on the floor, on a beanbag.” Making the classroom more comfortable and inviting, with clean carpets and no dirty footwear, could encourage reading, he says.

It isn’t just the children who should spend the day in their socks, says Heppell, the teachers must too. “You can’t have a room that’s shoeless unless everybody is shoeless.”

Whether any of this barefootedness translates into academic progress is difficult to say. “There are a lot more variables. These experiments are in schools that are improving anyway – they wouldn’t be taking their shoes off if they weren’t looking for ways to be better.”

Other teachers sound a similar note of warning. Secondary-school teacher Tom Starkey says he is intrigued by the idea but warns against falling for quick fixes. “It’s the shoes [that are a problem], or the food, or the colour of the uniform. It’s more complicated than that. It’s about socio-economic background, what’s going on in the school, teaching approach. Focusing on one thing – such as shoes, which is cute – sometimes shifts the focus away from things that are more important.”

Learn to Code, Code to Learn

Is it important for all children to learn how to write? After all, very few children grow up to become journalists, novelists, or professional writers. So why should everyone learn to write?

Of course, such questions seem silly. People use writing in all parts of their lives: to send birthday messages to friends, to jot down shopping lists, to record personal feelings in diaries. The act of writing also engages people in new ways of thinking. As people write, they learn to organize, refine, and reflect on their ideas. Clearly, there are powerful reasons for everyone to learn to write.

I see coding (computer programming) as an extension of writing. The ability to code allows you to “write” new types of things – interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations. And, as with traditional writing, there are powerful reasons for everyone to learn to code.

The recent surge of interest in learning to code, reflected in sites like codecademy.com and code.org, has focused especially on job and career opportunities. It is easy to understand why: the number of jobs for programmers and computer scientists is growing rapidly, with demand far outpacing supply.

But I see much deeper and broader reasons for learning to code. In the process of learning to code, people learn many other things. They are not just learning to code, they are coding to learn. In addition to learning mathematical and computational ideas (such as variables and conditionals), they are also learning strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas. These skills useful not just for computer scientists but for everyone, regardless of age, background, interests, or occupation.

Six years ago, my research group at the MIT Media Lab launched the Scratch programming language and online community in an effort to make coding accessible and appealing to everyone. Since then, young people (ages 8 and up) have shared more than 3 million projects on the Scratch website, with thousands of new projects added every day. Scratch is used in many contexts (homes, schools, libraries, community centers), at many age levels (from elementary school to college), and across many disciplines (math, computer science, language arts, social studies). 

We’ve been amazed with the diversity and creativity of the projects. Take a look at the Scratch website and you’ll find animated stories, virtual tours, science simulations, public-service announcements, multimedia art projects, dress-up games, paint editors, and even interactive tutorials and newsletters.

As an example, let me describe some of the projects created by a young Scratcher who I’ll call BlueSaturn. When BlueSaturn started using Scratch, one of her first projects was a Christmas card with cartoon images of Santa and his reindeer. Each reindeer was holding a musical instrument and, when clicked, played a different part of the song “We wish you a merry Christmas.” BlueSaturn sent her friends a link to the project as holiday greeting.

As she worked on the Christmas card, BlueSaturn realized that what she enjoyed most was creating animated characters. So she developed a project that featured a series of different animated characters: dinosaurs, dragons, flying horses. In the Project Notes, she encouraged other members of the community to make use of her characters in their own projects – and she offered to make custom characters upon request. In effect, BlueSaturn was setting up a consulting service. We had never imagined that the Scratch website would be used this way.

One community member wanted a cheetah for his Scratch project, so BlueSaturn made an animated cheetah, based on a video that she saw on a National Geographic site. For another community member, BlueSaturn created a bird with flapping wings – and then she posted a step-by-step tutorial showing how she had created the animation.

BlueSaturn became well-known in the community, and she began to receive requests to join collaborative teams, or “collabs” as they are often known in the Scratch community. In one collab, BlueSaturn worked with four other young people from three different countries to produce an elaborate adventure game. BlueSaturn created animated characters while other members of the collab developed game scenarios, created music and sound effects, and drew backgrounds.

In the process of working on these projects, BlueSaturn certainly learned coding skills, but she also learned many other things. She learned how to divide complex problems into simpler parts, how to iteratively refine her designs, how to identify and fix bugs, how to share and collaborate with others, how to persevere in the face of challenges.

We find that active members of the Scratch community start to think of themselves differently. They begin to see themselves as creators and designers, as people who can make things with digital media, not just browse, chat, and play games. While many people can read digital media, Scratchers can write digital media.

Scratch community members also begin to see the world in new ways. As one 11-year-old Scratcher wrote on a public blog: “I love Scratch. Wait, let me rephrase that – Scratch is my life. I have made many projects. Now I have what I call a ‘Programmer's mind.’ That is where I think about how anything is programmed. This has gone from toasters, car electrical systems, and soooo much more.”

It has been exciting to watch what young people are creating and learning with Scratch. But this is just the beginning. This month, our research team is launching a new generation of the Scratch programming language and online community. This new version moves Scratch into the cloud, enabling people to program, save, share, and remix Scratch projects directly in a web browser. The new version also adds many new features to enhance opportunities for creativity and collaboration.

But we are aware that new features and capabilities are not enough. The biggest challenges for the future are not technological but cultural and educational. Ultimately, what is needed is a shift in mindsets, so that people begin to see coding not only as a pathway to good jobs, but as a new form of expression and a new context for learning.

Source: The Guardian

Not feeling confident? Here are six ways to fake it

“Fake it til you make it” – the concept that if you act more confident than you feel, it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy – is widely proposed as a way to boost self-esteem.

Rachel Davis, a 21-year-old linguistics student at University College London, has tried this technique in new situations with unfamiliar people. “I try and become a cool, cynical, full-of-quips persona – an extra lively can-do exaggerated caricature of myself,” she says. But Davis feels this behaviour can be problematic as when she confides in new friends about social anxiety, they don’t believe her.

“Occasionally the confidence I’ve projected prevents me from seeking the help I eventually end up needing,” she says.

However, Ruby Andrews, a 22-year-old student at Chelsea School of Art, believes that faking confidence is “a necessary skill, particularly when you’re young and living in London”. She explains: “In the capital you have to be strong or you’ll sink. I’m not someone who flourishes when I’m out of my comfort zone, so faking it has helped me feel more confident and capable, even when inside I feel scared.”

Confidence coach Jo Emerson says she prefers the phrase “act as if” to “fake it til you make it”. “Acting ‘as if’ means you consider what qualities you would like to embody as a confident version of you – your best self – and then start acting in ways that echo this. For example, you might think your best self would smile at everyone you meet, in which case this is what you need to practice until it becomes second nature.”

Here are six areas where you can use this method to boost your confidence.

1. Adjust your body language

Both Davis and Andrews feel conscious of body language: Davis says she fidgets and Andrews tries to avoid tucking her hands in her sleeves as it could suggest a lack of confidence. 

Tweaking your posture just a little bit so that you are making yourself bigger rather than smaller can “significantly change how your life unfolds” says Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy in her popular TED talk about what the way we position our bodies communicates to other people, and to ourselves.

“In essence, if we stand like winners we feel like winners,” says Emerson. “Our positive physiology sends positive messages to our brain so stand tall and proud if you can.”

2. Consider your tone of voice

Speaking quietly, not saying much or hesitating while you speak all betray a lack of confidence. Emerson suggests recording yourself speaking to get over self-consciousness about your voice. “This often takes several play backs,” she says. “Then ask yourself how you might improve the way you speak. This often means slowing down and breathing between sentences. The more you can relax and be yourself with your voice, the better you will come across.”

Anne Walsh, vocal coach at Confidently Speaking, says that during stressful times like interviews or presentations, “we breathe high into our upper chest areas through fear and tension and this interferes with our capacity to connect breathing to speaking effectively.” She advises her clients to breath deeply because it allows your voice to be “open, warm and resonant”.

Walsh adds: “These techniques are simple to learn and can be practiced regularly until they feel natural. Confidence is created by a relaxed, open body posture, low, easy breathing and a warm, resonant vocal tone. These aren’t necessarily natural states for some of us, but they can be consciously learned, practiced and applied in situations that count.”

3. Make eye contact

Emerson says looking people in the eye and smiling really help to build confidence. Andrews says she’s noticed that she tends to walk around with her head down, but notices that when she looks up, making eye contact with strangers “can be a positive and self-assuring experience”.

4. Change the way you think

“If you have low confidence you are likely believing a very negative, critical voice in your mind,” says Emerson. “The key to boosting your self esteem is to start questioning this voice and replacing what it says with positive, wise, loving self-talk.”

“I definitely think negative thoughts impede my confidence,” says Andrews. “I’ve noticed that when I doubt myself I perform less well.” She says talking to friends and family about what is worrying her helps to offload the anxiety. 

“Negativity definitely impacts both my concentration and my creativity,” she adds. Davis tries to distract herself from negative thoughts by thinking about the good things she has going for her – friends, hobbies, boyfriends, even animals and foods she likes.

5. Dress in a way that makes you feel good

University professor and author of Mind What You Wear Karen Pine did an experiment where she dressed students in Superman costumes. She found they were more confident than the control group. “Dressing for success really does work,” she says. “Not only does dressing smart make you feel confident, research suggests that you will behave more confidently too.”

Emerson says clean, ironed clothes that suit you are important for confidence. “The way I dress has changed hugely since I was a student,” she says. “Because I had no confidence in my twenties I copied what I saw other girls wearing and hated those clothes on my body. I think the way we dress has a huge bearing on our confidence. We feel good about ourselves if we make an effort with the way we dress. This isn’t about fashion or size, more about wearing clean, ironed clothes that suit you.”

Andrews did a foundation year at world-famous fashion school Central Saint Martins and says that going to university felt like a runway show. “I was aware of how confident and proud everyone seemed,” she says. “Looking back I think some people stood out, but they were actually a minority. I notice when I wear something that I feel more comfortable in. When I dress lazily or in something that I think doesn’t flatter me, I spend time thinking about this and it distracts me.”

Davis says she feels best when she’s true to her style. “I like stretch fit or loose fit clothing,” she says. “Stiff smart clothing makes me either really confident or super uncomfortable. If I get anxious, or sweat, I get more anxious and sweat more. But if I feel a bit confident then a well-fitting smart outfit exponentially increases that.”

6. And the rest...

Davis says she can feel more confident if she stands out. “If I have something to show off that makes me seem extra well put together – such as nails or make-up – I feel more confident,” she says. “However, recently I’m discovering how to apply the state of mind without needing the external stimuli. I am learning to make myself feel comfortable simply by reading the situation, avoiding negative vibes and identifying people I can relate to.”

Andrews says exercising makes her feel confident, and so does receiving praise. “I feel confident when I receive an unexpected compliment from someone I don’t know particularly well,” she says. “So I try and praise those around me on little things in the hope that they too feel more sure of themselves as a result.”

Emerson’s top three tips for boosting confidence:

• Stop comparing yourself to other people, as it only leads to low self-esteem.
• Understand that confidence is like a muscle and you need to work on it to maintain it.
• Practice mindfulness – it’s the best antidote to stress, which causes anxiety and low confidence.
• Source: The Guardian