NEWS Fani-Kayode reacts to Aisha’s resignation from Buhari’s cabinet, APC

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, chieftain faulted Alhassan’s refusal to heed his earlier caution for her to dump the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Alhassan, better known as Mama Taraba, had resigned her ministerial appointment, after she was disqualified by the ruling APC from contesting the governorship seat of her state.

According to her, it would be out of place for her to remain as a minister in the government when the party that formed the government does not find her qualified to be a governor.

She stated that she felt betrayed and let down by the party.

Reacting, Fani-Kayode said Alhassan was humiliated and pushed out of APC despite his earlier advice to her.In a tweet, he wrote: “Few months ago I advised Aisha Alhassan that she should leave Buhari and APC before they humiliate her,push her out and insult her.

“She responded by insulting me. Now they have humiliated her,pushed her out and called her a “hypocrite that was working for PDP”. Poor,dumb Aisha!”

New minimum wage: Workers shut lecture rooms as ASUU, NASU join strike in UNIBADAN

Academic and non-academic activities were on Thursday disrupted at the University of Ibadan when the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and other unions in the institution joined the strike declared by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).The NLC, DAILY POST learnt had directed all workers across the country to embark on one-week warning strike which starts today.

DAILY POST correspondent who visited the university Thursday morning observed that students and lecturers who had lectures as at 8am in the morning were shocked to meet the lecture venues put under lock and keys.Administrative offices were not spared as most members who had come to work were directed to return home after attending the congress of their unions held at the Theatre Arts to intimate members on compliance.

The development also forced many students to loiter around, discussing the implication of the development on their pursuit.

Offices were put under lock and key. Those selling on campus have started feeling the impact of the strike.

Those who had travelled to process academic transcripts could not achieve their goal as those to process same were not available.

The University of Ibadan Chairman of ASUU, Dr. Deji Omole while speaking said, “ASUU is an affiliate of NLC and the national leadership of the Union attended the NEC meeting of NLC where the decision to embark on the ongoing warning strike was taken.

“Members of ASUU are therefore directed to join the strike action declared by NLC as from today Thursday, 27 September 2018.

“With this decision to join the NLC declared warning strike to press for the conclusion of negotiation on minimum wage, ASUU, UI emergency congress will hold tomorrow Friday, 28 September 2018 to share information and to formally declare the strike.

“We should not allow the government to always walk away from concluding negotiations with the organized labour Unions as this also has implications for the renegotiation of ASUU/FGN agreement”.

Seven ways to improve the ACT's education system

Given the amount of money we spend per student and our relative socioeconomic advantage, the ACT’s education system should be at the top of the class. Unfortunately, debates on performance rarely go beyond playground arguments.

Claims that any criticism of public schools is talking down the system are toxic and must be rejected outright. Equally, empty rhetoric about failing our students by the opposition must also be rejected. Voters deserve viable alternatives to current government policy, not just name-calling.

The ideological inertia of the Labor and Liberal parties in the ACT has squandered our opportunities.

The vacuous Future of Education strategy released by the ACT government this August epitomises the problem. The document has eight points that mean little, waffling about “putting students at the centre”, “empowering teachers”, and “strengthened systems”. The strategy says nothing about what will improve performance. The plan has no metrics to hit and no milestones to meet. It is a strategy that cannot fail, because virtually anything can be claimed as a success.

This ignores the real and growing problems in our education system. ANU research shows that our children are up to a year behind in learning compared to other children who come from similarly wealthy and educated populations. The most recent productivity commission report found that compared to other Australian states and territories, the ACT has the third-lowest year 12 completion rate of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

The ideological inertia of the Labor and Liberal parties in the ACT has squandered our opportunities.

The vacuous Future of Education strategy released by the ACT government this August epitomises the problem. The document has eight points that mean little, waffling about “putting students at the centre”, “empowering teachers”, and “strengthened systems”. The strategy says nothing about what will improve performance. The plan has no metrics to hit and no milestones to meet. It is a strategy that cannot fail, because virtually anything can be claimed as a success.

This ignores the real and growing problems in our education system. ANU research shows that our children are up to a year behind in learning compared to other children who come from similarly wealthy and educated populations. The most recent productivity commission report found that compared to other Australian states and territories, the ACT has the third-lowest year 12 completion rate of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

1. Increasing choice in public school selection. Every school has a unique style. A more traditional academic approach may suit some students, while inquiry-based learning or play-based learning may suit others. Unfortunately, the old-fashioned and strict in-area enrolment rules for ACT schools make parents feel that they have no choice for their children’s education, purely to avoid bureaucratic inconvenience.
2. Learning lessons from all education sectors. Everyone should have access to free, high-quality public education. We must also accept that some parents want independent schooling, given that private schools like Radford College have a seven-year waiting list. We must ask the question: what are these schools delivering that the public school system is not? Why do parents want to spend the extra money?
3. Publishing better statistics on educational outcomes. Although NAPLAN is controversial, it remains the main available measure of school performance. The Federal Government is currently implementing the 2016 recommendations of the Productivity Commission to create a National Education Evidence Base and drive education reforms from real data. Yet the ACT’s strategy does not reference this major project once, or the opportunities to compare notes with other jurisdictions to see what works and to learn from them.
4. Equalising resources at all public schools. It is a travesty that some ACT public schools have multiple halls and sporting ovals while others have no oval at all. The infrastructure at Weetangera School, just 3 kilometres away from Florey Primary School (with a high proportion of lower socioeconomic and ethnic children) couldn’t be more different in the facilities available to them. The government should establish an asset register and prioritise capital works for schools with lesser facilities. Every child should have access to equal resources, regardless of the age or suburb of the school they attend.
5. Committing to introducing early childhood education for three-year olds. Research indicates that early childhood education is essential to allow people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds to achieve parity in educational outcomes. Despite the Education Minister recently announcing that the ACT government would fund education for three year olds, this transformative change is conspicuously absent from the overarching strategy and there is no timeframe for commencement.
6. Aligning schools to the capacity of working parents. Too many schools are still designed around the benchmark of the 1980s where it was common for one parent to stay home while the other worked. Now both parents work and care for their children, with an increasing number also caring for their ageing parents. Schools shouldn’t assume parents are easily available during school days any more. Further, parents may have limited skills or capacity to help at home. Schools cannot expect parents to provide additional tuition to students who are falling behind.
7. A greater focus on fundamentals. Reading, writing, and maths are more essential than ever. Unfortunately a seemingly endless range of fundraising and awareness “events”, often combined with undirected learning activities, provide too many opportunities for the less-motivated student to be distracted and fail to obtain these critical life skills. The ACT government should review all use of school time that isn’t delivering on the core curriculum.
The ACT Government has poured more and more money into the public education system, including rolling out school computers worth tens of millions of dollars, but it has dropped the ball on practical educational reforms in favour of glitzy initiatives. The truth is that our ACT education system is not delivering the results it should, and we need to acknowledge that openly.
We can do better. With leadership, I believe that it is possible to have a high-achieving educational system that makes children, teachers, parents, and the community proud.

Why is Labour so timid on education? It makes the Lib Dems look radical

I’ve been a teacher for the past five years at an inner London academy, and I’ve seen the injustices that education professionals, students and their parents face first-hand. State schools are chronically underfunded, while elite private school fees cost up to £30,000 a year. Ofsted and school league tables are used to enforce a narrow vision of education, and an Institute of Education report this week has found that teachers in England have the lowest job satisfaction of all English-speaking countries.

Perhaps most importantly, students are suffering: the OECD has reportedthat young people in the UK are among the unhappiest in the world. This is the result of 40 years of education “reforms” driven by a rightwing political agenda, favouring privatisation, obsessive testing and endless competition between students and between schools – as if these were things to be celebrated in themselves.As an active Labour member I want to see radical ideas coming from shadow secretary of state Angela Rayner aimed at tackling these challenges. Labour’s flagship education policy, the National Education Service (NES), contains the seeds of this radical potential. But the idea remains an empty shell: there hasn’t been a single education policy announcement from Rayner since the NES idea was launched 18 months ago.

Layla Moran, education spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats and a former teacher, on the other hand, made a powerful speech to the Liberal Democrat conference this week.She promised to abolish Ofsted, league tables and SATs, to remove private school charity tax status, and subtly hinted at abolishing the 11-plus test for grammar schools, because they perpetuate “state-sponsored segregation”.

I have never voted for the Liberal Democracts and never will. But there’s no denying that they currently have the most radical offer on the table when it comes to education.

By contrast, Rayner in her Guardian interview this week insisted that her party’s policymaking on education would not be “ideologically driven”.

The trouble is, education policy has always been ideologically driven. So either Labour is going to challenge the particular neoliberal ideology that has created the current mess or it isn’t. And if it doesn’t, it won’t fix it.

Rayner claims that academies as such are not a problem. But academisation has led to a situation in which we now have a competitive market in education that pits desperate schools against each other to retain their “market position”. This has led to terrible examples of gaming the system and outright corruption, at the expense of the most vulnerable children. The recent education select committee report showed that disproportionately high numbers of special educational needs students are being “off-rolled” to improve league tables positions. The academy revolution promised that the market would improve schools for all our children, and yet the gap in attainment between working class children and the rest stubbornly persists.

Rayner is right, of course, when she says that many vulnerable, working-class young people are being failed. And everyone agrees that practical education should be more highly valued than it is by our elitist system. But simply saying that we need more “technical” or “vocational” training, as Rayner does in her interview, is not enough. Her suggestion that the study of history is too “abstract” suggests a dangerous anti-intellectualism. It also reproduces the snobbish belief that working-class children shouldn’t have access to high-status knowledge. The 2011 Wolf report made clear that vocational qualifications under New Labour were an abject failure. Not only did they not prepare young people for skilled work, but they also created a narrow, technical curriculum that meant students continued to be locked out of the powerful knowledge that teachers know can enable them to understand the social, economic – and dare I say it, historical – forces that shape their worlds.When asked about private schools Rayner rules out abolishing them, saying that if we only make “the state sector good enough” then private schools will wither on the vine. She forgets the main reason many people choose private education is snobbery – they don’t want their children being educated with the “great unwashed”. Labour’s plans to impose VAT on private school fees was a step in the right direction.

But why not suggest that university admission departments must only accept 7% of their undergraduates from private schools, given that this is the proportion of students they represent in the country as a whole? Then you really would see parents flock to the state sector, and perhaps have a greater investment in improving it.

So while the NES remains a potentially radical idea, that potential is currently going to waste.

The Lib Dem policies don’t go far enough for me. They would only roll back the worst of the education reforms adopted under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. But Labour should be offering a great deal more than that. Labour must have an exciting vision for the future, a vision for the NES inspired perhaps by Finland, where schools promote collaborative, creative and emancipatory learning, rather than endless competition for exam results.

Labour galvanised people with its manifesto in 2017 because it promised something genuinely different, yet this has not been reflected in Labour’s education policy to date. As a teacher, I know that my students and their parents deserve more from Labour: otherwise, the deep inequality that blights our education system is set to continue.

Development goals

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 2015, calls for a new vision to address the environmental, social and economic concerns facing the world today. The Agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 4 on education.^[37][38]

Since 1909, the ratio of children in the developing world attending school has increased. Before then, a small minority of boys attended school. By the start of the 21st century, the majority of all children in most regions of the world attended school.

Universal Primary Education is one of the eight international Millennium Development Goals, towards which progress has been made in the past decade, though barriers still remain.^[39]Securing charitable funding from prospective donors is one particularly persistent problem. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute have indicated that the main obstacles to funding for education include conflicting donor priorities, an immature aid architecture, and a lack of evidence and advocacy for the issue.^[39] Additionally, Transparency International has identified corruption in the education sector as a major stumbling block to achieving Universal Primary Education in Africa.^[40] Furthermore, demand in the developing world for improved educational access is not as high as foreigners have expected. Indigenous governments are reluctant to take on the ongoing costs involved. There is also economic pressure from some parents, who prefer their children to earn money in the short term rather than work towards the long-term benefits of education.^{[citation needed]}

Since 1909, the ratio of children in the developing world attending school has increased. Before then, a small minority of boys attended school. By the start of the 21st century, the majority of all children in most regions of the world attended school.

Universal Primary Education is one of the eight international Millennium Development Goals, towards which progress has been made in the past decade, though barriers still remain.^[39]Securing charitable funding from prospective donors is one particularly persistent problem. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute have indicated that the main obstacles to funding for education include conflicting donor priorities, an immature aid architecture, and a lack of evidence and advocacy for the issue.^[39] Additionally, Transparency International has identified corruption in the education sector as a major stumbling block to achieving Universal Primary Education in Africa.^[40] Furthermore, demand in the developing world for improved educational access is not as high as foreigners have expected. Indigenous governments are reluctant to take on the ongoing costs involved. There is also economic pressure from some parents, who prefer their children to earn money in the short term rather than work towards the long-term benefits of education.^{[citation needed]}

Zambia: On Location with Teacher Charles Zulu

Charles Zulu (CZ): I am the head teacher of Chiwawatala Basic School, My deputy is Misozi Mwanza, and there are 12 other teachers. I was born in 1957 and reside at the school. I am married and have 6 children.

Jan Aaron (JA): What is your educational background, schools, degrees, prior jobs? How long have been working at your present job? Challenges? What accomplishments are you most proud of in your current job? What does the future hold for your school?

CZ: I was educated in Chipata and have a Diploma in Primary Education. I have been a teacher since 1981 and have never worked anywhere else. As head teacher, my main duties are to administer the day-to-day running of the school, to relate to and interpret government policy on education with the local community, other stakeholders and donors. My main challenge is infrastructure. We do not have enough classrooms and teacher houses. The other challenge is the growing number of orphans. When we received assistance from ADB (African Development Board), we constructed 2 classroom blocks and 4 teacher houses. When other aid came from the Lu of Sausage Foundation in the UK, we brought power to the school. I look at and cherish these developments as my greatest accomplishments. The school is continuing to grow from the initial population of 223 pupils in 1997 when I arrived to almost 880.  

JA: Is education for all children compulsory in Zambia? If so, ages and grades? Are schools free? Cost of uniforms, books and supplies? If a family can't pay, is school provided on a scholarship basis?  

CZ: Education is free and compulsory for Grades 1-7 in Zambia. Pupils start school at 7 years of age. From grades 8-12, students are required to pay. At our school, pupils pay 80,000 Kwacha (US$16) per term for three terms. All children are required to pay for school uniforms, buy books and other school supplies. These cost about US$60 for the full year. It is not easy to afford the costs, but a few pupils have scholarships. Pupils have 8 hours at school of which 6 hours are spent in class and 2 are spent on extracurricular activities. We have 3 terms of 3 months each with a month break between terms. We provide lunch at school, which has been sponsored by the World Food Programme and we grow vegetables to supplement  this.

JA: What nonacademic courses does your school offer for those who don't excel academically, such as basket weaving, animal husbandry? Guide instruction for employment at Bushcamp? Are there courses in deportment?  I heard the boy’s choir. Is there a girl’s choir? Have any of your graduates gone on to become famous in business, the arts, or other fields? If so, give names and brief  descriptions.

CZ: In community studies we offer non-academic courses like fishing, weaving, agriculture, animal husbandry, carving, and conservation. These assist our learners who cannot continue with formal education to earn a living in their societies. A good market is there for these products and learners benefit a lot from the courses. The choir is made up of both boys and girls, some of which have excelled. Some are teachers, safari guides, businessmen/women. For example, Kevin is now a guide at Mfuwe Lodge, Mike owns a big shop in Mfuwe area and many others are prospering in both government and private institutions.

MIT President Susan Hockfield Applauds 250 High School Women in Math First Prize Of $25,000 Goes To 10Th Grader

MIT, Boston: The world of math and arithmetic is sometimes considered to be a male-dominated field. In a world where men and boys are given the most credit for their mathematical accomplishments, the Advantage Testing Foundations’ Math Prize for Girls is a welcome change. The Math Prize for Girls is a competition open to junior high school and high school women across the country who excel in math and science.

Recently, the Math Prize for Girls celebrated its third year at MIT. The competition lasts an entire day while the girls conquer a multitude of written tests. Over the course of the day, the 250 competitors dwindle down to 10 finalists. Those 10 finalists are then honored at the award ceremony at the Kresge Auditorium on campus.

During the award ceremony, past winners were recognized and many speakers shared their wisdom with the audience. Dr. Susan Hockfield, president of MIT, gave encouraging statistics to the competitors. “I am here to tell you two things,” Hockfield announced, “first, you are not alone. There are many people in the world who care intensely about math and science and engineering, even if there may not be lots of them at your high school.” She went on to explain that 45 percent of the current MIT student body consists of young women. Eighty-five percent of those women will major in math at MIT. The girls in the audience smiled at those statistics.

Other speakers included Dr. Tom Leighton, the co-founder of Akamai Technologies, Luyi Zhang, a current MIT freshman and the keynote speaker Dr. Shafi Goldwasser, a computer science professor at MIT. Each speaker had supportive and enlightening advice to share with the young competitors.

The award ceremony commenced with the final 10 contestants in a difficult tie. After three mind-bending math questions, the final winners were determined. The first prize, a check for $25,000, was handed to 10th grader Victoria Xia of Vienna, Virginia. Tenth grader Julia Huang and 9th grader Danielle Wang each received $7,500 for winning second and third place, respectively. Wang was the first-place winner in the previous year.

The Math Prize for Girls is a special competition for its contestants and winners. Elizabeth Shen, a high school senior from Charlotte, N.C., said, “In the world of mathematics competitions most of the dominant people are boys … and I think that’s because in society it’s more appropriate for boys to be involved in math and science. But this competition allows girls and women to shine.”

Another contestant, Melody Guan from Toronto, competes regularly in math competitions. She describes the female atmosphere as being a supportive environment. “It’s very special and unique and extremely encouraging to be in an environment where the contestants are all girls. Also, it’s easier to make friends because you share a common language. It’s nice to make a network of girl mathletes,” she said. Following high school, the two seniors intend to study a math-related field at either MIT or Harvard.

Hockfield summed up in her final statement the power of this competition: “The math skills each of you is building now will allow you to live a life beyond that of spectators and consumers,” she explained. “You can be the creators and inventors and problem-solvers of our future, and I can guarantee that there is nothing more exhilarating.

Strong, Effective Leadership Key to The Bialik-Rogozin School

REPORTING FROM TEL AVIV -- When I sat down to talk to Karen Tal at the Bialik-Rogozin School in south Tel Aviv, I was eager to meet the woman whose inspiring transformation of a failing school became the topic of the academy award winning documentary “Strangers No More,” which was produced and directed by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon.

In 2005 when Tal was recruited to oversee the merger of the Bialik and Rogozin schools by the municipality, she was understandably overwhelmed. The two schools were located in the same decaying building. The atmosphere was marked by violence and a high rate of teacher burnout with only 28 percent of its students passing the bagrut (Israel’s national exam). Now the school boasts 90 percent of its students who achieve success on the exam, and it has become a model for other schools of how to achieve racial tolerance and integration. The campus’s entrance is a microcosm of the positive changes, with walls collaged with photographs of children refugees from Darfur and a mural of painted green trees, depicting Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish Arbor Day that celebrates the birthdays of all trees, brings life to another wall. Student demographics are similar, with refugees from war torn places, others who are the children of workers from such far-flung locales in the Philippines, Uzbekistan, and Colombia, and native-born Israeli Jewish, Muslim, and Christian children whose families are mired in poverty.

The transformation that took place at the school illustrates that Tal not only deinstitutionalized a failing school; she reimagined a new philosophy of teaching. She explains, “My vision is holistic. I want to build children’s self esteem and create a home for learning. In keeping with this philosophy, Tal keeps the doors of the school open well beyond the end of the school day. Until late in the evening the school offers a safe space where students can receive one on one mentoring from over 100 volunteers.  This open door policy extends not only to the students but to families as well. After school hours, the building transforms into an ulpan (a language school) and resource center for refugee families struggling to find jobs, secure citizenship and adapt to the challenges of life in a different culture.    

Tal is now working to export the Bialik-Rogozin model to other challenged communities, directing the new Education Initiatives Center that will work with and empower principals in poor areas of Israel to create community and public-private partnerships to turn around weak elementary and high schools. The non-profit initiative, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and municipalities, has the potential to touch thousands more disadvantaged students throughout the country. Over the next year, she will help oversee the reform and the reopening of schools in several cities throughout Israel. Although she will travel extensively throughout the country training principals to recreate her success, it is clear that the Bialik-Rogozin school is never far from her heart. She even plans to come back as a volunteer and work with students one on one.

Recently, Karen Tal was awarded the prestigious Charles Bronfman prize, a $100,000 award which recognized the achievements of a single humanitarian whose work is inspired by Jewish values and has broad global impact. In her acceptance speech, she commented, “The way we judge our society is by how we treat those on the margins. The magic in this place is from love and from the injunction of how we treat the strangers among us.”

How Camps Help Children Care for the Earth

Whether a child makes his home in the heart of the city or the fields of the heartland, daily life can make getting “back to nature” hard for any family. Yet experiencing the outdoors helps children gain enhanced abilities to learn, lead, and experience contentment, as well as gain a lifelong interest in caring for planet earth.

Parents who want to be sure their kids know a toad from a frog and a catfish from a crawfish don’t need to go it alone. Camp programs are among the very best ways for children to get to know first-hand a very important family member — Mother Nature.

Take James, for example. Despite being included in many family travels, James and the natural world had only a passing acquaintance, and his parents were wise enough to send him into the woods for camp.

“We have a little potato patch down by the river, and the kids can catch a trout in the river and dig up potatoes and bring them back to camp, learning what it’s like to live off the land,” explains Sandy Schenk, owner and director of Green River Preserve camp of Cedar Mountain, North Carolina.

Almost all camps incorporate hikes and nature activities, and some go an extra mile to immerse kids in nature and the environment. Green River Preserve is one such camp. It specializes in helping gifted children better understand the earth through daily activities with professional naturalists on a 3,400-acre nature preserve.

“We find that getting kids into the natural world is transformational,” says Schenk. “Nature’s a magnificent teacher because everyone is treated the same. Pushing yourself is something that happens naturally in the out of doors. And when you see kids helping each other over a slippery rock wall, it’s amazing. We see each child come out of the program with a greater understanding of nature and better sense of self.”

Eagles’ Nest Camp of Pisgah Forest, North Carolina, has been teaching kids to take care of their natural world for decades. “In our Explorer’s Club class, kids are out in the woods, streams, and bushes, really getting a feel for the amazing biodiversity of the Northern Appalachians,” explains Noni Waite-Kucera, executive director of Eagle’s Nest Foundation. “To have kids be able to explore and be a part of that is a real gift for them.”

Eagle’s Nest also sponsors camp craft classes, helping children learn to read a map, build a fire, and leave no trace. “We teach every camper how to respect and avoid making an impact on the environment,” she says. Even an earth art class uses items found in the forest for woodland sculptures, which campers then leave behind to biodegrade and contribute to the health of the forest ecosystem.

Environmental programs don’t always take place exclusively in the outdoors. The Whole Kitchen program uses holistic ingredients, fresh foods, whole grains, and local produce. “We grind our flour from wheat berries, and the kids make the bread,” Waite-Kucera says. “It’s all a way to show how nature provides for us, and why we need to return the favor.”

Sometimes, a camp’s location can provide built-in environmental lessons. At Windsor Mountain (formerly Interlocken), camp life centers around a small farm and camp garden nestled in the foothills of New Hampshire on the edge of a 4,000-acre nature preserve.

“We offer kids a chance to get their feet wet in the morning dew, to feel the grass under their feet, to lie down in the field and look up at the stars. Our activities help them understand how Mother Nature is delicate and why we care about helping to protect her,” says Sarah Herman, director of the camp.

Campers harvest vegetables from the garden for the salad bar and help take care of the farm animals. Children with a special interest in nature also can go directly into the marsh to learn about its animal habitats, into the woods to create natural art, or on a bog-wading ecological adventure. For older youth, three-day, off-campus trips can take campers backpacking, mountain climbing, rafting, and more — all with an eye to building awareness in the natural surroundings.

Regardless of which you choose, nearly all campers leave with an enhanced appreciation of the outdoors.

Sport England launches £13.5m drive to boost secondary school PE

Sport England is launching a £13.5m scheme to train 17,000 teachers in delivering PE and sport in school, after research found that almost 20% of secondary students hated PE lessons.

With more than a quarter of the nation’s adults “inactive”, according to the Active Lives survey released in March, Sport England wants to ensure students are leaving secondary education with an active lifestyle.

Jennie Price, the chief executive of Sport England, said: “While some youngsters have a great experience of PE and sport at school, others don’t, and our research shows that can put them off being active for life. Lots of people have bad memories of being picked last for a team or just feeling really uncomfortable in PE lessons. This programme is designed to stop that happening.”The scheme will run through the national network of teaching school alliances, training teachers in new activities from zumba to volleyball and encouraging school leaders to value PE.

Last year the government doubled the funding for PE in primary schools to £320m a year, and 1 million primary school children are now taking part in the Daily Mile running programme, but secondary schools have been without any financial investment or national schemes in the subject for the last decade.

A third of pupils leaving primary school are overweight or obese, making it more difficult for secondary school PE teachers to ensure their lessons are inclusive.

Meanwhile, schools are under greater pressure than ever to perform in academic subjects, and a Youth Sport Trust survey found that 38% of teachers said PE time had been cut for 14- to 16-year-olds in the past five years.The former Olympic sprinter Darren Campbell, whose company works in schools, said there was a link between sport and mental health. “Competitive sport is being taken away and it’s becoming all about taking part,” he said. “Life is competitive, just getting a job is competitive. Sport is life lessons, learning how to win and learning how to deal with defeat. We’re failing to prepare young people for disappointment.”

Another Olympian, Denise Lewis, welcomed the focus on how teachers delivered PE lessons but expressed concern about what she saw while visiting schools.

“The lack of coordination in young people is alarming. I’ve been to schools where children aged nine and 10 just can’t skip,” she said. “It’s great they’re addressing secondary school PE but I still believe that by the time children are in year 6, if they are fitter and more coordinated, they will be more readily keen to participate in exercise at secondary school.”

Lewis also highlighted an issue facing teenage girls. “Most girls I see don’t have the correct fitting bras. They’re conscious of their shape while they’re participating in exercise, so they don’t commit fully. They’re participating with the handbrake on because they’re so self-conscious about their body.”

She said teachers needed to consider innovative and sensitive ways to support parents in providing appropriate kit.

Ross Myhill, the head of PE at Thomas Gainsborough school in Suffolk, one of 40 taking part in a pilot scheme, described the impact it was having, from training teachers to deliver activities such as yoga and handball to making the most of existing facilities through additional after-school clubs.

The school is running inclusive competitions for lower-ability students, such as a “Highland Games-style” sports day with welly throwing and tug of war. “These are students who have never represented the school [in sport] in their whole lives. They get to experience that same sense of pride, and competition,” Myhill said.

“I’ve been teaching for 15 years and I don’t think there’s been such a hands-on scheme before. You have up to £20k to upskill staff to give secondary school students more opportunities and get them active.

“We’ve got a rock climbing wall in school but – and it’s horrible to say it – we don’t have enough money in the school to be able to put people on a rock climbing course to deliver the lessons.”

With the new funding, Myhill hopes to be able to offer lunchtime and after-school sessions, as well as opening up the facility to the local community.

Education sector

The education sector or education system is a group of institutions (ministries of education, local educational authorities, teacher training institutions, schools, universities, etc.) whose primary purpose is to provide education to children and young people in educational settings. It involves a wide range of people (curriculumdevelopers, inspectors, school principals, teachers, school nurses, students, etc.). These institutions can vary according to different contexts.^[34]

Schools deliver education, with support from the rest of the education system through various elements such as education policies and guidelines – to which school policies can refer – curricula and learning materials, as well as pre- and in-service teacher training programmes. The school environment – both physical (infrastructures) and psychological (school climate) – is also guided by school policies that should ensure the well-being of students when they are in school.^[34] The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has found that schools tend to perform best when principals have full authority and responsibility for ensuring that students are proficient in core subjects upon graduation. They must also seek feedback from students for quality-assurance and improvement. Governments should limit themselves to monitoring student proficiency.^[35]

The education sector is fully integrated into society, through interactions with a large number of stakeholders and other sectors. These include parents, local communities, religious leaders, NGOs, stakeholders involved in health, child protection, justice and law enforcement (police), media and political leadership.^[34]

Several UN agencies have asserted that comprehensive sexuality education should be integrated into school curriculum.^[36]

Solving a Medical School Dilemma: Who Wants to Be The Proctologist’s Very First Patient

A Doctor’s very first patient:  The most important teacher you’ve probably never thought about.

Many years ago I found myself sitting in a doctor’s waiting room with a sore throat. Perhaps influenced by a parenting magazine on the coffee table, suddenly an odd thought occurred to me: How do gynecologists and urologists learn to do invasive exams? Who do they practice on? Manikins? Is that even helpful? I thought, how do you practice a prostate exam? Does some unlucky patient wind up being the first attempt for a new doctor just out of school? 

And…wouldn’t it be awful to be that first patient?

To make a long, circuitous story very, very short, I find myself now training instructors to address that challenge. As I discovered, the problem of how to practice these sensitive exams creates a lot of anxiety for medical students, and hadn’t been given much attention. I’ve spent the last several years committed to changing this.

Historically, it has been next to impossible to get anyone to volunteer to act as a “guinea pig” for untrained hands learning how to do the invasive, stigmatized, and emotionally complicated gynecological, urogenital, and prostate exams. 

No surprise there.

Professors, understandably, won’t allow their own bodies to be examined by students who need to practice. Likewise, students should not be required to practice on each other. Plastic manikins simply don’t work: Their hard components don’t accurately feel like the delicate structures, and manikins don’t provide any immediate feedback.  This is a huge drawback for a student who wants to learn how to perform these exams without hurting a patient in the process. 

Some students have been made to practice on anesthetized patients. Some students still are. (Note: Always read the small print when you sign consent forms before going under general anesthesia.)  To their credit, students and professors have strong moral objections to this practice…and, just like manikins, there is no feedback from an anesthetized patient. 

But even if there was a willing volunteer, would that really work? There is so much emotional discomfort and social baggage involved when it comes to the private areas of the body, so much anxiety for the students, such a great possibility for injury to the volunteer, so little direction about what to say to a patient to make them comfortable, so much inconsistency in the methodology…and, aside from all that, no guarantee that an untrained volunteer will provide constructive feedback to the student. From the standpoint of a school, such a volunteer creates more problems than they solve.

The result is that many students get no hands-on training when learning to perform “bathing suit-area” exams. The thinking too often is that this whole area of instruction is too complicated, too embarrassing, too stigmatized, and too traumatizing. And therefore nothing is offered and nothing is done. 

So, yes…you very well could be that first patient for a new doctor with inexperienced hands.

But there is a solution. What schools need are highly trained specialists who can instruct students as well as use their own bodies to allow students to practice the techniques. These specialists are called Gynecological Teaching Associates (GTAs) and Male Urogenital Teaching Associates (MUTAs). They are substitute professors, if you will, who teach the necessary exam skills and then also act as “patients” to guide the students as they practice those exam skills on that same instructor. Equally important, GTAs and MUTAs teach the students essential communication skills that help make the patient feel comfortable during the exam. 

I didn’t invent this idea; here and there schools have trained GTAs and MUTAs “in-house.” But most schools don’t have the wherewithal or the kinds of resources to recruit and train such high-level instructors. Most schools need an outside group to come to them with excellent GTA and MUTA instructors to provide standardized training for their students. Such outside groups have been rare or non-existent, until now. After many years of experience as a GTA, one of my current colleagues formed a company about a year ago to address this need. I quickly joined her to help develop a MUTA program and act as Managing Director and Lead Trainer for the company.

Finding instructors willing to do this was — and is — a challenge.  Being a GTA or MUTA is hard work, physically and emotionally. In addition, there was virtually no information on how to traininstructors. As we expanded our reach over the past year, I wound up having to write the only available curriculum to train MUTAs.  My colleague, Isle Polonko, developed the curriculum to train GTAs. Our company, Clinical Practice Resources (ClinicalPracticeResources.com), now provides instructors to dozens of teaching hospitals, schools, and institutions throughout the country. We now have over 20 highly trained male and female instructors doing this important work, and we are the largest independent company in the world providing this kind of educational instruction. And yet, we barely feel we have scratched the surface.

The response from students and teaching institutions has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are continually getting referrals, requests to expand our program, develop new programs, and start programs in other areas of the country. There is a huge need for this kind of instruction. Over the last several years I have been invited to give presentations at international conferences by the Association of Standardized Patient Educators (ASPE), and have been invited again to give a number of presentations about my work at ASPE’s annual conference this June.  What started out as a random musing in my doctor’s office one afternoon has certainly led me on a fascinating journey.

The most rewarding aspect of this work, though, was something I hadn’t expected at all. Most of the students we teach are in the middle of medical school, and have spent their entire education up until that point immersed in books or interacting only with plastic manikins. When I teach a class, I am often the first real human “patient” they have yet to come in contact with. Students start the class filled with anxiety, terrified. By the end of my class, they are filled with confidence. This is, after all, what everything has been about for them: working with people. Because I’ve provided them with an anxiety-free way to conquer the scariest challenge so far in their medical training, they emerge fearless about the challenges that lay ahead for them…and excited to meet their future patients with care and empathy. It’s a momentous transformation, and I am continually grateful to be a part of that accomplishment. 

Zambia: On Location with Teacher Charles Zulu

Charles Zulu (CZ): I am the head teacher of Chiwawatala Basic School, My deputy is Misozi Mwanza, and there are 12 other teachers. I was born in 1957 and reside at the school. I am married and have 6 children.

Jan Aaron (JA): What is your educational background, schools, degrees, prior jobs? How long have been working at your present job? Challenges? What accomplishments are you most proud of in your current job? What does the future hold for your school?

CZ: I was educated in Chipata and have a Diploma in Primary Education. I have been a teacher since 1981 and have never worked anywhere else. As head teacher, my main duties are to administer the day-to-day running of the school, to relate to and interpret government policy on education with the local community, other stakeholders and donors. My main challenge is infrastructure. We do not have enough classrooms and teacher houses. The other challenge is the growing number of orphans. When we received assistance from ADB (African Development Board), we constructed 2 classroom blocks and 4 teacher houses. When other aid came from the Lu of Sausage Foundation in the UK, we brought power to the school. I look at and cherish these developments as my greatest accomplishments. The school is continuing to grow from the initial population of 223 pupils in 1997 when I arrived to almost 880.  

JA: Is education for all children compulsory in Zambia? If so, ages and grades? Are schools free? Cost of uniforms, books and supplies? If a family can't pay, is school provided on a scholarship basis?  

CZ: Education is free and compulsory for Grades 1-7 in Zambia. Pupils start school at 7 years of age. From grades 8-12, students are required to pay. At our school, pupils pay 80,000 Kwacha (US$16) per term for three terms. All children are required to pay for school uniforms, buy books and other school supplies. These cost about US$60 for the full year. It is not easy to afford the costs, but a few pupils have scholarships. Pupils have 8 hours at school of which 6 hours are spent in class and 2 are spent on extracurricular activities. We have 3 terms of 3 months each with a month break between terms. We provide lunch at school, which has been sponsored by the World Food Programme and we grow vegetables to supplement  this.

JA: What nonacademic courses does your school offer for those who don't excel academically, such as basket weaving, animal husbandry? Guide instruction for employment at Bushcamp? Are there courses in deportment?  I heard the boy’s choir. Is there a girl’s choir? Have any of your graduates gone on to become famous in business, the arts, or other fields? If so, give names and brief  descriptions.

CZ: In community studies we offer non-academic courses like fishing, weaving, agriculture, animal husbandry, carving, and conservation. These assist our learners who cannot continue with formal education to earn a living in their societies. A good market is there for these products and learners benefit a lot from the courses. The choir is made up of both boys and girls, some of which have excelled. Some are teachers, safari guides, businessmen/women. For example, Kevin is now a guide at Mfuwe Lodge, Mike owns a big shop in Mfuwe area and many others are prospering in both government and private institutions.