Weekly Global Education News | June 24, 2017
Update on issues affecting teachers, children, and schools around the world
UNICEF: Iraq’s children caught in cycle of violence and poverty as conflict escalates
“Across Iraq, children continue to witness sheer horror and unimaginable violence,” said Peter Hawkins, the UNICEF Representative in the country, in a statement on the launch of the new assessment.
Entitled Nowhere to Go, the assessment underscores that more than five million children in the country are in need of urgent humanitarian aid.”
World poverty could be more than halved if all adults finish secondary school
“A new paper released today by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report … shows that the global poverty rate could be more than halved if all adults completed secondary school.
The paper, Reducing global poverty through universal primary and secondary education, demonstrates the importance of education as a lever for ending poverty and helping improve the lot of adults currently living under the threshold of $1.90 a day . By confirming the links between the two, the paper is welcome news for those working to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal on poverty eradication by 2030 (SDG 1) while reinforcing the investment case for universal secondary education — an education target under SDG 4.”
See also: Millions could escape poverty by finishing secondary education, says UN cultural agency
The role of education for women and girls in conflict and post-conflict countries
“In the event of war and conflict, women and young girls suffer more compared to their male counterparts. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), women comprise 49% of refugees worldwide, mainly due to conflicts, and they often face more hardship than men in similar situations due to their gender.”
Children in Syria in worst crisis since WWII
Ukraine: 750,000 children at risk of losing access to safe drinking water, warns UN
“Nearly three million people in eastern Ukraine rely on water infrastructure that is now in the line of fire,” said Afshan Khan, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia, noting that more families are expected to be cut off from safe drinking water, putting children at severe risk of disease and other dangers.
About 400,000 people, including 104,000 children, had their drinking water cut off for four days this week after two filtration stations for the South Donbass Water pipeline were destroyed by shelling.”
How to host 200,000 refugee students in your education system: An answer from Lebanon
“As the country which hosts the world’s largest number of refugees per capita, Lebanon holds some important lessons. Lebanon almost doubled the size of its national public education system in five years in response to the ongoing refugee crisis, something no country has ever done before.
In order to accomplish this, Lebanon integrated Syrians into public schools using the national curriculum. It did this by:
Instituting second-shifts in more than 300 public schools, with Lebanese certified teachers as instructors; and
Abolishing enrollment fees and providing free textbooks for all public school students.
World Refugee Day: Come See What MSF Sees
See also: Making the most of World Refugee Day
“What’s the use of education?” Nobel Prize-winner Professor Amartya Sen launches IOE Centre for Education and International Development
“Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Amartya Sen (Harvard University) launched the UCL Institute of Education’s (IOE) Centre for Education and International Development (CEID) on Thursday 15 June.
This new research centre will build on the IOE’s leading contribution to the academic field of education and international development, bringing together a wide range of academics, students, alumni and practitioners working in diverse settings in every continent to address some of the world’s most important challenges.”
