New UNESCO Report “The hidden crisis: armed conflict and education”

UNESCO has released the 2011 EFA Global Monitoring Report, ‘The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education.’ This report analyses the devastating effects of conflict on education.

To download the report Click Here!

Pan-African University to launch in February 2010

The Pan-African University, envisaged as a continental network of institutions training postgraduate students and promoting research, is set to open its doors in February 2010.  The Pan African University (PAU), supported by the African Union, will not construct a new higher education infrastructure – at least not for now – but will use existing universities as satellites across the continent to train masters and PhD students. It will eventually comprise a main campus linked to a network of five regional centres, chosen for their academic and research strength and the relevance of their work to Africa’s needs. The centres will be located in North, West, East, Central and Southern Africa. To read the rest of Munyaradzi Makoni’s article on University World News Click Here!

University of Pretoria joins World Digital Library Project

The University of Pretoria’s Department of Library Services has joined the World Digital Library Project, making it one of the 27 institutions in the world and the only one in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa to belong to this project.
Proposed in 2005 by the Library of Congress in cooperation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Digital Library project will make available on the Internet significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.
To read more Click Here!

For more information regarding the World Digital Library project, please visit http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/project/english/index.html

UNESCO Regional Conference on Higher Education in Africa

Dakar, Senegal: 11 November 2008.

Keynote address by the Minister of Education of South Africa, Mrs Naledi Pandor, at this conference on new partnerships in African Higher Education

Research in Africa on downward spiral

Wachira Kigotho recently wrote an article in The Standard Online Edition on the “Death of Research in Africa”. In this article he indicates that the scientific gap between Sub-Saharan African countries and the rest of the world is widening to unacceptable levels as a result of weak or total absence of research policies. He reiterrates that when these countries are measured in terms of published scientific papers and patent applications, most countries are experiencing a staggering collapse of scientific output and innovation. National scientific communities that flourished between 1970s and 1980s in Sub-Saharan Africa have floundered or become too small to function effectively. He lists the following possible reasons for the decline:

• erosion of academic oversight and direction
• paralysis because of budgetary shortfalls
• absence of career prospects
• high staff turnover
• large number of researchers emigrated or changed professions
• virtually no recruitment of scientists in the region throughout the 1990s
• wages paid to scientists in most African countries are no longer adequate to live on
• funding for science and research partnerships with universities and research institutes in other countries have declined
• vibrant scientific journals, many of them supported by university departments have disappeared and those that appear are so poorly edited that they have lost their reputed contributors or have been discarded by scientific databases, thus marginalising the scientific output of these countries

Exceptions are countries in Sub-Saharan Africa whose scientists are relatively active in agriculture and medicine.

To read the whole article Click Here!

Survey of e-Learning in Africa

UNITWIN/UNESCO Chair in ICT for Development recently released their Survey of e-Learning in Africa. This report summarises information about the status of e-learning in Africa based on 316 responses to a questionnaire circulated in 2007 to people on the e-Learning Africa database. Respondents to the survey were from 42 different African countries, with Kenya (15%), South Africa (12%), Nigeria (11%), Ethiopia (9%) and Uganda (8%) furnishing most respondents.

These respondents provided a wide variety of information about their e-learning practices, and it is difficult to draw overarching generalisations based on the evidence provided. Nevertheless, three main conclusions can be drawn: 

• there is a wide variety of different e-learning practices in Africa;  
• e-learning is still very much in its infancy across most of the continent;  
• there is much enthusiasm amongst respondents for developing the potential of e-learning in their countries.

  Click Here to read the Survey!

World Youth Report 2007

The World Youth Report 2007 has recently been published by Youth at the United Nations. The report examines the challenges and opportunities existing for the world’s roughly 1.2 billion young people between the ages of 15 and 24. Distinct from the 2003 and 2005 editions, it provides a regional overview summarizing the major youth development trends in the fifteen priority areas of the World Programme of Action for Youth. The report explores major issues of concern to youth development, including employment, education, health, poverty, and violence. It also highlights youth as a positive force for development and provides recommendations for supporting their essential contributions.

Chapters:

• Asian youth in the context of rapid globalization
• Latin American youth in an era of socio-economic and political change
• Overcoming the barriers of poverty: challenges for youth participation
  in sub-Saharan Africa
• Labour market participation among youth in the Middle East and North
  Africa and the special challenges faced by young women
• Tackling the poverty of opportunity in small island developing States
• Labour market challenges and new vulnerabilities for youth in economies
  in transition
• Opportunities for youth development in developed market economies: An
  unequal playing field
• Ensuring youth development around the world: The way forward
• Statistical Annex

World Youth Report 2007 Click Here to download!

Our Education is in Crisis – New Report

 According to a new Finweek report just released, South Africa’s Education is in crisis mode. Below the summary of the report as quoted from their website: www.fin24.com “The report revealed not only the shocking skills shortage 13 years into post apartheid South Africa, but a fundamental crisis in an education system sorely lacking resources to adequately equip a nation for future growth.  “According to the report, the bottom line was the failure of the education system to face up to the challenges of global competition in the 21st century.   “We’re probably talking about an effort – assuming for argument sake we get the education system functioning optimally now – lasting an entire generation before we see the results of a well-educated society working its way through the labour market and economy,” Stellenbosch economist Servaas van den Berg told Finweek.  “During the past two years, the South African education system ejected 535 000 people from school without any passing certificate and a very uncertain future. Without doubt these (school leavers) will join the ranks of the unemployed… At this time citizens between the ages of 20-24 represent 14% of the labour force, but are already over represented among the unemployed, accounting for roughly 27% of that number.  “Add to that last year’s report by Education Minister Naledi Pandor that less than half of the 675 132 learners who started school in 1999 actually made it to matric.  “Of the 564 775 matriculants who wrote the year end exam last year, more than 200 000 failed.  The decline in pass rate and lack of skills, says the report, is creating a slippery slope for further economic growth.  “It warns that a knowledge economy cannot survive with a severe imbalance between the educated and uneducated; causing a self fulfilling vicious cycle, lack of skills reducing demand and vice versa.   “Statistics reveal numbers that are cause for serious concern: Between 1999 and 2004, an average of only 4.4% of matriculants achieved mathematics passes adequate for gaining entry into university to study natural sciences.  “The fact that in 1999 only half of the country’s maths and science teachers had tertiary qualifications in these subjects is as worrying.  “For the past 16 years, fewer than 7% of Senior Certificate candidates passed higher grade maths, according to a 2007 Centre for Development Enterprises survey on maths and science in schools.   “The prognosis for the matric classes of 2010 and 2011 is not much better.  “When the class of 2010 (now in grade 10) was in grade 3 in 2001, the national survey of performance showed that 30% did not achieve the required standard in numeracy, and 54% did not achieve the required standard in literacy.  “For the class of 2011, the 2005 grade 6 evaluation showed that only 28% performed at the required standard in numeracy. For literacy, only 38%.  “In addition to the education crisis, South Africa is losing skilled professionals to other countries who use South Africa as a hunting ground for recruitment. A study recently found that the loss of one skilled professional in SA costs up to 10 unskilled jobs.   “The fact that very little is being done to train a next generation of engineers, scientists and other professionals needed for a growing economy is even more frightening.  

Results from PIRLS 2006 International Report is shocking!

South Africa’s Grade 4s & Grade 5s came last in a study of 40 countries that took part in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006. This was revealed yesterday at the release of the South African results at a news conference in Irene, South Africa by Prof Sarah Howie and her team from the Centre for Evaluation Assessment at the University of Pretoria, that co-ordinated the research nationally. 

The PIRLS 2006 International Report is available at http://timss.bc.edu/PDF/p06_international_report.pdf

Web 2.0 for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

The Obervatory on Borderless Higher Education Published an interesting report in August 2007 on “Web 2.0. for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education”. This report authored by Tom Franklin founder of Franklin Consulting, an Education Technology Consultancy and Mark Van Harmelen an independent ICT consultant who works in education and technology enhanced learning at the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science, discusses the uses of Web 2.0 in higher education and examines the practices at five institutions currently implementing Web 2.0: the UK Universities of Brighton, Leeds, Warwick, and Edinburgh, and the University of Klagenfurt in Austria. It then considers ways in which Web 2.0 impacts institutional policy and strategy. In the final section it then analyses issues related to Web 2.0 in learning, teaching and assessment. This report may be used to help formulate policy and guidelines for Web 2.0 use in universities. Although it identifies some of the risks associated with Web 2.0 implementation, including intellectual property and security issues, and because the application of Web 2.0 in higher education is still in an early stage it concludes by recommending that institutions impose only minimal and necessary regulations in order to avoid constraining experimentation with Web 2.0 technologies and allied pedagogies. The report is available to subscribers (UP does subscribe) on the Obervatory on Borderless Higher Education’s web site at  http://www.obhe.ac.uk/products/reports/