All educational centers in Borno state were closed three weeks ago due to Boko Haram attacks in the area, however this group of students had returned to their school in order to sit final exams. An estimated 14 girls escaped from the trucks as they were being driven away, but most of the 129 abducted students are still missing. Eighteen-year-old Godiyah Isaiah is one of the girls who managed to escape. She said that the gunmen initially posed as Nigerian soldiers who had arrived at the school to evacuate the students to a safer region.

Boko Haram is thought to have taken the students to their camps near the Cameroonian border. The group has abducted girls in the past to use for forced labor or sexual slavery. Groups from the Nigerian police force, army, and air force have been searching for the girls, as have many of the girls’ own parents, who have headed into the Sambisa forest to look for their children.

Boko Haram has carried out increasingly violent attacks in Nigeria in recent years as part of its campaign to create an Islamist Nigerian state. The group frequently targets schools, teachers, students, and ordinary civilians, and is said to have killed an estimated 1,500 people so far in 2014.

Creative Commons Love: UNHCR Photo Unit on Flickr.com

Eight teachers in Kitale, Kenya will be the first to be trained to use PEEK in their classrooms. Designed to be mobile and used with only basic training, teachers can give eye exams to their students and catch eye problems before they become a serious issue and cause students to fall behind in school.

PEEK was designed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and works by displaying a shrinking letter on the phone’s screen to be used as a vision test. Additionally, the phone’s flashlight and camera can be used to scan the retina for optic nerve health and the lens for cataracts. Results of the exams are stored on the phone to be emailed to doctors, who can follow up with any eye health issues.

Though PEEK is still in the trial stage, early results are encouraging, and those involved in the project are excited about its potential.

Peter Ackland, from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, notes that “teachers are the gateway to testing children in many low-income countries.” PEEK could prevent situations where, due to a lack of human resources to conduct eye exams, children “go through life with an eye condition that’s entirely avoidable.”

According to the World Health Organization, 258 million people are blind or visually impaired, but four out of five cases could be prevented or cured with treatment. The most common problem in children is simply poor eyesight, which, when diagnosed and corrected with glasses, drastically increases children’s opportunity and ability to perform well at school.

Creative Commons Love: Nomadic Lass on Flickr.com

The Uwezo Learning Assessment is an initiative that aims to evaluate, report on, and make recommendations about learning capabilities among children aged six through 16 in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. According to Uwezo’s founders, the project began after education stakeholders began to suspect that often “schooling is not translating into learning.” With the release of the Uwezo Tanzania 2012 Learning Assessment Report, Uwezo have found that suspicion confirmed.

According to the report, which surveyed over 100,000 Tanzanian children, literacy in Kiswahili and English remains generally low in Tanzania. In addition to the 85% of students in grade three whose literacy was lagging, researchers found that almost a quarter of seventh graders could not read a story written at a second grade reading level.

According to Uwezo Tanzania’s country director, Zaida Mgalla, English skills were also found to be low, with 50% of seventh graders lacking a basic grasp of English.

Surveyors concluded that literacy and numeracy performance varied by students’ location, wealth, and by the type of school they attended. Wealthier students, children in urban areas, and those who attend private schools generally outperformed poorer and rural students, and those attending government-run schools.

As the Uwezo initiative is still in the evaluation stage, the organization has not yet made recommendations on improving the school system.

In the meantime, according to Mgalla, the results are clear: “We are in a society of two classes,” she says. “The privileged with more wealth or in urban areas or who can afford private schooling do much better than most people. When it comes to education, Tanzania is not one nation.”

Creative Commons Love: Book Aid International on Flickr.com

Last October the EU was named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. It announced later that the prize money would go to “Children of Peace” projects aimed at helping children who have been displaced and affected by conflict. Some of the recipients include 700 children of the indigenous group the Nasa We in Colombia’s Tolima region.

Indigenous peoples like the Nasa We occupy a precarious place in areas like Tolima, where competing armed groups recruit children, use valuable resources, and threaten traditional culture.

Nasa We youth, especially if they have dropped out of school, often become targets for armed groups.

“When the farmers’ children come to school, they often say: ‘This boy or that one has been taken.’ When those people find out that children are 12, they just take them,” a 17-year-old secondary student in the town of Gaitania told Euronews.

The EU hopes to make school “more attractive” to children in this area to help prevent them from becoming child soldiers.

To achieve this end, the Nobel prize money is being used to renovate schools and classrooms. Students currently struggle to learn in primary schools like the one in Gaitania, where the roof leaks, the library has no books, and there is no electricity. Teachers fear there is no motivation for older students to stay in school.

EU funding is also being used to “consolidate the ethno-education process of the Nasa We,” according to local UNHCR head Jovanny Salazar. Schools that serve the Nasa We conduct lessons on the indigenous community’s culture, heritage, and language, in addition to Spanish, reading, and mathematics. Some of the EU prize money slated for use in the area is now being allocated to print textbooks about the Nasa We.

Creative Commons Love: World Bank Photo Collection on Flickr.com

According to the United Nations Development Program, 1.4 billion people (20% of the world’s population) do not have access to electricity and an additional one billion struggle with unreliable electricity networks. 291 million children around the world have no electricity in their schools.

A lack of electricity in schools limits the amount of time students are able to study and learn to full daylight hours, and means no access to materials like projectors and computers. Students and teachers are unable to print and copy materials, learn computer skills, and access online resources.

SolarCity estimates that it will be able to install between 475 and 525 solar power and battery systems in schools, partnering with the school-building nonprofit buildOn. Identified target countries include Nicaragua, Haiti, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, and Senegal.

SolarCity and buildOn have already installed one photovoltaic system at a school in Nicaragua. In addition to providing teachers and students with an inexpensive, sustainable source of power during the day, thanks to electricity the school now functions as a community center and meeting place at night.

According to SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, most poor, rural schools in developing countries “will never get electricity” in the near future, as no local means to generate it exist nearby. With the photovoltaic panels and battery system his company will install, he says, “You can skip the legacy infrastructure and build out the new infrastructure in a smarter, better way.”

Creative Commons Love: Black Rock Solar on Flickr.com

Dr. Ari Johnson, from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) evaluated the program in Yirimadjo, Mali. Administered by Senegalese NGO Tostan, Malian NGO Muso, and the Mali Ministry of Health, the program reduced the child mortality rate to 17 deaths per 1,000 children under the age of five in the period from 2008-2011.

During this time, 24 community health workers went door-to-door to more than 7,000 households, treating sick children and evaluating healthy ones for any warning signs of childhood illness. The success in this method, according to Johnson, lies in the assertive approach to treatment. As many childhood illnesses strike suddenly and worsen rapidly (sometimes resulting in death in under 48 hours), by the time families seek out treatment on their own it is often too late.

Additionally, the administering NGOs worked to reduce child mortality by addressing systemic causes of childhood illness and death: namely poverty. Health workers introduced education and employment opportunity initiatives to help empower community members to escape poverty and have more control over their own futures.

Molly Melching, Tostan’s Executive Director, noted that this kind of initiative where health, education, and development build on each other has proven to be highly effective.

“Tostan’s major goal has always been to educate, to get people at the grassroots the information they need to make important decisions and become really involved in development efforts themselves and actually own their own development,” she told Voice of America News.

The program’s UCSF evaluators noted that more research was needed, but that they had high hopes for the program overall.

Creative Commons Love: European Commission DG ECHO on Flickr.com

The Character and Creativity Initiative (CCI), from LeadIn and the Global Peace Foundation, is a series of trainings and programs that aim to positively impact high school students by encouraging peace, understanding, and creativity in schools. First pioneered in six Kenyan schools in 2010, the program has since spread to 40 schools in Kenya, and has now reached schools in other parts of Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia, and North America.

American educationist and engineer Tony Divine oversaw CCI’s implementation in Kenya. According to him the Initiative encourages both teachers and students to adopt new values. He says that teachers who were previously impatient with unmotivated and underperforming students “understood them better” after the Initiative, and students who had been disengaged or troublemakers “earned fresh motivation that helped them engage in productive activities.”

According to LeadIn’s 2013 evaluation report on the Initiative, participating schools not only showed a positive change in students’ self-esteem and interpersonal relationships, but bullying and drug/alcohol abuse among students decreased and academic performance increased.

The Global Peace Convention, which honored CCI among its 1,000 delegates and organizations from 40 countries, this year hosted for the first time a Global Summit on Character and Creativity. CCI chair Professor Leah Marangu spoke to delegates at the Convention, describing CCI as a trait of Kenya’s “top schools.”

Schools that have adopted the Character and Creativity Initiative are reinventing the education system, she said, and “harnessing the hidden qualities of their teachers, students, and even parents.”

Creative Commons Love: Moving Mountains Trust on Flickr.com

Students at the Mayo Girls Primary School participated in GIS Day celebrations by learning about how geographic information systems help shape their lives and futures in this, the world’s newest country.

Presenters from the World Food Programme spoke to students about how the agency relies on GIS software to deploy and track humanitarian aid in South Sudan, a country with a large geographic area, weak infrastructure, and a great need for aid after a long violent conflict.

Kenyang Cirr Dut, a Ministry of Education official, also told students how they can use geography in their own lives once they get older. “If you master geography, you will know when it’s the right time for planting crops and this will lead to abundant food supply,” he said.

According to World Food Programme officers, this was not just a day to encourage girls to become involved with geography, but more generally to pursue their studies and stay in school. Mayo School’s GIS Day is an example of a WFP-supported event that works to build excitement about school, and is part of a strategy to keep female students enrolled that also includes food incentives provided by the WFP.

GIS Day has been celebrated worldwide since 1999, with grassroots educational events bringing knowledge of GIS applications to schools and to the public. In addition to being used by the WFP, GIS are used to produce the maps used by humanitarian agencies all over the globe.

Creative Commons Love: Arsenie Coseac on Flickr.com

At two schools in Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, parents, students, and school directors recently signed an agreement to end “decades of rivalry” between them. Students at the schools launched violent attacks on each other throughout this past year, culminating in November with a back and forth series of attacks. Students involved threw rocks, bottles, and firecrackers at the opposing school’s buildings, and launched a tear gas canister into a classroom. Asunción police officers responding to the situation noted that many students were under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time.

According to Paraguay’s Ministry of Education (MEC), these types of attacks are not the only forms of school violence they see. Ministry Official Alba Martínez notes that her department has handled 50 cases of bullying and violence this year, but that most cases are never reported.

María Achucarro, of the National Police’s School Monitoring Department, says that school violence is often the fault of parents. “All of these violent incidents are taking place because of the absence and lack of attention from parents,” she says. “Of the 500 parents invited to a talk about prevention, only 20 attend.”

Other members of the Education Ministry have echoed the sentiment that parents are to blame. Simply blaming parents is not an effective tool for change, however, as school violence and bullying are multifaceted problems. At this stage, a collaborative effort between parents, teachers, students, officials, and the police is needed to improve the situation for youth in Paraguay.

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“This is not optional. This is government policy,” declared Education Minister Ronald Thwaites at the announcement of the new mandate. The policy, supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and several Jamaican educational agencies, is intended to ensure that female students are not denied their opportunity to continue their education if they become pregnant.

Despite the Ministry of Education’s affirmation that education for pregnant students is a fundamental right, several other education institutions seem unsure. Jamaica’s National Parent-Teacher Association withheld support from a similar policy proposed in May, saying that while they believed that pregnant students should be allowed to learn, they “did not believe they should attend classes with other students.”

A representative from the Association of Principals and Vice Principals, interviewed by the Jamaica Gleaner about the new policy, quoted a regulation from 1980 stating that female students who become pregnant “shall be excluded from attending the institution during the period of pregnancy.” He added, however, that after giving birth young mothers should be transferred to a different school and reintegrated.

Other educators interviewed by the Gleaner echoed this sentiment, agreeing that sending a teenage mother to a different school would help her avoid embarrassment, and was important so that “you don’t signal to the students that it’s ok to because you can come back.”

The UNFPA’s new report on teenage mothers clearly shows that adolescent pregnancy is often due to “circumstances beyond a girl’s control.” Encouraging students to leave the schools, teachers, and friends that they know after giving birth reinforces the stigma of pregnancy and may act as a barrier to education.

The UNFPA reports that 7.3 million teenage girls in developing countries give birth each year, and most do not finish school. Now is a crucial time for Jamaica to address the causes of adolescent pregnancy, send a clear message of wholehearted encouragement, and support adolescent mothers in continuing their education.

Creative Commons Love: Jake Brewer on Flickr.com