The report also reveals other shocking statistics. Approximately 65% of the schools surveyed had been looted, occupied or damaged by bullets and shells. 80% of respondents said that fear of violence was the main reason that students were reluctant to return to their studies. Overall, nearly half of all schools are closed and students across the region have lost an average of six months of school time.

A lot is being done in response to the crisis. For instance, 1,352 primary school teachers from UNICEF and other NGO’s have been transported back to their posts within the region. Nearly 25,000 children who had been forced out of schools are not taking catch-up classes to prepare for this year’s final exams. An additional 40,000 children are scheduled to start learning again in the coming weeks.

Yet, UNICEF is stressing that more needs to be done. Earlier this year, it appealed to the international community for a sum of $11.5 million in aid. UNICEF has since tripled that amount to US$32 million. One third of the funding has been received.

The survey was conducted in 176 out of 1,933 primary schools in 11 of the 17 prefectures in the Central African Republic. The report stresses that its results should be taken with a grain of salt. On page six, it states: “these findings should be interpreted as only pertaining to the schools assessed; due to the purposive sampling strategy utilized, the findings should not be generalized to all schools in the prefectures.” The report also reveals that difficulty with travel and dwindling resources prevented the survey from being conducted in six of the prefectures.

You can read the full report here.

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Young Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai has won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The award will be presented by the European Parliament in Starsbourg on November 20. It recognizes Malala’s work defending human rights and free thinking. She is also a favorite to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which would make her the youngest Nobel laureate yet. The Nobel committee is expected to announce the winner this Friday.

Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament,who announced the laureate, said, “By awarding the Sakharov Prize to Malala Yousafzai, the European Parliament acknowledges the incredible strength of this young woman. Malala bravely stands for the right of all children to be granted a fair education. This right for girls is far too commonly neglected.”

The Sakharov Prize was established in 1988, in honor of Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet dissident and scientist. The inaugural winners were Nelson Mandela and Anatoly Marchenko. Since 2010, the award has been accompanied by a monetary prize of €50,000 (approximately US$67,000).

Yousafzai is a student from Mingora in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, where the Taliban has banned girls from school since 2009. She gave a public speech in 2008, entitled, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to an education?” In 2009, she blogged anonymously for the BBC under the pseudonym of Gul Makai. After receiving a positive response, she and her family began to receive death threats from the Talibans, culminating in an assassination attempt in October 2012.  She was shot in the head and neck by gunmen on a school bus.

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A 33-page report published by Human Rights Watch titled, “Safe No More: Students and Schools Under Attack in Syria,” reveals a grim picture of education in Syria. Children aren’t simply missing school. School buildings have become barracks and sniper posts. Students are interrogated, beaten, and sometimes tortured for alleged anti-government loyalties. The document also claims that Syrian forces and the shabiha, loyalist militias, have fired upon schools, injuring children in the middle of lessons.

The report points to two air strikes on schools that were not being used by opposition forces and were not in the vicinity of anti-government military posts. The Syrian air force reportedly dropped improvised “barrel bombs” and incendiaries on schools.

Salma, a 14-year-old high school student, recalls two instances in mid-2012 of her school being shelled while class was in session: “When the tank entered the (grounds), it hit the walls of the school with machine guns. Students got down to shelter. We spent half an hour or an hour there underneath our desks.” Marwan, a 12-year-old student said that he ran for cover as tanks shelled his school building.

According to the Syrian Ministry of Education, 2,362 schools (over 10% of all schools) in Syria have been damaged or looted. 1,468 schools are being indefinitely designated to house displaced persons. Syria’s Local Coordination Committees report that at least 3,873 schools throughout the country have been damaged. 450 of these schools are completely destroyed and must be reconstructed.

The report is a compilation of more than 70 interviews conducted between October and December of 2012. Those interviewed included 16 students, 16 educators, and 22 parents of schoolchildren. Most of the interviewees were refugees and the majority of the interviews were conducted in Jordan. A sizable group of Syrian refugees in Jordan are originally from Daraa, Homs, Damascus.

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The beneficiaries receive internet access to thousands of international scientific journals, books, and databases. These can texts can be downloaded, saved, and printed. The database allows users to search through articles by keyword, subject, author, and language. These resources are available in many languages. Research4Life also offers training for the program.

Research4Life aims to close the education gap in an effort complete the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015. In total, the initiative has benefited 6,000 institutions in developing countries. Some of these institutions receive access for free, while others have access at a low cost. With the addition of Wiley’s online library, the e-book library numbers almost 30,000 journals, books, and databases.

Emily Gillingham, chair of Research4Life’s Executive Council, stated, “The books are empowering universities, colleges, research institutes, and government ministries, as well as non-governmental agencies and hospitals, with access to scientific knowledge.”

Gillingham noted that almost 6,000 of the books deal with chemistry, the physical sciences, and engineering. 1,200 of the titles are medical. 2,000 of the texts are related to the life sciences, agriculture, and food science.

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Officials in Mozambique have been caught stealing money from funds designated for the Ministry of Education. Some estimate that at least two million meticais (approximately US$66,450) were taken each month between 2006 and 2012. An investigation is now underway, led by the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption (GCCC).

At a press conference on Wednesday, Eurico Banze, a spokesperson for the Education Ministry, claimed that five million meticais (US$166,000) were stolen in 2012 alone. The day before, Education Minister Augusto Jone told reporters that 144 million meticais have been stolen since 2006. 

The man in charge of paying wages in the Ministry, known only as Sende, went missing in December 2012. Officials believe Sende orchestrated the fund mismanagement.

The officials involved have been named, leading to four suspensions. The thieves used false wages sheets which were processed alongside the regular sheets. Money was leaked from the Education Ministry to individual bank accounts.

Corruption is ubiquitous in many nations on the African continent. It has large impacts on the poor and, when paired with incoming foreign aid, reduces the effect that large-scale development efforts have.

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During an education summit, Commissioner for Education Alhaji Usman Mohammed revealed that approximately 1,300 teachers in Kaduna, Nigeria have failed tests that were designed for primary four pupils.

The Commissioner stated, “A total of 1,599 teachers selected from across the state were given primary four tests in mathematics and basic literacy. Only one of them scored 75%, 250 scored between 50-75%, and 1,300 scored below 25%.”

The same test was performed on 1,800 primary school students, who failed in even higher numbers than their teachers. Mohammed continued to explain the large failing rate, stating, “We are not surprised about the performance of the pupils because how can they know it when their teachers don’t know it.”

The Chairman of Kaduna’s House Committee on Education, Yunusa Mohammad, estimated that, out of the 36,000 teachers in the state, 15,000 are unqualified.

Fingers are being pointed in every direction. One theory, by the Commissioner, suggests that the provincial nature the hiring of teachers encourages underhanded dealings and political patronage in employment. This leads to poor instructors.

Kaduna State Governor Alhaji Mukhtar Ramalan Yero issued a stern mandate, saying, “The teachers are yours; you employed them and promote them when necessary. So, they are yours. I urge you, the local government chairmen, to look critically at the workforce and try to eliminate those that are not qualified. If you allow the situation to continue like this, the sector will collapse.”

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The results for Zimbabwe’s November 2012 Ordinary Level examinations have been released, revealing a shocking 18.4% pass rate, and an 81.6% fail rate. 31,767 students passed in the five subjects out of the total 172,698 pupils who sat for the test. The rate indicates a drop from last year’s 19.5 pass rate.

The O-level exams are a secondary school test that require a C grade on five subjects for a passing test score. Students normally take 8 or 9 subjects during their schooling.

Gender disparity was very clearly present in the results. Females held a pass rate of 16.4% compared to 20.4% of males. Only 14,198 females passed five subjects, compared with the 17,565 males who did so.

Despite the shortcomings, David Coltart, education minister of Zimbabwe, pointed out to reporters that the test results mark an improvement from 2009, during which 14% of students passed. He blamed a decade of “chaos.” He said, “I’m afraid that this was inevitable. There’s been so much chaos in Zimbabwe’s education system in the last decade that it was inevitable that children’s education would be affected in this way…We are improving it but there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Coltart, a Christian politician who was one of the founding members of the Movement for Democratic Change, became education minister in 2008. He notably ended teacher strikes in 2009 and raised teacher pay in the region.

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In the coming weeks, more than 200 students will graduate from the Samsung Engineering Academy in Kenya, a private learning institution that aims to train and develop engineers in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria.

The program began in 2011, and Samsung aims to successfully train 10,000 engineers on the African continent by 2015. The program provides hands-on, vocational training for students in grades ten through 12. Such a development program will aid many to obtain skilled, well-paying jobs. It should also have lasting impacts on the nation’s infrastructure and technological advancement.

The program lasts for a single intensive year, teaching basic to advanced engineering skills, usually designed to accord with future studies at a corresponding technical school. Some students obtain internships at Samsung or Samsung’s Channel partners. Individuals who are particularly talented are offered a year-long learnership opportunity at Samsung’s headquarters in S. Korea as part of the 100 African young leaders program.

Trainees are comprehensively prepared to repair and service a variety of digital consumer electronic appliances, such as LCD TVs, smartphones, refrigerators, air conditioners, and laptops.

Samsung Electronics East Africa Service Business Leader, Koki Muia, expressed the company’s interests, saying, ”Given our current growth rate in Kenya and across the region, Samsung is deliberately developing a pool of skilled technicians and exclusive service experts to handle growing demand… The development and training of qualified electronic technicians who can meet contemporary demands also helps to align Samsung Electronics East Africa corporate goals to the overall Vision 2030 National Economic targets.”

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Education Minister Abraham Iyambo announced that the state plans to send 1.7 million books to schools throughout Namibia. The books are estimated to cost approximately N$137 million. The measure will ensure that every pupil has textbooks by the end of 2013. So far, 54.7% or 990,000 of the textbooks have been distributed.

The books were funded by The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a US-funded program that offers development aid to countries that adopt economic and political reforms. The fund was initiated in 2004 under the Bush administration. The account has partnered with Namibia to provide textbooks in Mathematics, Science, and English for grades 5 through 12.

The state started to distribute the books in April and has been often delayed, leaving many discouraged. Iyambo recounts, ”In 2010, I heard a school in the Kavango Region had a 50:1 learner-textbook ratio, because the teacher kept the textbooks that were there in storage. But that is now a thing of the past.”

Iyambo claims to make the current ratio of children to textbooks, 3:1, a thing of the past by the end of this year. The minister has set February 20 as the deadline for the textbooks to be delivered. “This deadline date is non-negotiable,” said Iyambo.

The ministry has also successfully sent out free stationary and materials to all primary schools in the country. The state of education has looked quite promising, ever since the pronouncement of universal free primary education to all Namibian children last summer.

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Starting on April 1, it will be mandatory for prison inmates who do not have a qualification equivalent to Grade 9 to complete levels one through four of Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET), a program that aims to improve adult literacy throughout South Africa. The measure will make great strides in enhancing rehabilitation in all South African prisons.

Correctional Services Minister S’bu Ndebele announced the mandate during the grand opening of the Usethubeni Youth School Westville Correctional Centre in KwaZulu-Natal. He said, ”We are working towards turning our prisons into learning centres, and we want offenders to read, study and work. We want to impact the hearts, heads and hands of offenders so that, upon their release, they are in possession of at least a certificate in one hand and a skill in the other.”

Ndebele also noted that nine correctional centers had achieved a 79.25% matric pass rate last year, which is greater than the national average of 73.1%.

Correctional Services also plans to integrate this education with vocational training. The sector has 19 textile workshops, ten steel workshops, ten wood workshops, six bakeries, one shoe factory, 21 farms and 94 vegetable gardens at its disposal to provide future opportunities for offenders.

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