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World Bank Loans Morocco $100 Million for Education Development Funding

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Morocco has made strides in ensuring the quality and coverage of their educational system in recent decades. The World Bank reports encouraging statistics: a rise in primary school enrollment from 52.4 per cent to 98.2 per cent over the last decade, and a rise from 17.5 per cent to 56.7 per cent in secondary education. However, there are still serious issues facing the country— notably a significant decline in enrollments between primary and secondary school and unequal access to education in urban and rural areas. The report shows, for example, that in urban areas, 79 per cent of boys are enrolled in secondary school, while in rural areas only 26 per cent of girls are in school.

Students Outside Casablanca, Morocco (School #3)Morocco also struggles with ensuring a quality education for its students. In the 2011 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, only 26 per cent of Moroccan 4th graders reached international benchmarks in mathematics, and only 36 per cent of 8th graders met those standards.

To promote the gains in Morocco, the World Bank has issued two $100 million loans since 2010, with the goal of increasing access to schools, especially for young women. The need to promote a strong educational system in Morocco has become more urgent recently, as youth unemployment continues to grow and jobs are harder to come by. Morocco needs to continue its push toward educational reform to field a more competitive workforce.

Creative Commons Love: henskechristine on Flickr.com

 

Report Reveals Low Literacy in Tanzania’s Schools

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Children's Corner at Bunbogo Primary SchoolA new report on the findings of the Uwezo Learning Survey in Tanzania has found that literacy and numeracy in Tanzanian schools are lagging far behind expected levels. Around 85% of third graders in public schools are unable to read Kiswahili and solve grade-appropriate math problems, according to the report.

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

Indian Shop Owner Runs Informal School Under Bridge

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HomeworkEvery morning under a railway bridge in New Delhi, India, Rajesh Kumar gives lessons to more than 50 children. Without walls, desks, or chairs, the students of Kumar’s school sit on foam mats in the dirt and learn reading, writing, and mathematics. Kumar is a shop owner with no formal training as a teacher, who founded his school in 2008 to educate the impoverished children of the New Delhi slums.

Kumar’s students are the children of poor migrant workers, and most do not attend formal school. For some parents, the closest government school is too far away, others enrolled their children in formal school, but were dismayed by the poor quality of the education they received. A few families send their children to both government school and to Kumar, impressed by the education the children receive under the bridge. Parents view Kumar’s school as a place where their children’s teacher knows who they are, where children can ask questions and actually learn.

In recent years, educational standards in Indian schools have been declining, according to the nonprofit Pratham. India’s 2010 Right to Education Act guarantees free education to all children ages six to 14, but the 96% of Indian children that attend school often deal with overcrowding, teacher shortages, and lack of access to clean water and appropriate toilet facilities. According to Pratham’s 2012 report, almost 68% of third graders read below a first grade level.

Despite shortcomings in the system, India’s children are motivated to continue learning. For Kumar and the volunteers who teach with him, their purpose is to aid them any way they can. Kumar says his goal is to enroll the children in formal school, citing the importance of earning a degree.

According to Kumar, “To change the future of these children, education is the only weapon. If they go anywhere in the world, if they have education, they can achieve anything. And without education, they can do nothing.”

Creative Commons Love: Meanest Indian on Flickr.com

Coursera Draws Top Universities to Offer Free Courses

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Coursera, is an online education company founded this year by two Stanford University computer-science professors. It’s been off to a strong start, and has drawn together at least four top-tier universities in an effort to provide high quality educational experiences to anyone in the world, for free. Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania have all signed up to offer what could be amazing educational opportunities for people in some of the most difficult places on earth.

Through Coursera you can take classes on subjects such as computer science, economics, mathematics, healthcare, biology, social sciences, and many more. Watch the video below to learn more.

Mind Blowing Plant Math; Fantastic, Free Fibonacci!

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Want to unlock the secrets of the universe in your math class? How about for free? You can’t help but get ideas for great free math and science lessons from watching these videos. Just showing the videos themselves in class can excite future mathematicians, but doing the activities and having students reach their own conclusions about the inevitability of Fibonacci? Priceless.

Some Plants. Maybe some Magnetized solution in water, and a whole lot of fun. Show the videos before or after, depending on your approach, or just on their own.

These are all by the mysterious mathemusician Vihart, and she has more!

Free and Awesome Online Graphing Calculator!

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portrait of a genius

Help Make More Free Stuff!

If you’re not a math nerd, you may be surprised to learn that great free solutions for replacing that old TI-82 is actually news. Well, it is. Up until now, if you wanted to access the magic of a graphing calculator you pretty much had to buy it (and pretty much only from Texas Instruments) starting around $55 and going up from there surprisingly quickly.

Until now.

Abettercalculator.com (Now here: Desmos) provides a powerful online graphing calculator for absolutely free. It even has a catchy opener, “If math is the universal language, the calculator is our interpreter—and it hasn’t improved in 20 years. Until now.”

If you’re the kind of person to be excited about a graphing calculator,  you may also delight in the fact that it’s been updated to HTML-5, allows you to log-in and create personal libraries you can share with your fellow math nerds, and you can access it from anything with a web browser. Yep, you’re smart phone just got even more useful.

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