EDUCATION

EDUCATION HAS THE POWER TO TRANSFORM CHILDREN’S LIVES, NOW AND FOR GENERATIONS TO COME. WE'RE HELPING MILLIONS OF CHILDREN GO TO SCHOOL.

EDUCATION IS MANY CHILDREN'S ROUTE OUT OF POVERTY. IT GIVES THEM A CHANCE TO GAIN VALUABLE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS, AND TO IMPROVE THEIR LIVES. AND IT MEANS WHEN THEY GROW UP, THEIR CHILDREN WILL HAVE A MUCH BETTER CHANCE OF SURVIVING AND THRIVING.

BUT MILLIONS OF CHILDREN TODAY NEVER SEE THE INSIDE OF A CLASSROOM. MANY OTHERS DROP OUT, OFTEN BECAUSE THEIR CLASS IS OVERCROWDED AND THE TEACHERS POORLY TRAINED.

THAT'S WHY WE'RE HELPING MILLIONS OF CHILDREN GO TO SCHOOL FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF THE EDUCATION ON OFFER.

EDUCATION FOR ALL

WORLD LEADERS PROMISED THAT ALL CHILDREN WOULD BE IN SCHOOL BY 2015, AS ONE OF THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS. IN MANY COUNTRIES, THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN IN SCHOOL HAS RISEN SINCE 2000. BUT WITH MILLIONS OF CHILDREN STILL OUT OF SCHOOL, AND MILLIONS MORE LIKELY TO DROP OUT OF PRIMARY SCHOOL, THERE’S A LONG WAY TO GO.

READ HOW WE'RE BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS AT SCHOOL FOR CHILDREN FROM MINORITY GROUPS IN VIETNAM AND BANGLADESH.

OUR BRIEFING MAKING IT COUNT IDENTIFIES WHAT THE PRIORITIES ARE FOR ALL THOSE INVOLVED IN FUNDING, PLANNING AND DELIVERING EDUCATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN ORDER TO GET ALL CHILDREN INTO SCHOOL BY 2015.

BEATING THE ODDS IN BRITAIN 

IN THE UK, THE POOREST CHILDREN DO MUCH WORSE AT SCHOOL ON AVERAGE THAN THEIR BETTER OFF CLASSMATES. BY THE TIME THEY REACH GCSES, CHILDREN FROM POOR FAMILIES DO HALF AS WELL AS THEIR BETTER OFF CLASSMATES (27% OF CHILDREN FROM POOR FAMILIES GET 5 OR MORE GOOD GCSE PASSES, COMPARED WITH 55% FROM BETTER OFF FAMILIES).

THAT’S WHY WE'RE WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FAMILIES AND SCHOOLS TOGETHER (FAST), AN AWARD-WINNING, PROJECT THAT SUPPORTS PARENTS IN IMPROVING THEIR CHILDREN’S LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT AT HOME, SO THEY CAN REACH FULL POTENTIAL AT SCHOOL.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT FAST.

EDUCATION IN EMERGENCIES

CHILDREN ALWAYS TELL US THE SAME THING IN EMERGENCY SITUATIONS – WHAT THEY WANT MOST OF ALL IS TO GET BACK TO SCHOOL. THAT’S TRUE WHETHER THEY’RE RECOVERING FROM A NATURAL DISASTER – LIKE THE EARTHQUAKE THAT STRUCK HAITI IN 2010 – OR GROWING UP AMID CONFLICT.

CHILDREN’S RIGHT TO A DECENT EDUCATION IS AS BASIC AS THEIR RIGHT TO FOOD AND WATER. THAT’S WHY WE CALLED FOR EDUCATION TO BECOME A KEY PART OF EMERGENCY RESPONSES – ALONG WITH SHELTER, NUTRITION AND MEDICINE. NOW WE’RE A LEAD AGENCY IN COORDINATING EDUCATION IN EMERGENCIES.

EDUCATION IN CONFLICT

CHILDREN GROWING UP IN WAR-TORN COUNTRIES ARE MOST AT RISK OF MISSING OUT ON SCHOOL.

OUR REWRITE THE FUTURE CAMPAIGN HELPED 1.6 MILLION CHILDREN IN CONFLICT-AFFECTED COUNTRIES INTO SCHOOL IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS. IT’S THE EQUIVALENT OF OPENING TWO NEW SCHOOLS A DAY. BUT WITH OVER HALF THE WORLD’S OUT-OF-SCHOOL CHILDREN IN CONFLICT AFFECTED COUNTRIES, MUCH MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE.

http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/education

Financial Education For Kids

1. When it comes to teaching kids about money, the sooner the better.

Up until they start earning a living, and sometimes well beyond that, kids are apt to spend money like it grows on trees. This lesson will help you put your children on the road to handling money responsibly.

Long before most children can add or subtract, they become aware of the concept of money. Any 4-year-old knows where their parents get money - the ATM, of course. Understanding that parents must work for their money requires a more mature mind, and even then, the learning process has its wrinkles. For example, once he came to understand that his father worked for a living, a 5-year-old asked, "How was work today?" "Fine," the father replied. The child then asked, "Did you get the money?"

2. Once they learn how money works, children often display an instinctive conservatism.

Instant gratification aside, once they learn they can buy things they want with money - e.g., candy, toys - many children will begin hoarding every nickel they can get their hands on. How this urge is channeled can determine what kind of financial manager your child will be as an adult.

3. Seeds planted early bear fruit later.

It's important to work on your child's financial awareness early on, for once they're teenagers, they are less likely to heed your sage advice. Besides, they're busy doing other things - like spending money.

4. An allowance can be an effective teaching tool.

When your kids are young, giving them small amounts of money helps them prepare for the day when the numbers will get bigger.

5. Teenagers and college-age kids have bigger responsibilities.

Checking accounts, credit cards and debt are as elemental to the college experience as books and keg parties. Teaching high-schoolers about banking and credit will make them more savvy when they leave the nest.

6. Even investing should be learned early.

High schoolers can and should be taught about the market - using real money.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson12/index.htm

Tips To Encourage Special Education For Children With A Learning Disability

There are many special education courses offered in school today. Whether a child needs complete special education or just assistance in understanding one or two classes, special education can change the way that a child learns. Before you send your child to special education classes you need to determine what is best for your child using these five tips.

Does the special education class teach what your child needs? If the class is taught in the same way that the regular classes are taught, chances are your child will not benefit from this type of special education. Make sure that there is an individualized plan as well as a group plan to teach and enhance learning. If not, have a meeting with the teacher to determine if there is anything you can work out between the two of you.

Do the teacher and assistant display enough patience and compassion to deal with the different attitudes and situations with each child? You can determine that by sitting in on one or two classes to monitor the way the class is taught and how they respond to each child's needs. If a child does not understand something, you need to know how quickly they respond and how do they help. It's important to feel comfortable knowing that when you child goes to school he or she will get the help they need. You also want to know if there is enough assistance when the teacher needs it the most.

Are there volunteers in the school that can pull in when necessary? Can you volunteer as well? Schools should never turn down any type of assistance they can get when it comes to making school safe, running effectively, and appreciating all parents and guardians that want the best for their child.

Are there special programs that assist the special education classes? There should be community assistance in order to give the students hands on visuals in order to understand the classroom lessons. Sometimes children learn more when they actually see it. For example, a fireman wears the gear, drives the truck, and helps to contain a fire but having a fireman come to the class room dressed in gear and tell stories of their jobs is much more effective for some students. This is sometimes easier for children to learn while others can learn strictly by studying it in a book.

You also want to see how often your child's teacher will be performing parent teacher meetings. Once a month is ideal even if it is over the phone but if it needs to be more often then you should be willing to do so. It's important that you and your child's teacher work together to create a working plan for your child's education. After all, your child is the reason why you are there to begin with. If you cannot establish a good working relationship with your child's teacher then you may be fighting with the system all year and the only one who suffers from this is your child.

 http://ezinearticles.com/?Tips-To-Encourage-Special-Education-for-Children-With-a-Learning-Disability&id=6798739

The New Rules Of Leadership

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2013/03/17/the-new-rules-of-leadership/

Student Loans: A Pocket Guide

Jake Butler runs the UK's biggest independent student money site,SaveTheStudent.org. Here is his in-a-nutshell guide to student loans. For the full picture, download an 80-page e-Book called The Essential Student Guide To Finance, free from the site.

• The maximum amount universities can charge for tuition fees in 2012 is £9,000. That's a three-fold increase on 2011.

• Full-time students can apply for a maintenance loan of £5,500 (more for London).

• You pay back 9% of everything you earn over the threshold of £21,000.

• You do not pay a penny for your education until you graduate and earn a decent salary.

• After 30 years, any outstanding student debt is written off.

• Interest is charged at the rate of inflation plus 3% per annum whilst you are at university, which continues at 0%-3% thereafter (depending on your salary).

• Your student loan repayments are deducted straight from your salary every month by your employer.

• Funding and support is available for a good proportion of students, but especially those from lower income families.

• Many of these changes now apply for part-time students, however they cannot apply for a maintenance loan.

• Systems differ between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

• For some, the real cost of university education is tripling with the new fee system, but others will find themselves better off.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/aug/10/student-loans-guide

Where To Educate Your Children

Three out of 10 of us either work in an educational institution or learn in one. Education eats up 8% of the Gross National Product. Keeping it all going is the biggest line item on city budgets. Whether the results are worth it sometimes makes teachers and parents--and administrators and politicians--raise their voices and point fingers.

In the 1930s, the United States was fragmented into 130,000 school districts. After decades of consolidation, there are now fewer than 15,000. They range in size from hundreds that don't actually operate schools--but bus children to other districts--to giants like the Los Angeles Unified District, with three-quarters of a million students.

Greater Chicago has 332 public school districts and 589 private schools within its eight counties. Metropolitan Los Angeles takes in 35 public library systems. Greater Denver counts 15 public and private colleges and universities. Moving into any of America's metro areas means stepping into a thicket of school districts, library systems, private school options and public and private college and universities. 

Let's agree with wise experts that the quality of education any child gets comes down to just three things: their own motivation, their parents' support and good teachers. Still, is there a way to compare America's metro areas for education strengths? Consider five factors.

1. School Support

One of the Department of Education's most popular Web sites is Build a Table. Here, you can collect data on anything from public school finances and teachers to high school graduation rates for any place you wish--the country, states, counties, metro areas and districts.

Using the department's data, which come from each of the states, you can combine the metro area's average number of students per full-time equivalent classroom teacher (the lower the better) with its averageinstructional expense figure for student (the higher the better) to produce some interesting winners: Ocean City, N.J., Ithaca, N.Y., and Honolulu, Hawaii.

2. Private School Options

Today, one of nine children attends a private school. Catholic schools are the private school alternative with the biggest enrollment (2.5 million pupils).

Although half of all private school pupils sit in Catholic school classrooms, two of every three private schools are non-Catholic. Some 1.7 million pupils attend schools run by groups such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Seventh-Day Adventist Board of Education and the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools. Nonsectarian schools enroll another 800,000 pupils, most of whom pay tuition to institutions belonging to the National Association of Independent Schools.

Yes, you can find a private school at another Department of Educationsite-- and yes, you can rate each metro area's options for private school options. Winners in this category are Washington, D.C., Houston and Atlanta.

3. Library Popularity

At a bank of Internet terminals at a public library's main branch, you may see a cab driver researching family genealogy on your left, a high school senior investigating jobs with the airlines on your right. Behind you, a stack of Mexico City newspapers wait on a re-shelving cart. And in front, an acre of tables is piled with briefcases and book bags where people sit reading. More than any other metro-area educational institution, libraries are the vital center and ultimate education resource for everyone.

If librarians had to choose one measurement of success, it would be turnover rate. Calculated by dividing the library's circulation by its number of books, turnover shows the activity of the library's collection--indicating the number of times each book would have circulated during the year if circulation had been spread evenly throughout the collection.

A library system emphasizing best-seller circulation will have higher turnover than a library system that has an extensive reference collection, or frankly, a library system that is open fewer hours and has books no one likes to read.

Among metro areas, the perennial winners in library turnover are all out west: Portland, Ore., San Jose, Calif., Colorado Springs, Colo., and Salt Lake City.

4. College Town

Colleges and universities are great white-collar employers. In fact, there is a big connection between research-oriented universities and healthy economies. Two historic examples are Stanford University's boost to the growth of Silicon Valley high-tech enterprises in San Jose and the Bay Area, and MIT's faculty and alumni, who started electronics firms along Route 128 outside Boston.

Any place can be a college town if it has at least one institution of higher education. But if you weight each person attending local colleges by the number of years needed to get the highest degree offered (that is, associate of arts enrollment is weighted by two, bachelor degree enrollment by four, master's degree enrollment by six and doctoral enrollment by nine), you come up with a wide range of numbers.

Places like College Station-Bryan, Texas; Iowa City, Iowa; Lawrence, Kan.; and Columbia, Mo., come out very high on this criterion. Alas, there's only one game in town in Ames, Iowa (Iowa State University), in College Station-Bryan (Texas A&M), in Lawrence (University of Kansas) and in Columbia (University of Missouri). Something else is needed to reward higher-education variety.

5. College Options

A metro area's collection of higher-education institutions should meet the needs of the greatest number of residents: low-cost night and weekend continuing-education courses for people who work, full-time graduate courses in the professions, courses leading to occupational certification in two-year colleges and the traditional bachelor's degree curriculum offered in colleges or universities. Here, the top-ranking places are one, two and three in size: New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Combining all these criteria gives us the rankings of the top places in America to educate your children--led by Washington, D.C.-Arlington, Va., and followed closely by Madison, Wis., and Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, Mass.

http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/12/best-places-for-education-oped-cx_dsa_1212educate.html

World's University Ranking 2012 - 2013

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012-2013 powered by Thomson Reuters are the only global university performance tables to judge world class universities across all of their core missions - teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The top universities rankings employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available, which are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.

TOP 50 UNIVERSITY IN THE WORLD 

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking