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education

Public School, Inc.: When public education turns into big business

by Loknath Das September 30, 2017

written by Loknath Das

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Andrew Sterling thought BASIS Tucson in Arizona was a teacher’s dream when he started working there in 2008. Class sizes at the midtown public charter school were small, teachers were experts with advanced degrees and students were bright and engaged, with few disciplinary issues.

“The kids were excellent – just amazing kids that came from seemingly a variety of backgrounds and variety of interests, quite quirky in a lot of ways,” said Sterling, who taught history and government.

Those quirky kids were the reason he later enrolled his daughter there for fifth grade. He wanted her to be surrounded by good peers. Plus, he’d get to watch her closely. But his concern was growing over the school’s changing climate.

BASIS, which started as a single Tucson charter school and grew into a network of educational facilities, began attracting national attention as an academic powerhouse with soaring test scores by the late 2000s. Riding that momentum, the company pushed to expand, adding charter and private schools nationally and internationally and multiple layers to its corporate structure.

And the pressure grew for students to score even higher to fuel that growth.

Sterling saw his students drowning in schoolwork, which increasingly focused on test results. Some students were built for it, he said. Most struggled. Many transferred out, unable to keep up.

There was a physical change, too.

In 2012, BASIS added a new custom-designed campus in the wealthy Catalina Foothills on the north side of Tucson. The school added more grades between the two campuses, and hundreds more students enrolled. By then, a new management arm of the BASIS corporation had taken over school operations.

Despite his concerns, Sterling stayed, hoping to help his struggling students. Meanwhile, BASIS kept growing.

BASIS today is perfectly poised to capitalize on growing efforts across the country to turn public education into big business. Although it is not the largest charter school network in the U.S., BASIS is one of the only to have successfully expanded into private and international operations. None of the five largest charter networks concurrently operate private schools.

BASIS expanded rapidly, mostly by leveraging its public school status to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars, ultimately paid by taxpayers, while also expanding its private school operations. And in its race to the top, critics say BASIS systematically shortchanged the students who are the most costly to educate, including those with disabilities.

Despite continued criticisms – especially regarding what some consider “cherry-picking” of students, a common complaint about some charter schools – BASIS has continued to attract parents looking for something more than a traditional public school for their children.

“We have a laser-like focus on academics,” said Peter Bezanson, CEO of BASIS.ed, the corporate arm that manages BASIS schools.

As school choice – a movement to give students access to more public education options – continues to gain momentum, companies such as BASIS are seen as the solution to public education’s ills. It brought together people from different ends of the political spectrum – former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Rev. Al Sharpton – to jointly tour the BASIS Tucson campus in 2009. BASIS is also touted as a model for public education by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

This phenomenon has spurred a nationwide debate.

President Donald Trump and his billionaire education secretary, Betsy DeVos, whose family are Republican megadonors, are among the biggest champions of school choice.

“I’m opposed to any parents feeling trapped or, worse yet, feeling that they can’t offer their child the education they wish they could,” DeVos said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in March. She compared school choice with consumers picking Uber or Lyft over traditional taxis.

“What they are trying to persuade the American public of is that public schools don’t belong to the public, that they’re consumer items,” saidDiane Ravitch, a former assistant education secretary under President George H.W. Bush, who once advocated for school choice herself.

Back then, Ravitch envisioned choice as schools within schools that could serve as labs for educational innovation, she said. But school choice became synonymous with big businesses, she said, and big businesses brought about legally questionable practices such as conflicts of interests, nepotism and putting their own interests above those of the public.

How BASIS got its start

As the movement to create independent and innovative public schools spread across the country, Olga Block, an immigrant from the Czech Republic, wanted a more rigorous education for her daughter.

Block decided to start her own school with the help of her American husband, Michael, a Stanford-educated economist. She would combine best of both worlds: the hands-on, slower-paced American learning environment and the rigorous European study habits Olga Block was used to back home.

“BASIS was essentially built on a mother’s love for her daughter,” said Bezanson, the BASIS.ed CEO.

The Blocks, who remain managers at BASIS.ed, declined to be interviewed.

The school opened in fall 1998, renting space at a synagogue in midtown Tucson. It was called Building Academic Success in School, or BASIS.

Today, the BASIS network runs 24 charter schools in Arizona, Texas and Washington, D.C., and seven private schools in California, New York, Virginia, and Shenzhen and Guangzhou, China. It has plans to open more schools in the U.S. and overseas in the near future.

As BASIS grew, so did its corporate structure. In 2009, Olga and Michael Block established a private limited liability company, BASIS.ed, to handle school operations. To manage the assets and equities of various private management arms that run the charter, private and international schools, the founders also established BASIS Educational Ventures.

Such complex corporate structures, also common to other large charter networks, limit risk and maximize profit, said Gary Miron, an expert in charter school finance at Western Michigan University and fellow for the National Education Policy Center.

“It’s just amazing that they are public schools,” he said, “but they are really private in so many ways.”

Reading, writing and reaping profits

Before BASIS’ multi-tiered corporate structure emerged, IRS disclosure forms showed that in 2008, Olga Block earned $197,507 as the chief executive officer of BASIS, which then had two schools and just over 1,100 students. Michael Block earned $156,362 in various roles.

That same year, the superintendent of the Tucson Unified School District, which served more than 56,000 students in more than 80 schools and programs, made just over $200,000.

Tax filings from 2007 and 2008 also show that the founders paid family for work they did for BASIS: Olga Block’s two daughters and her sister, who lives in the Czech Republic, were paid for public relations material design and accounting. Michael’s son, Robert, was paid for technology services in other years.

The founders’ relatives still occupy high-level management positions in various arms of the network. At least three of Olga and Michael Block’s children are on the BASIS payroll.

Arizona law requires all public officers on political subdivisions, boards or commissions to disclose conflicts of interest. It also says public officers should refrain from voting on or participating in any contract, sale, purchase or service from a relative.

The Arizona attorney general’s office said it believes the law applies to charter school officials and board members, but referred to the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools for enforcement of the law. The charter board said it does not keep track of conflict-of-interest disclosures.

“I think it’s fairly common for family-owned businesses to employ family members,” said Bezanson, BASIS.ed’s CEO.

BASIS.ed provides everything that’s required to run a school – from supplying teachers to buying textbooks on a contract basis, he said. The difference between BASIS.ed and the nonprofit charter holder, BASIS Schools Inc., he added, is that BASIS.ed is private, which allows it to efficiently manage schools in different states.

Once BASIS transitioned to private management in 2009, few details about its schools’ finances remained public. Filings instead show millions in lump sums for management fees and leased employees, including teachers, all addressed to Michael Block, who until 2015 was a BASIS charter board member.

For the 2014 tax year, the most recent tax filing publicly available, the nonprofit housing the network’s charter schools paid BASIS.ed $15.6 million in management fees and an additional $44.3 million for salaries and benefits. In exchange for the fees, BASIS.ed says it handles tasks such as hiring administrators and teachers and buying school supplies.

A 2016 U.S. Department of Education inspector general’s report raised the alarm about charter schools using private management, saying it limits accountability.

But Bezanson said that the structure allows BASIS to run its schools more efficiently and that the BASIS charter school expansion is “wholly separate and not commingled with anything having to do with the expansion of the international or independent schools.”

Bezanson would not provide information about executives’ salaries, saying it’s a private company.

On average, BASIS paid about $3.3 million annually per school to BASIS.ed for salaries and management between fiscal years 2008 and 2014, according to tax filings. In comparison, the average total budget for a school in the Tucson Unified School District for the 2014-15 school year was about $2.5 million.

In tax filings, the fees to BASIS.ed are listed under transactions with related parties – something the Education Department’s inspector general’s report called a red flag because it could mean weak internal controls, alongside conflicts of interest and insufficient division of duties.

As it stands, though, the Department of Education does not have an adequate way to monitor charter management companies to identify and address potential risks, the report concluded.

Big borrowers

BASIS borrowed big to grow big by leveraging its charter schools’ public status, which allows it to borrow tax-free and at lower interest rates.

The network’s charter schools are funded by state governments on a per-pupil basis, like district schools, but there is no dedicated funding for charter school buildings. So BASIS turned to the government bond market to fuel its charter school expansion.

It has borrowed so much that its charter school arm, the only BASIS subsidiary for which financial information is publicly available, had about $230 million in long-term debt at the end of fiscal year 2016, according to its consolidated financial audit submitted to the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools.

BASIS borrowed largely through industrial development authorities of municipalities in Arizona, which are government-affiliated middlemen that help secure funding for projects that benefit the people of that town, city, county or state.

It used loans through the city of Phoenix and Pima County – sometimes to pay back other loans – to build and renovate schools in Washington, D.C., and Texas, using its existing charter school facilities as collateral.

In one instance, a 2016 loan for $84 million for various capital projects across the network – about $31 million of which was used for refunding a previous loan for the D.C. campus – was secured by 14 BASIS charter schools’ state funding and facilities.

The city of Phoenix isn’t fronting the money, nor is it liable for the debt, said Bezanson, the BASIS.ed CEO. The money comes from private investors.

But taxpayers – primarily in Arizona – do pay for the costs of these loans, including transaction fees and interest, through state per-pupil funding for education.

The charter network’s buildings are not publicly owned, either – they are owned by BASIS.

“That seems illogical that we would allow them to use a share of public dollars to acquire an asset with public dollars that is then owned by this private entity,” said Bruce Baker, an education professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who specializes in charter school business practices.

At the same time, Baker said, charter schools are backed into a corner when it comes to facilities financing. Without a dedicated funding mechanism, they must seek other options.

But many of those options are the result of bad policy design and create opportunities for bad deals and bad debt, he said. Repeated borrowing and refinancing results, Baker said, in a lot of public money being sunk into transaction costs and fees.

The 2016 financial audit shows signs of what looks like financial distress for the BASIS network’s charter school arm. It ended fiscal year 2016 with negative cash flow – a deficit of nearly $23 million, according to the audit.

That distress was caused by refinancing loans for better rates and resulting prepayment penalties, said DeAnna Rowe, head of the nonprofit organization for BASIS charter schools, who previously served as executive director of the state charter school board.

Source:-salon.

September 30, 2017 0 comment

Education

The education system still has much to learn

by Loknath Das September 30, 2017

written by Loknath Das

The education system still has much to learn

There is a driven, compulsive quality to Japanese education, which emerges clearly in a report by Shukan Toyo Keizai magazine titled “Schools are breaking down.”

Technological progress has a side-effect: an economy that demands higher and higher education as the price of admission into it. Children struggle to learn, and teachers to teach, more and more. Two resulting symptoms are overworked teachers and bullied, or bullying, children.

Karōshi (death from overwork) is a familiar phenomenon in the private sector but not one commonly associated with the teaching profession. And yet 60 percent of public junior high school teachers are “borderline karōshi,” Toyo Keizai says, meaning they work at least 60 hours a week, though contracted to work only 38 hours, 45 minutes. The overtime hours, largely unpaid, are spent preparing lessons, grading assignments and tests, supervising extra-curricular activities, counseling, dealing with concerned and/or obnoxious parents, attending meetings, handling administrative chores and so on.

One teacher, in November 2011, actually did work himself to death. He was 26 and in his second year of teaching junior high school in Osaka. He was dedicated. He thought his students deserved everything he had to give, and he gave everything. He collapsed one day in his apartment. He’d suffered a stroke. It took three years for his death to be officially recognized as karōshi.

Bullying is an old story, hardly confined to Japan, seemingly impervious to decades’ worth of measures to reduce it. In fact it’s rising. In extreme forms it amounts to nothing less than torture, physical and psychological. The ubiquitous smartphone makes the latter easy. You can say anything you like about anyone you don’t like. Smearing a classmate all over the net is an easy way to vent stress you can’t cope with otherwise — partly caused, maybe, by classmates smearing you all over the net.

In 2015, there were roughly 220,000 officially recognized bullying episodes in elementary, junior high and senior high schools nationwide — the most ever, nearly double the figure for 2006. Part of the increase is due to stricter reporting requirements. Schools were too apt to turn a blind eye. They had reputations to protect. A notorious instance, the immediate cause of the heightened requirements, was the suicide in 2011 of a boy in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture. It took the school two years to admit the boy had been bullied. Over 300 children a year in Japan kill themselves — 320 in 2016. The overall suicide rate is declining, but not the under-18 suicide rate, unchanged over the past decade. School can make childhood a living hell, unknown and unknowable to adults.

Toyo Keizai fears schools are going “black.” The reference is to burakku kigyō (black companies) that overwork and underpay employees to the point of neo-slavery. In the private sector, one-third of the workforce is officially part time — which is to say, paid like part-timers, though often worked like full-timers. Public elementary junior and senior high schools seem to be moving in that direction. As of 2013, one-sixth of their teaching staffs nationwide were part time. It saves money. A 41-year-old part-time teacher in her seventh year earns ¥2.46 million a year — roughly a third of a veteran full-time teacher’s salary, and little enough, ironically, to make her eligible for limited welfare assistance. Adding insult to injury, she never knows from one year to the next whether her contract will be renewed.

What, one wonders, of the quality of education in such a cauldron as the public education system seems to be, if Toyo Keizai’s picture is anything to go by? Much is made of international rankings, specifically those of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and Japan doesn’t fare too badly: second among OECD advanced nations in “science literacy” in 2015, up from fourth in 2012; fifth in “mathematical literacy,” up from seventh. The weak link in the chain is literacy literacy — more literally, reading comprehension — in which Japan ranked eighth, down from fourth.

Maybe science and mathematics are enough. Who needs words when you have numbers? This or that individual, or this or that employer, might not, but civilization as a whole might. The education ministry seems to think it does. Its introduction of moral education as a formal subject, effective next April, suggests as much.

An episode that occurred in Okinawa last month will bolster the view that a moral vacuum exists, which moral education must fill. Four teenagers allegedly vandalized a memorial in a cave in which civilians were forced to commit mass suicide in the closing days of World War II.

Teens do crazy things; it’s part of growing up, and maybe too much shouldn’t be made of it. But this particular stunt suggests a blindness and deafness to tragedy that Okinawa International University professor emeritus Masaie Ishihara, for one, sees as an education problem.

“I suspect,” Ishihara told the Mainichi Shimbun, “that history, and what happened during the Battle of Okinawa, are not being passed down to younger generations in education.”

It’s hard to “pass down” the past to a present in such rapid flux. Toyo Keizai mentions yet another burden on educators. Traditionally, school was one of three “pillars” in a child’s education. The other two were family and community. Career-oriented parents and weakened community ties leave school shouldering a near-monopoly that would strain it even under ideal circumstances, which present ones are not. Schools have their hands full keeping kids technologically primed. Kindergartens are teaching computer programming. The past? Who needs it? Who has time for it?

“Who needs it?” is a good question. There’s the all-to-oft-quoted line about those who forget the past being doomed to repeat it. If George Santayana, whose line it is, meant war, his thinking is open to question. Historical memory, and the resentments it breeds, have caused at least as many wars as historical forgetfulness. North Korea seethes not because it has forgotten the Japanese occupation but because it remembers it.

What to teach, how and to whom are permanent questions, increasingly urgent as postmodern civilization careens into an unknown future. If Toyo Keizai is right about schools “breaking down,” it’s a bad time for it to be happening.

Source:-japantimes

September 30, 2017 0 comment

Education

Foundation of Modern Education System

by Loknath Das September 25, 2017

written by Loknath Das

In response to the deadline set by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to the School Education Department to train the untrained teachers, before April 2019, it seems that both central as well as state government has taken a serious note of untrained teachers who are teaching our future generations. On the face of it, it seems to be a good initiative and both the governments must be appreciated for it, but the fact of the matter is that the teacher training should not be a one-time event but is a continuous process which needs to be looked at in a different way. The government should not only worry about untrained teachers but trained teachers too need regular refresher courses so that they can keep themselves updated and relevant. It’s an established fact that our government schools despite having the most brilliant minds as teachers have continuously shown very poor results as compared to their private counterparts. Although, it will be extremely unfair to make teachers solely responsible for poor quality of education when the administrative setup and government policies are equally or at times more responsible for bad quality teaching as it is these policies which have forced teaching community to take non-teaching assignments like election duties, booth level officers, etc. Under these circumstances training of teachers must not only be taken seriously but at the same time efforts should be made even at the highest level of government for implementation of these programmes on ground so that we may be able to see paradigm shift in education from quantity to quality education. These training programmes must be organised under a well-designed frame work so that there may not be any scope of derailment from particular topic during a training session. Teachers, especially those who serve in the poorest of urban and rural areas need to be well trained and prepared to deal with extremely diverse classrooms of mostly first-generation learners.

Teacher training refers to the policies and procedure designed to equip both in-service and prospective teachers with the knowledge, attitudes, behaviours and skills required to perform their tasks effectively in the classroom as well as in the school. Teachers training is ideally divided into the three stages, pre-service teaching, faculty induction, in-service training. Pre-service teaching training is training for prospective teachers which is be done through both regular and distance mode. Although many times it has been seen that these teacher training colleges hardly follow National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) norms.

Another stage in teacher training is faculty Induction, which is a process of providing training and support during the first few years of teaching. It is also referred as orientation course. The most important one is continuo’s in-service training for practicing teachers. Among above three types of teacher training, the most important one is continuous in-service training for professional development and capacity development. Since the world is changing rapidly the teaching skills required are also evolving. So, we must accept that no initial course of teaching training can be sufficient enough for a teacher to deliver effectively for an entire service period. Apart from that, the student community today is way different and more curious than say twenty or thirty years back. In this regard, there is a continuous pressure on teacher’s fraternity not only to have mastery in their subject and aptitude to understand their students but also keep themselves abreast about latest teaching methodology. Keeping this in view, there is dire need of continuous professional development of teachers so that teachers like other professionals reflect upon their competencies, keeping them up to date and develop them further. Research had suggested that in-service training will be effective only if teachers training programmes are spread over time, collaborative in nature as well as responsive to the needs of teachers. Although, Jammu and Kashmir government is regularly making arrangements for training of teachers and in fact is spending substantial amount on these training programmes but unfortunately the outcome of these trainings has been very poor and dismal. There could be different reasons for that, like attendance of teachers in these programmes is not taken seriously both by teachers as well as authorities. This in turn becomes a major flaw. Another major drawback in these in-service teacher training programmes is that teachers are trained by persons with little or no hands-on experience of teaching in real classroom. Moreover, these so-called resource persons are not trained to engage with professional teachers. There should have been a provision of selecting among in-service teachers preferably having a good academic background as well as experience as resource persons and not based on political affiliations as is mostly done. The resource personnel should be well versed with training and orienting practices at national level institutions like National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) and National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), so that these resource persons will be equipped to face experienced and informed group of teachers in these training classes.

Moreover, these trainings only talk about ideal situations which unfortunately have no relation with actual class room problems and the fact is that on ground the problems are entirely different and acute in nature like the ‘teacher student ratio’, infrastructure and level of students, etc. It would have been immensely great if at times real classroom situations, issues and problems are taken into consideration while giving training to teachers, which unfortunately most of the times is not done. Above all, there must be a calendar of teacher training courses which must be adhered to strictly and due care must be taken that these programmes will be conducted only during vacations so that precious time of students will not be wasted. Last but not the least, implementation of trainings on ground should be linked to the promotion of teachers.

[“Source-greaterkashmir”]

September 25, 2017 0 comment

Education

Government ‘starving’ post-16 education, says AoC president

by Loknath Das September 23, 2017

written by Loknath Das

In her first interview as president of the Association of Colleges, Alison Birkinshaw sets out concerns over funding

The lack of investment in post-16 education means that students are being short-changed, according to the new president of the Association of Colleges. Alison Birkinshaw, principal of York College, told Tes in an exclusive interview that colleges like hers were doing their “absolute best” to give students a broad education, but this had come at a cost, and she was “not sure how long we can continue to do that now”.

“Government has to see that it cannot starve post-16 education funding in this way, because it is going to impact later on down the line on the skills our students have,” she said.

Funding pressures have also had a knock-on effect on college staff pay. A national pay freeze in 2015-16, which resulted in strike action in colleges across the country, was followed by a below-inflation, 1 per cent pay rise in 2016-17. On Tuesday, AoC proposed a further 1 per cent pay rise for 2017-18, leaving unions “disappointed”.

Birkinshaw said additional funding was needed to ensure that staff get the pay they deserve. “Even giving staff a decent pay award is a major challenge, because the cost and the income don’t meet any more,” she said. “It is an absolute imperative that we do something about that.”

While extra funding promised by the Department for Education to pay for the introduction of the new T levels – eventually rising to more £500 million a year – was a positive development, financial pressures on the entire post-16 sector needed to be addressed, she added.

Not surprisingly, Birkinshaw signalled her backing for the Support Our Sixthformers campaign being run by the AoC, the Association of School and College Leaders and the Sixth Form Colleges Association, which is calling for a £200-per-student uplift in post-16 funding.

“That would really go a long way in dealing with some of those funding gaps that we have got,” she said. “It would help us recruit staff, invest in the equipment we need, it would help us save minority subjects from going under.”

‘They would be shocked’

The funding pressure was one of two key issues that persuaded Birkinshaw to stand for AoC president. The other was the contentious issue of GCSE English and maths resits. The government has made it a condition of colleges’ funding that students who only achieve a D or 3 in English or maths will have to retake the qualification. This has caused the overall number of entries among students aged 17 and over to increase significantly.

Birkinshaw suggested it was time to get rid of the policy. “I think it is important to emphasise that I do see it as important to work with our students to make sure they are literate and numerate,” she added. “But the curriculum for English, in particular, is just so inappropriate.

“If the policymakers actually looked at the specifications that they are making our hospitality and catering or our motor-vehicle students sit, they would be really shocked. I would also challenge our policymakers to sit the exam themselves and see what mark they would get, because it is really hard.”

This is an edited version of an article in the 22 September edition of Tes. Subscribers can read the full article here. To subscribe, click here. This week’s Tes magazine is available at all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here.

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes FE News on Twitter, like us on Facebook and follow us on LinkedIn

[“Source-tes”]

September 23, 2017 0 comment

Education

‘Your child is at risk’: Will Carrigan’s parents say education is key to suicide prevention

by Loknath Das September 18, 2017

written by Loknath Das

Will Carrigan with his nephew Eddie.

Rugby league is a big deal in the Upper Hunter in regional New South Wales. But on a recent weekend, fierce competitors put rivalry aside and came together for a common cause.

The event was the Where There’s A Will round, named in honour of the former front rower for the Scone Thoroughbreds, Will Carrigan, who took his own life on Christmas Day 2015.

Will’s parents, Pauline and Hilton Carrigan, do not want anyone to go through what they have endured.

They have turned their grief into action and are campaigning to save lives.

“Someone said to me, ‘What would have saved Will?'” Mrs Carrigan said.

Her answer: “Education.”

PHOTO: Rugby League players taking part in the Where There’s A Will round. (ABC News: Jerry Rickard)

‘Don’t be us’

Will, 24, was a fun-loving larrikin, his father said.

If you or anyone you know needs help:

Lifeline on 13 11 14
Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800
MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978
Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467
Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36
Headspace on 1800 650 890

“Just an ordinary country boy that did his work, loved his sport and loved all his mates,” Mr Carrigan said.

“Took his own life. We never saw it coming.”

The couple said they could now see their son was struggling.

“How does a boy who has everything explain to someone that they’re not well, and it’s not what they want, or it’s not how they saw it going?” Mrs Carrigan said.

PHOTO: Will Carrigan’s parents, Pauline and Hilton. (ABC News: Simon Beardsell)

After their son’s death, the Carrigans set out to learn more about youth suicide and depression.

“If I can say one thing, don’t be us,” Mrs Carrigan said.

“There’s a certain amount of guilt that came when I found out the statistics and I realised our children had been at risk for an awfully long time and we didn’t know.

“So we are doing you a favour by telling you your child is at risk.

“Don’t assume there is a typical type that commit suicide. They’re just normal, everyday children.”

Hopes program will go national

Hilton and Pauline Carrigan stand with rugby players

PHOTO: Hilton and Pauline Carrigan with some of Will’s former teammates. (ABC News: Jerry Rickard)

The Carrigans launched the Where There’s A Will charity with the aim of improving children’s mental health through education, starting at school but involving the whole community.

“I realised that you could actually immunise a child for their future, that you could teach them resilience and give them a cup half-full [mentality] in simple terms that prepares them for the knockbacks that they are going to take,” Mrs Carrigan said.

With funding from the charity, school teachers have undergone special training. Positive education programs have been introduced into more than 20 schools in the Hunter Valley.

Kim Wilson, a Year 1 teacher at St Mary’s Primary in Scone, said she was already seeing results.

“In two terms of doing this the language has changed, the kids are expressing their feelings, and they can say why they are happy and why they are sad,” Ms Wilson said.

Where There’s A Will is also running “mental health first aid” programs for adults in the community to help them identify children who are struggling.

Media player: “Space” to play, “M” to mute, “left” and “right” to seek.

VIDEO: A message from the sons of the Upper Hunter to their fathers. Video by the Where There’s A Will charity. (ABC News)

Simon Murray, who heads the Positive Education Schools Association, said he was convinced what was happening in the Upper Hunter could lead to change across Australia.

“We will get data and evidence and publish that and this could become an exemplar for other regional centres and cities,” he said.

“This is a terribly important initiative for the rest of this country and I just hope the policy makers, the bureaucrats and the politicians, are actually noticing what’s happening.”

Mrs Carrigan said the hard work by Where There’s A Will and its supporters was paying off.

“We know that two boys who were contemplating suicide reached out for help and both came from that fact that they had been involved in [positive education] programs within the last six weeks,” she said.

“We lost our son, we won’t get him back. It’s our duty to make sure that other people don’t have to go through this and that’s the bottom line.”

‘Makes you pretty proud’

Hilton and Pauline Carrigan with Todd Greenberg.

PHOTO: NRL CEO Todd Greenberg is proud the sporting community came together for Where There’s A Will. (ABC News: Jerry Rickard)

Back at the rugby league, Will’s former teammates said what happened to their friend had changed them all.

“It’s a big thing and I think it’s great what Pauline and the foundation are doing,” Tom Hagen said.

“Just getting word out into the community, just get a bit of awareness into people that it’s alright to talk and they don’t have to fight all their battles alone.”

NRL CEO Todd Greenberg attended the Where There’s a Will round.

“Makes you pretty proud as a leader of a sport to be here today and actually see this community come together for such an important cause,” he said.

After the game the local sports club was jam-packed for the auctioning of the players’ jerseys, with all proceeds going to the charity.

The last jersey to go was number 14, Will Carrigan’s.

“I think a lot of people in the room will know what it stands for,” Mr Greenberg told those gathered.

“I encourage you to bid strongly for it. I’m going to put the first one up for the NRL at $3,000.”

The bidding was fierce but the final offer of $13,500 was made by Mr Greenberg. And he’s sending the jersey home.

“This jersey could take pride of place in the rugby league museum, in a lot of places, but it belongs with the Carrigan family,” he said.
[“Source-abc”]

September 18, 2017 0 comment

Education

CHR, ERC, NCIP budgets to go to free higher education

by Loknath Das September 14, 2017

written by Loknath Das

Lawmakers raise President Rodrigo Duterte’s clenched fist salute after defunding the Commission on Human Rights and approving the 2018 budget bill on second reading. (Photo courtesy of the House of Representatives)

The House of Representatives will realign the budgets of the Commission on Human Rights, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, and the Energy Regulatory Commission to fund free higher education.

“The budget will form part of the pool of funds to finance the free higher education law,” appropriations committee chair Rep. Karlo Nograles said in a text message.

This was after Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez in a Thursday radio interview vowed to insist on the effective defunding of the agencies when the House and the Senate go on a bicameral conference to reconcile their versions of the 2018 General Appropriations Act.

“I respect the Senate, but it doesn’t mean it will get its way with whatever it wants,” he said. “We can’t always yield to whatever they want.”

The Department of Budget and Management originally proposed budgets of P350.95 million for the ERC, P1.13 billion for the NCIP, and P649.48 million for the CHR, of a total of P2.13 billion.

Akbayan Rep. Tomasito Villarin of the opposition Magnificent Seven bloc criticized the attempt to “soften the criticism” of the House’s 119-32 vote to defund CHR.

“Nice try Karlo, but it ain’t cute. You can’t cut the budget of a constitutional body then to soften criticism [and] bestow it to a supposed loftier cause like free tuition,” Villarin said. “Educating people on the value of human rights should start with our legislators.”

Gabriela Women’s Party Reps. Emmi de Jesus and Arlene Brosas said in a statement that “ensuring funds for the youth’s right to education should not be at the expense of the institution that is mandated to uphold and promote the most basic of human rights, including the right to life.”

Instead, they proposed the House source the funds from the P2.5 billion intelligence funds of the Office of the President, P900 million for the antidrug campaign called Oplan Double Barrel Reloaded, P500 million for the community-based intelligence network Masa Masid, and P56 billion for right-of-way acquisitions.

It may be recalled that House members approved the motions to grant a P1,000 budget to the ERC on Sept. 5, and the NCIP and the CHR on Sept. 12.

The said motions were raised by Zamboanga City 1st Dist. Rep. Celso Lobregat, Bayan Muna Party-list Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate, and 1-SAGIP Party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta, respectively.

Lobregat cited the corruption allegations that hounded the ERC, while Zarate criticized the NCIP for inaction or even complicity in the violation of indigenous peoples’ rights. Both motions were carried without objection.

Marcoleta, meanwhile, claimed the CHR was invalidly created because it took effect under an executive order by President Corazon Aquino at a time when Congress has yet to convene.

He also criticized the agency for not acting on common crimes and for not defending the “human rights” of President Duterte against a critical editorial by the New York Times. The motion was adopted through a 119-32 vote.

Besides the budgets of the defunded agencies, Nograles said in August that P16 billion in scholarship funds could be realigned to fund Republic Act 10931, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, that President Duterte signed earlier that month.

Such funds are currently allocated under the Commission on Higher Education, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, the Department of Health, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and various state universities and colleges.

Nograles also said he was looking at P37.5 billion in allocations from the Departments of Transportation, Agrarian Reform and Information and Communications Technology under the 2016 budgets.

The said funds were left untouched and were set to expire when the two-year validity period of appropriations ends on December 31. If they continue to be unspent, the funds would revert to the national treasury and could be tapped to fund a supplemental budget for the free higher education law.

Students from 114 SUCs, 16 local universities and colleges (LUCs) accredited by the Commission on Higher Education and 122 technical-vocational institutions (TVIs) under Technical Education and Skills Development Authority are set to benefit from the law.

SUCs were first allowed to forego the collection of tuition for the academic year 2017-18 under the 2017 General Appropriations Act, even before RA 10931, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, was signed into law.

The Duterte administration did not originally plan to make tuition free for the 2017 budget, but the Senate realigned P8.3 billion for student financial assistance, allowing SUCs to charge zero tuition. The fund was originally supposed to be allocated to the Department of Public Works and Highways for development projects in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. /je

[“Source-inquirer”]

September 14, 2017 0 comment

Education

Conflict, widespread poverty stall progress on education rates over past decade – UNICEF

by Loknath Das September 7, 2017

written by Loknath Das

This 11-year-old girl lost her left leg in a suicide attack in an internal displaced persons (IDP) site in the Lake Chad Region. After three months in a hospital, she is trying to start over. UNICEF/Bahaji

6 September 2017 – Pervasive levels of poverty, protracted conflicts and complex humanitarian emergencies have led to stagnation in reducing the global out-of-school rate over the past decade, prompting the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to call for more investments.

With 11.5 per cent of school-age children – or 123 million missing school today, compared to 12.8 per cent – or 135 million – in 2007, the percentage of out-of-school 6-15 year olds has barely decreased in the last decade, according to UNICEF.

“Investments aimed at increasing the number of schools and teachers to match population growth are not enough,” said UNICEF Chief of Education Jo Bourne.

“This business-as-usual approach will not get the most vulnerable children into school – and help them reach their full potential – if they continue to be trapped in poverty, deprivation and insecurity,” she added.

Children living in the world’s poorest countries and in conflict zones are disproportionally affected. Of the 123 million children missing out on school, 40 per cent live in the least developed countries and 20 per cent live in conflict zones.

UNICEF points out that war continues to threaten – and reverse – education gains.

The conflicts in Iraq and Syria have resulted in an additional 3.4 million children missing out on education, bringing the number of out-of-school children across the Middle East and North Africa back to 2007’s level of approximately 16 million.

With their high levels of poverty, rapidly increasing populations and recurring emergencies, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia account for 75 per cent of the global out-of-school primary- and lower-secondary school age population.

“Governments and the global community must target their investments at eliminating the factors preventing these children from going to school in the first place, including by making schools safe and improving teaching and learning,” she continued.

However, some progress has been achieved.

Ethiopia and Niger, among the world’s poorest countries, have made the most enrolment rate progress in primary-school-age children with an increase of more than 15 per cent and around 19 per cent, respectively.

Emergency funding shortfalls for education affect access for children in conflict to attend school.

On average, less than 2.7 per cent of global humanitarian appeals are dedicated to education.

Six-months into 2017, UNICEF had only received 12 per cent of the funding required to provide education for children caught up in crises. More funds are urgently required to address the increasing number and complexity of crises and to give children the stability and opportunities they deserve.

“Learning provides relief for children affected by emergencies in the short-term, but is also a critical investment in the future development of societies in the long-term,” underscored Ms. Bourne.

“Yet investment in education does not respond to the realities of a volatile world. To address this, we must secure greater and more predictable funding for education in unpredictable emergencies,” she concluded.

[“Source-un”]

September 7, 2017 0 comment

Education

Data: The mover and shaker of 21st-century education

by Loknath Das September 5, 2017

written by Loknath Das

Technological disruption is revitalising the education industry, enabling both students and teachers to strengthen their skills and knowledge to adapt to the new requirements of a 21st-century work force.

In July 2016, Georgia Tech professor Ashok Goel hired Jill Watson, a teaching assistant for the spring semester. Jill was great at online student interactions, answering questions and was nominated as an outstanding assistant by students. The difference between Jill and other assistants? Jill is a chatbot. Her DNA is based on an open source platform (with pre-fed customized data) developed specifically to handle an enormous amount of students posts on the forum. And thus began an interesting new phase in one of the most respected sectors in the world – the education sector.

In India too, personalized digital learning platforms, new learning models delivering customized knowledge and flipped classrooms are finally dismantling the “one size fits all” approach towards student learning and education. Learning is becoming immersive (inside and outside the classroom); spurring creativity, critical thinking and meaningful real-world experiences.

But, the growth is disparate and still rudimentary. Understandably so for a country like ours with widespread geographical, cultural, gender and financial differences. Coupled with limited infrastructure, the dream of a truly literate India has a long time coming. There is a wide gap between expectations and reality both in terms of physical infrastructure and technological adoption.

While the government and academia work on improving the former, the latter has the power to really turn things around. What it needs in that endeavour is a solid data led backbone. Educational institutions today hold large amounts of data collected from online applications, classroom exercises/testing and student surveys. Social media too provides a rich source of information to capture student learning styles, preferences, concerns, reactions and perceptions.

This unstructured but valuable resource can be effectively analysed for insights to boost student achievement, increase faculty and staff productivity and improve operational effectiveness via better financial management and streamlined operations.

On a student level, the right utilisation of data sets will provide educators with real-time feedback on students’ performances, strengths and weaknesses. Data analytics can track student learning curves based on learning style and capability. Teaching techniques can accordingly be altered based on student pace and skill level, further augmented with technology innovations. If we can Dial in a Doctor, why not a teacher?

On a national level, a central repository can help make better decisions for the entire sector. The ball has already started rolling with the Digilockers and the National Repository of Open Educational Resources (high-quality digital content in local languages). The next step would be to make data accessible to institutions and academia alike – so that they can build customised techniques basis local and individual differences.

However, this is not a small undertaking. Challenges include low awareness, an absence of a data driven, insight – oriented culture, availability of uniform data sources and the apparent cost associated with data mining. Greater efforts are needed to adopt data management and infrastructure backbone for informed decisions, increased efficiency and greater accountability.

One of the foremost ways to address these issues is to increase collaborative efforts between educational institutions and data management enterprises. India must invest in a strong technology backbone, focused on hardware and software development across schools and higher education institutions. Educators need be trained to integrate technology in their pedagogy for effective learning.

But is the future of education solely dependent on technology? While data is set to move the educational landscape, educators are also working incessantly to build a sustainable and meaningful education system for all. The future will be about putting students first – with an innovative new curriculum focused on real-world needs, class design revamps for greater collaboration, rehashing educator roles and harnessing big data and artificial intelligence. The global conversation on innovative education is growing much louder and the urge to get rid of antiquated education systems has never been stronger and we should definitely not sit this one out.

There are tremendous growth opportunities for big data and analytics in the education sector. The Digital India drive can catalyse such initiatives by creating an enabling environment across the country.

Therefore, as we adapt to the needs of a 21st-century workforce, the sector needs a robust infrastructure background with measured approaches to manage life critical, business critical, real time, and mobile data. Backed up with investment, coherent strategies, and top-notch human talent, it’s now time to change the education sector with data.

Source:-hindustantimes

September 5, 2017 0 comment

Education

Education of ‘slaves’

by Loknath Das August 31, 2017

written by Loknath Das

Are the university degrees and passes in high school examinations to form disciplined personalities or simply to train slaves for the workplace? (Photo: Michael Balderas)

Schools are set to reopen on Monday. Already the orientation in some schools has been taking place this week. Is it basically the beginning of another academic year of training future workers for the workforce of mainly private entities?

Is this what education is really about? Are the university degrees and passes in high school examinations to form disciplined personalities or simply to train slaves for the workplace?

Who determines what the jobs are in the national marketplace? Isn’t it a relatively few business people? Why do they not want the rest of the society to be rounded individuals capable of controlling their own destinies?

Some employers treat empowering people through co-operatives and worker share ownership with disdain. They prefer to provide their workers with access to certain comforts that the workers spend the rest of their lives paying for.

And those comforts will be paid for out of their salaries, rather than out of their own businesses. In this way the employers have eternal control over their workers, who spend the rest of their lives making profits for the employers.

What are slaves trained for? They are trained in whatever skill their owners deem fit so that the owner can make a profit. Isn’t this just a refined form of slavery, as granulated sugar is refined sugar? Are we nothing but ‘granulated’ slaves?

And part of the scam seems to be to let people think that they have achieved a good education, when in fact they have received it in a substandard way. Education Minister Senator Ruel Reid announced last week that, in terms of mathematics examinations, Jamaica is doing better than it did before. Is the marking standard the same as before, or is it easier these days?

If not, is the change really for political reasons to fool the general public that students are getting a real education? Aren’t the graduation ceremonies part of the racket, especially when illiterates are being ‘graduated’?

Why are calculators allowed in the examination rooms? Is it so that calculators can be sold? Is it to expand the number of mathematics passes for political reasons? Haven’t both political parties done this? Where is this putting us? I understand that one can actually pass elementary mathematics as a subject in an external examination. If this is so, who are we fooling?

Unless someone is an engineer or a mathematician, why does the rest of the population need more than elementary mathematics, especially if we offer logic as a course? There are too many people today with university degrees who cannot argue logically, yet they passed mathematics. But we should ‘call a spade a spade’ and not fool young people that they are proficient in a subject when they really are not.

The question that has remained unanswered is why the examination results always go to the Ministry of Education first before they go to the candidates. A letter writer to the media asked this question this week, and so far it has been ignored. Are examination boards being pressured to increase the number of passes for political reasons?

It is not just in classroom and book education that the matter of training slaves should be addressed. It also happens in the workplace itself and in the field of sport. Are we also undertraining people, especially youngsters, by distracting them with the latest in technology? Is this being done by the First World to control the Third World?

In his column ‘Who is laughing all the way to the bank now that the World Championships are over?’, published on Wednesday, August 23, 2017, Dr Henley Morgan wrote, “It is as if we are competing under the weight of a national inferiority complex, which is lifted only when our standing is near the top of the medal table. Not so for the big, rich and powerful nations. They too want to win medals, but win or lose they are the ones laughing all the way to the bank. The reason is simple. They are active participants in the multi-billion US-dollar global sports industry. We are not.”

Last year when Usain Bolt announced to the world that he would be doing one more set of championships, in many conversations I had with people I asked if someone could tell him not to do it. It would have been better to retire with his record of being unbeaten intact, as Justin Gatlin was inching closer to Bolt in every race. I did not write this as I knew it would not be heeded anyway. It turned out even worse than I thought with his unfortunate injury in the end.

But who now laughs “all the way to the bank”, win or lose, as Henley Morgan wrote, which was precisely my point in those discussions. The leaders in the sports industry simply used Bolt to make more millions and, yes, they paid him handsomely, which he deserves, but with themselves making far more money.

Have we mesmerised our athletes by cheering them on to the point that they do not know when they are being used? Have we ‘mis-adjusted’ them by not pointing out the evils of this world to the point that they can be taken in by them? Before Henley Morgan wrote last week I wondered if I was the only Jamaican who understood what was happening.

When are we going to wake up from our national stupor? When are we going to learn to work and live together so that together we can control our own destinies in cooperatives or in share ownership of companies? When are we really going to be emancipated? Isn’t education in a politically independent country supposed to be about mental emancipation so that we can become mentally independent?

We who were born after the 1930s have the blueprint to do this, as Norman Manley and his friends sat down and basically mapped a course for Jamaica which has been followed only in part over the years. The time has come to return to this blueprint.

Again, I ask, what is education really about? Is it supposed to form characters complete with information, or is it only to equip people for the workforce controlled by the few?

[“Source-jamaicaobserver”]

August 31, 2017 0 comment

Education

‘Close rural-urban gap in school education’

by Loknath Das August 25, 2017

written by Loknath Das

Bedi says feedback from students shows the difference in teaching methods; asks officials to visit schools on a daily basis

Following her visit to a government girls’ higher secondary school in suburban Bahour, Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi on Wednesday made a quick assessment of the quality of education being imparted at the Thiruvalluvar Government Girls’ Higher Secondary School in the city.

Among the Class XII students who expressed views was one who complained that she could not hear the teacher’s voice in commerce class and another who wanted to “change a teacher but the school wouldn’t do so.” Students also sought better toilets and facilities for indoor sports and games.

“The feedback from students revealed the big difference in education standards between the rural and urban schools,” Ms. Bedi said.

She assured the students that the Education Department will do the needful.

“Do you know you can be your own teachers by being self-learners? Form groups to learn and then test each other to improve,” she advised them.

Pointing to the possibility of some among the students being first generation learners in their family, the Lt. Governor conveyed to them that the onus was as much on them to work harder and prepare for multiple options. “Admissions are now by merit. So you need to work hard to qualify to join professions of your choice”, she said.

Summing up her experience, the Lt. Governor said that the visit was most helpful in getting a first hand feedback of students on the specific needs to take them to the next level of learning.

‘Make surprise visits’

Ms. Bedi has instructed the Directorate of Education to make surprise visits to schools on a daily basis to identify areas of improvement in the education system. “Visit one school daily and take feedback from students to identify gaps. Organise intensive teacher training programs based on the learning outcomes mandated by Government of India. Develop customised training packages for rural and urban schools for their upliftment,” she told L. Kumar, Director of School Education.

She asked him to partner with the Labour Department to provide after-school skills training to students and emphasised the need to start career counselling for students as early as Class IX “so that they did not experience frustration related to employability once they graduate from school.”

Ms. Bedi also took to Twitter to lament over the education system where “our examination system in school may pass them (students) from one class to the next, but sets them up for failure post school”.

Ms. Bedi added that she has written to all elected representatives to undertake visits to schools in their constituency and ensure that rural students are not put to unfair disadvantage.

[“Source-thehindu”]

August 25, 2017 0 comment