Australia

Posted on March 29, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Students reap rewards of greater autonomy for principals
Arlington, K.  Sydney Morning Herald (13 March 2012) 

This article from the perspective of New South Wales parents and educators focuses on the benefits — mainly flexibility — that the school autonomy plans will provide with the shift in personnel and financial decision-making power from the state government to individual principals.  According to one principal, “'[We have] the opportunity to think differently and find solutions to issues that haven’t been found before.”  According to the article, this flexibility enables principals to bring into public schools what private schools have been doing all along — treating each child as an individual.   (The perspective of principals from the New South Wales Teachers Union can be found here; an article about a report funded by the Treasury outlining the autonomy plan as a cost-effective plan can be found here.)

Leave a comment

Posted in Newspaper Articles

Tagged ,

Norway

Posted on March 26, 2012 by | Leave a comment

GNIST – “Do You Have It in You?” Campaign

The Norwegian government has invested in attracting high-quality teacher candidates since it passed GNIST in 2008.  This link leads to an interactive promotional video.  Here are the instructions in English:

1) Decide to do this for a friend (“en venn”) or yourself (“meg”).
2) Upload a picture from Facebook or your PC.
3) Type in your/your friend’s name and indicate gender – woman (“kvinne”) or man (“mann”).
4) Click the “Se filmen” (See video) button.
5) When loaded to year 2069 mouse-over timeline on bottom screen right hand side.  There you may select English subtitles from a pop-up menu.

Leave a comment

Posted in Videos

Tagged , ,

Norway

Posted on March 26, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Successful teacher recruitment campaign in Norway (in Norwegian)
Mellingsæter, H. Aftenposten (16 March 2012)

A recent statistical study shows that the status of the teacher profession is increasing in Oslo, the capital of Norway. The study is part of the daring and ambitious teacher recruitment campaign GNIST (SPARK).

The GNIST campaign for the teaching profession was initiated in 2008. It is based on a concern that policies were not sufficiently directed towards ensuring enough well-qualified teachers in Norwegian schools. GNIST is a partnership agreement between a number of stakeholders, including: teacher education institutions, school owners (municipal and county governments), unions and the national authorities. Partnership objectives were to increase the quality and status of the teaching profession, teacher education, and school leadership.

One aim of the partnership has been to develop reliable indicators of status and quality and to measure progress. The latest indicator report shows that there has been a strong positive shift in media coverage of the teacher profession and teacher education between 2008 and 2011. There has also been an increased attractiveness in the teacher profession in target groups during the same period, and a 45 percent increase in recruitment to teacher education between 2008 and 2011.

Leave a comment

Posted in Newspaper Articles

Tagged , , , ,

Canada

Posted on March 21, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Planned class-size cap stirs anxiety
Martin, N.  Winnipeg Free Press (12 March 2012)

Manitoba’s “plan to cap class size at 20 kids for kindergarten to Grade 3 has trustees nervous.” Trustees are concerned that there could be unintended consequences (i.e., having to split a class into two classes because of increased enrollment during the school year) if the rules are rigid and inflexible. The issue:  An influx of immigrants have swelled the numbers of students in the lower grades, making the proposed reform expensive.  (More on the increased expense of capping classes here.)  “Trustees overwhelmingly want the province to impose the cap on 90 per cent of K-3 classrooms, and let the rest take the numbers needed to avoid space and staff problems.”  This would allow flexibility if the student population grows during the school year.

Leave a comment

Posted in Newspaper Articles

Tagged , ,

Austria

Posted on March 21, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Fuss over a standardized school leaving exam (in German)
Die Presse (10 March 2012)

Austria will introduce a reform to standardize the important Grade 12 school leaving exam (known as the Matura) which allows students to enroll in universities. The reform increases the minimum passing grade to answering 60 percent of the test correctly.  The minimum passing score had been 50 percent.  Because of the higher minimum passing grade, many students have failed the exam pre-test.  Teachers are also protesting the law, insisting that it reduces their freedom in examining their students.  The Ministry of Education, however, argues that the reform will ensure quality, objectivity, fairness and comparability to the Matura.

Leave a comment

Posted in Newspaper Articles

Tagged ,

South Korea

Posted on March 18, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Korea to support multicultural children
Lee Woo-young, The Korea Herald (12 March 2012)

“The Education Ministry announced Monday that it would establish more preparatory schools to help children from multicultural families learn the Korean language and culture before they enter regular public school,” according to the article.  Prep schools currently offer basic language and culture courses before entering the public school system.  The Education Ministry will also ensure that Korean as a Second Language is offered in public schools. “As a part of this effort, the ministry plans to increase dual-language instructors tenfold from 120 this year to 1,200 in 2015 so that there will be at least one such teacher assigned to every 50 students.”

Leave a comment

Posted in Newspaper Articles

Tagged , ,

China

Posted on March 18, 2012 by | 1 comment
China raises education spending, but more needs to be done
Oulin, ed.  People’s Daily Online (posted on the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China website) (14 March 2012)

For the past twenty years, China has pursued a public investment in education at a rate of 4 percent of its GDP.  In the People’s Congress Convention that closed last week, China finally passed a budget that achieves this goal. This article on the National People’s Congress website asks, “Why did it take the country 19 years to increase education spending to 4% of GDP?”  The answer:  China has been focused on economic development (GDP growth).  China’s rapid economic growth has also made it difficult to increase public spending on education to the 4 percent goal.  But, the article also calls for a higher percentage of the GDP to be focused on education.  “It is also clear that when we [the People’s Republic of China] are about to eat this ‘apple’ of ‘4%,’ others have picked a greater and sweeter ‘apple.’ The investment in education of the United States had reached 7% of GDP in 1999, and the percentage had reached 5% in India in 2003. Although we are pleased about the achievement we have made, we also have to speed up cultivating the next ‘apple.’” (For more on the expenditure of educational institutions as percentage of GDP see an OECD comparison).

1 Comment

Posted in Newspaper Articles

Tagged ,

Singapore

Posted on March 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Singapore – Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education
OECD (10 February 2012)

This official video from the OECD’s Directorate for Education provides an overview of Singapore’s educational system, highlighting some of the reasons why Singapore consistently scores well on PISA.  If you don’t know much about education in Singapore, this provides an excellent introduction.


Leave a comment

Posted in Global Reports/Studies, Videos

Tagged , ,

Australia

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia
Jensen, B.  Grattan Institute (February 2012)

Four of the five top education nations in the PISA 2009 study come from East Asia – Shanghai, Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore.  (Finland ranked third in the study.)  In order to draw lessons for Australia, this report from the Grattan Institute found that it was neither cultural factors (Confucianism, Tiger Mums, rote learning) nor the amount of budget that contributed to educational success.  Instead, the report suggests that these countries implemented ideas and levers that are known to be effective for system improvement (e.g. focus on effective student learning, a strong culture of teacher education, collaboration, mentoring, feedback, and sustained professional development).

Leave a comment

Posted in Think Tank/Institute Report

Tagged ,

India

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment
Focus on RTE
Shrangi, V. The Times of India (7 March 2012)

This article reports on the drafting of the twelfth five-year plan, part of which focuses on the Right to Education Act (RTE) of 2009 (more on RTE here). Seeking to accomplish the goals of Education for All (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan), which was launched in 2001, neighborhood schools are to be established with a student-to-teacher ratio of 30:1 by 2013. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2011, “the two major obstacles have been availability of teachers and setting up of neighbourhood schools. Presently, there is a shortage of nearly five lakh teachers while about three lakh teachers, teaching at the elementary level, are untrained.”

Leave a comment

Posted in Newspaper Articles

Tagged , ,