To provide links for our twitter feed, every week or ten days, we look for news, research, and other media reports on educational change and improvement from a particular part of the world (Africa and Middle East; Asia & the Pacific; Central & South America; The Nordic countries; Europe; or the UK and Canada). While it’s always hard to determine the “hot topics” through these “non-random” scans of traditional and new media, we’re going to start pulling together some of the links we find in these scans and posting them here a little more frequently. This time, the scan focuses on Africa and the Middle East, and over the past two weeks, we’ve noticed more stories about testing-related scandals than almost any other topic. Maybe it’s just exam season, but the stories have come from Egypt, South Africa, Algeria, Morocco, and Ghana:
- Helicopters, scanners no match for Egypt’s exam cheats – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East http://buff.ly/1J8lT8Z
- allAfrica.com: South Africa: Basic Education On Progress in Group Copying Investigations http://buff.ly/1GnglQZ
- الشروق أون لاين Education Unions: “Protected and not afraid of punishment… those behind leaked exam topics on Facebook” http://buff.ly/1IoO6Ts
- Exam Leaks Are a Threat to Morocco’s Education System. Morocco World News http://buff.ly/1H3yQ3I
- BECE cancellation was a collective decision – Minister of Education | General News 2015-06-18 http://buff.ly/1Gnp59M
Unfortunately, extremism, in this case in Egypt and in Kenya, also continue to be in the news:
- ‘A trip to the farm’: Egypt canceled these school lessons to combat extremism | Al Bawaba http://buff.ly/1J8m9Fd
- Education in Kenya Suffers at Hands of Shabab Extremists – The New York Times http://buff.ly/1J8vJI3
- Kenya: Education crisis looms near border with Somalia as 2,000 teachers flee due to al-Shabaab attacks http://buff.ly/1J8vOLX
In addition to those stories, there were also frequent mentions of basic issues of rights and access to education in the Sudan and Algeria, education budgets and costs in Ghana and Ethiopia, teacher’s pay and teaching education in Uganda and Nigeria respectively. But no scan would be complete without a story or two on world rankings (Morocco) or educational performance (Nigeria):
- South Sudan Struggles to Uphold Children’s Rights http://buff.ly/1LnZe5Z
- 1.5 Million Students Expected in 2015-2016 Academic Year http://buff.ly/1IoO2Dd
- What is the actual cost of a high school education in Ghana? | Public Radio International http://buff.ly/1J8vAo2
- Ethiopia’s unprecedented budget targets education and infrastructure | East & Horn Africa http://buff.ly/1LnYPkb
- allAfrica.com: Uganda: Teachers’ Pay Not Poor, Education Official http://buff.ly/1dOySPt
- allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Colleges of Education Teachers Beg Buhari to Implement 2009 Agreement http://buff.ly/1d69dRE
- Morocco Lags Behind in OECD’s Global Education Ranking-Morocco World News http://buff.ly/1H3yWZ3
- Standard of education in Nigeria has declined — Buhari – DailyPost Nigeria http://buff.ly/1d69gNk
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