Despite the obvious benefits derived from education, governments face difficult trade-offs when balancing the share of public and private contributions to education.

Education plays a dual role when it comes to social inequality and social mobility. It is the main way for societies to foster equality of opportunity and support upward social mobility for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. But the evidence is overwhelming that education often reproduces social divides in societies, through the impact that parents’ economic, social and cultural status has on children’s learning outcomes.

In 2015, 193 countries committed to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, a shared vision of humanity that provides the missing piece of the globalisation puzzle. The extent to which that vision becomes a reality will in no small way depend on what is happening in today’s classrooms. Indeed, it is educators who hold the key to ensuring that the SDGs become a real social contract with citizens.

"Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence”, George Orwell wrote in 1943. And in an era of ‘fake news’ and post-truth, it resembles our world today.

Standardised testing has received a bad rap in recent years. Parents and educators argue that too much testing can make students anxious without improving their learning.

A university degree has always been considered as key to a good job and higher wages. But as the share of tertiary-educated adults across OECD countries has almost doubled over the last two decades, can the labour market absorb this growing supply of skills?

Across OECD countries, more and more individuals have attained tertiary education and the share of those with less education has declined. Although there are more tertiary-educated individuals than ever before, they still achieve good labour market outcomes.

Looking – literally – at how teachers around the world teach can be a game changer to improve education. The evidence is clear that teachers are what makes the greatest difference to learning, outside students’ own backgrounds. It is widely recognised that the quality of an education system is only as good as the quality of its teachers. Yet we know relatively little about what makes a good and effective teacher.

The world’s growing complexity and diversity present both opportunity and challenge. On the one hand, globalization can bring important new perspectives, innovation, and improved living standards. But on the other, it can also contribute to economic inequality, social division, and conflict.

Over the last generation, it has become clear that something has gone awry in how the United States prepares its young people for life. In spite of millions of young people pursuing university education, fewer than one in three young Americans successfully attain a bachelor’s degree, while millions of good middle-skills jobs go begging.

Digitisation is expected to profoundly change the way we learn and work – at a faster pace than previous major drivers of transformation. Many children entering school today are likely to end up working in jobs that do not yet exist.

Vibrant and dynamic urban centers are among the main drivers of national growth and employment, but OECD’s new report Promoting Growth in All Regions highlights that even less wealthy regions have the potential to bolster stronger, greener, and more inclusive economies.

As part of the OECD LEED project on university support for entrepreneurship in eastern Germany, undertaken in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Regional Development, this handbook presents highlights of results of a series of case studies and a university survey.

7th annual expert meeting of the initiative on Employment and Skills Strategies in Southeast Asia (ESSSA) and GIZ/ RECOTVET Policy Dialogue - 7-8 October, 2015 - Sokha Angkor Resort, Siem Reap, Cambodia

The Education Bill 2003 is well-intended, but its implication for contemporary Indian conditions must be examined first, says Sankrant Sanu.

The UGC has given the green signal to a plethora of value-added, job-oriented diploma programmes in colleges and varsities. An Education World report.

A Shanghai-based university's ranking of world universities has relegated the highly-rated Indian Institute of Science and the IITs to the bottom of its list, shattering the comfortable assumptions of Indian academics who pride themselves on their achievements. Summiya Yasmeen reports.

To mark its fifth anniversary, EducationWorld asked several educationists and industry leaders with proven commitment to improving the education system to write prescriptions for a renaissance of Indian education. Dilip Thakore threads the responses together.

Most private schools are not elite at all, contrary to public perception, and the Right to Education Act will let them run amok at the expense of the public education system, writes E S Ramamurthy.

Tarun Jain and Revathy Suryanarayana explore the link between vernacular language use in schools and educational achievement using data from large-scale historical events in South India.

A wide range of programmes and strong financial support have helped Tripura raise access to education for its tribal population. Ratna Bharali Talukdar on the many incentives that anchor the state's efforts to bridge the learning gap between tribals and non-tribals.

A largely oral system for transfering knowledge has been shaken by the advent of modern methods of learning, and by great changes in Indian society. But there are positive developments too; learning music is now more democratic than in the past. Varupi Jain speaks to noted practitioners who are alert to this transformation.

Responding to reports of high stress among students and parents, the state proposes to revise the grading system used in Class X. Sreedevi Jacob reports on the hopes and fears it has raised.

With a long history of support for public education, Kerala has led the nation's movement towards universal literacy. But now, with the early challenges conquered, there are tough new lessons to be learned, to provide equitable, quality education. Deepa A reports.

In Kerala, considered a role model for other parts of the country, almost all Muslim children up to the tenth standard are in school, numbers that compare well to that of other communities. Yet, the story is very different when one looks at higher education, writes Deepa A.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's recent remarks on muslim women and the absence of sanitation at their homes sparked a controversy. Kalpana Sharma says that if the CM really cared, millions of Indian women, with or without a "burqa", would not be "forced to go the jungles."

The Annual Status of Education Report, 2009 points out yet again that what stands between rural girls and a good education is often basic facilities like transport and proper toilets, writes Kalpana Sharma.

The Government of India decided to extend the lockdown again for two weeks after May 3 due to the full play of Novel Coronavirus (COVID 19). To avoid academic loss and take appropriate measures for the future of students, Prime Minister

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Arunachal Governor reviews State education scene

Research Centre Finance Administrator job with UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS | 206139  Times Higher Education (THE)

The funding will allow the National Science Resources Center to validate its LASER (Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform) Model. LASER, a systemic approach to reform, is a set of processes and strategies designed to help state, district and school leadership teams effectively implement and sustain
high-quality science education for elementary, middle and secondary school students.

The post NSRC to receive $25 million Investing in Innovation grant from U.S. Department of Education appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

“Places of Invention,” a planned 3,500-square-foot exhibition at the National Museum of American History scheduled to open in 2014, will feature a selection of “hot spots” of invention and innovation—places where a critical mass of inventive people, networks, institutions, funding and other resources come together and creativity flourishes.

The post Lemelson Center receives $2.6 million grant for informal science education appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Smithsonian Science Education Center (formerly NSRC) was formed by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academies in 1985 with the mission to improve the learning and teaching of science in school districts in the United States and throughout the world.

The post Smithsonian Science Education Center / National Academies appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

File: Los Angeles Unified 6th-grader Jack Spiewak performs as Macbeth at Eagle Rock Elementary School. District schools can now use a major source of federal funds to incorporate the arts into academics.; Credit: Maya Sugarman/KPCC

Los Angeles Unified School District officials have cleared the way for principals to tap into a major source of funding for arts programs targeting low-income students starting this fall.

Although state and federal officials previously said national Title I dollars, allocated to help disadvantaged students improve in academics, could be used for the arts instruction, some district officials had been reluctant to move ahead. The latest decision reverses the district's long-standing practice and opens the door for Title I-funded arts instruction that helps students improve their academic performance. 

"This has been a long time coming and this really is a day of rejoicing, quite frankly, in LAUSD," said Rory Pullens, the district's executive director of arts education. 

RELATED: For Pasadena school, arts plus math is really adding up

A two-page memo issued Thursday from Pullens, Deputy Superintendent Ruth Perez and Karen Ryback, executive director of Federal and State Education Programs, confirms the arts as a core subject and allows schools with high percentages of low-income students to use Title I funds for the arts.

Those schools "may utilize arts as an integration strategy to improve academic achievement," the directive reads. However, Title I funds are not allowed "to fund programs whose primary objective is arts education," according to the memo. As an example, the funds could be tapped to help students learn a character's point of view in a lesson that requires acting out a skit. 

Title I funding, developed in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, has been used historically to increase students success in reading and math. The funds have paid for efforts like reading coaches or math tutors, supplemental software programs and professional development for teachers to improve low-performing students' test scores.

At $14 billion a year, the Title I funds make up the federal government's largest expenditure for grades K-12. The majority of LAUSD schools receive Title I dollars.

Arts advocates have long sought to get the second-largest district in the country to shift its stance on Title I arts funding, arguing that the arts have been shown in research to boost student academic performance. 

LAUSD joins just a handful of districts around the state that have committed to a district-wide Title I plan including the arts. San Diego Unified, Sacramento City Unified and Chula Vista Elementary School District are among them, according to Joe Landon, executive director of the California Alliance for Arts Education. 

Landon says beyond these districts, the decision to use Title I for the arts is largely playing out on a school-by-school basis. Some principals are using Title I funds for the arts, but they're doing so largely under the radar, some fearing that state monitors will say the funds were used incorrectly. 

"At each level, there are people that are afraid," Landon said. The reason: schools are accountable for how Title I dollars are spent and misuse could cause schools to lose a valuable funding source. Despite the state and federal directives on Title I allowing arts instruction in academics, school officials have been hesitant to make changes because Title I spending is monitored so closely. 

Landon explained that a decision to use Title I funds for the arts is momentous for schools.

"When districts begin to move," he said, "that really changes it."

Attention turns to principals, funding gatekeepers

When Los Angeles Unified brought on Pullens, attracting him from a well-known arts school in Washington, D.C., he took on the task of securing Title I funding in his early months on the job. He said budgeting would be a huge challenge in increasing access to the arts for more of the district's students. 

The deed now done, Pullens said: "This was clearly a very high priority of what we wanted to accomplish and we are just so thrilled that this has finally come to pass."

It'll now be up to school principals to decide how much of their Title I funding to allocate for arts instruction. Pullens said plans to train principals on the benefits of arts integration are underway.

While the Title I arts spending is not mandatory, he expects the new directive to free up significant funding for the district's arts efforts. He didn't have exact estimates, but pointed out that schools' Title I funds range anywhere from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars per school. 

As KPCC reported in July, only about 70 of the district's more than 500 elementary schools were on track to provide all four art forms (dance, visual arts, music and theater) for the 2014-2015 school year — a legal requirement under the California education code. 

Cheryl Sattler, senior partner with the Florida-based consulting firm Ethica, has worked closely with about 100 school districts nationwide and estimates only two have used Title I funding for the arts.

“The urgency is to try to get kids to read," she said, "and if you have kids, for example, in the 10th grade who are reading at a 3rd or 4th-grade level, it’s really hard to think past that, because that’s the emergency.” The arts are often left out of the conversation, according to Sattler, which means they're left out of funding.

“I think the issue is that largely principals, and school improvement committees, and other folks who are worried about academic performance don’t always look to the arts and they don’t always know the research about how powerful arts can be,” she said. 

The LAUSD directive described examples of arts integration activities that schools might consider:

• Invite community members to demonstrate or share their talents with students as a prompt for a writing assignment.
• Have students create models that display mathematical data pertaining to each planet of the solar system: distance from the sun, length of day and night, length of year, and day and night surface temperatures.
• Ask students to create a small piece of dance/movement that models their understanding of geometric concepts.
• Encourage students to explore the science of sound by utilizing rubber bands, oatmeal containers, coffee cans, balloons, etc. to construct one or more of the four families of musical instruments: strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion.
• Have students write and perform a short skit to illustrate a literary character’s point of view.
• Provide a lesson on utilizing a software program to create an animated film that highlights key historical events that occurred during the Civil War (In this instance, the cost of the software program would be an appropriate Title I expenditure). 

Supporting Title I Schoolwide Program 2-19-2015

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Education should promote routine early screenings of children for autistic spectrum disorders, much like they are promoted for vision and hearing problems, says a new report from the National Research Council of the National Academies.

To ensure that minority students who are poorly prepared for school are not assigned to special education for that reason, educators should be required to first provide them with high-quality instruction and social support in a general education classroom before making a determination that special education is needed.

A report released today by the National Research Council presents a new framework for K-12 science education that identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school.

Educational and business leaders want todays students both to master school subjects and to excel in areas such as problem solving, critical thinking, and communication

A series of educational modules has been developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to help students in professional schools – law, public policy, medicine, journalism, and business – understand science and its role in decision making.

Despite their potential, many English learners (ELs) -- who account for more than 9 percent of K-12 enrollment in the U.S. -- lag behind their English-speaking monolingual peers in educational achievement, in part because schools do not provide adequate instruction and social-emotional support to acquire English proficiency or access to academic subjects at the appropriate grade level, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.