Teachers for Supply

In a crowded classroom in Gaza City, hands shoot inside the air when teacher Moussa Ziara asks for a volunteer to come back to the blackboard. The selected boy carefully chalks a letter of the alphabet amid enthusiastic applause from his classmates.

It seriously is not, perhaps, an atypical scene in a spot where education is extremely valued. What’s unusual, however, is that these Palestinian boys are studying Hebrew; a part of a resurgence in learning the “language of the enemy”, fostered – remarkably – by Gaza’s Hamas government.

Around 750 ninth-grade pupils in Hamas-run schools have begun studying Hebrew in a pilot scheme which may be extended within the coming years. It’s the first time for nearly 20 years that the language of Israel is at the school curriculum.

And on the Islamic University in Gaza City, an establishment with close ties to Hamas, 19 students have enrolled in a one-year postgraduate diploma in Hebrew on the way to qualify them to show in government schools.

Somayia al-Nakhala, director of curriculum on the ministry of education, explains why Hamas put Hebrew at the curriculum: “It’s better to grasp what Israel is thinking and saying than to grasp nothing. We need to know the language of our enemy – or our neighbour.”

She points out that folks in Gaza consume Israeli products, are prescribed Israeli drugs and sometimes watch Israeli television via satellite or access Israeli websites. “We’re connected to Israel,” she said. “Politics isn’t the same as practicalities.”

Until twenty years ago, thousands of Gazans worked as labourers or factory workers in Israel, picking up Hebrew as a part of their daily existence. Palestinian doctors worked in Israeli hospitals; Gazan businessmen liaised with their Israeli counterparts on import and export deals; some learned the language during spells in Israeli prisons.

But, as Gaza was increasingly closed off from Israel, after the establishment of limited self-rule by the Palestinian Authority in 1994, the suicide bombings of the second one intifada and the increase of Hamas as Gaza’s ruling Islamist faction, the collection of Hebrew-speaking Palestinians dwindled. Hamas is now taking steps to reverse the craze.

And there is not any shortage of takers. At Shefie elementary school for boys, 350 out of 400 ninth-grade pupils desired to join Hebrew last September. Most were disappointed; simply by limited teaching capacity, the varsity could offer just one class of 40 pupils.

“The youngsters are very wanting to learn, maybe because it’s as regards to Arabic and straightforward to profit,” said Ziara, their teacher. The category notched up a pass rate of 100% on the end of the primary term.

In general, Gaza has high standards of education regardless that its overcrowded schools are forced to run large classes and a shortened day to house two shifts in a single premises. Greater than 92% of its population are literate, a stronger rate than countries with comparable economies.

Ziara used to work in Israel as a trader, but have been barred from entry since 1999. “i am not a political candidate, but we’re neighbours with Israel whether we’re at war or peace. So we have to learn their language.

“And the language is filled with literature and culture, so it’s enriching to benefit,” he said, stressing that this can be a personal viewpoint.

One of the men in his class, 14-year-old Naji Ayyad, says his family encouraged him to soak up Hebrew, which his father speaks from his time as a worker in Israel. “It’s essential understand the enemy language so as to counter them,” he said.

Indeed, language has become a weapon within the propaganda war between both sides. The army wing of Hamas, which doesn’t recognise Israel’s right to exist, tweeted in Hebrew throughout the eight-day conflict in November. The Israeli authorities regularly send text messages in Arabic to Gazans, and shower the territory with warning leaflets written in Arabic.

At the Islamic University, teacher Jamal al-Hadad, who gained a diploma in Hebrew literature from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University in 1978, says the language is simple for Arabic speakers to be informed. “Arabic and Hebrew are very close, the languages have the identical roots.” He uses as a teaching tool a stapled booklet of his own poems – on “peace, beauty, love, politics and friendship” – which he has translated into Hebrew.

There were a number of objections to Hebrew being taught in Gaza, he says, but “a lot of persons desire to learn the language precisely because we’re in a conflict with Israel. They would like to grasp the impact of that conflict, they need so one can follow the inside track in Israel.”

Hopes that tens of thousands of GCSE English students may have their grades raised were dashed after the high court ruled that measures exam authorities took last summer to combat grade inflation were lawful.

Lord Justice Elias and Mrs Justice Sharp ruled against an alliance of pupils, unions, schools and councils who alleged that the government’s exam regulator, Ofqual, and the exam boards Edexcel and AQA had unfairly moved the boundary between a C and hasta hoy grade in English exams taken in June, in a final-minute “statistical fix” to counter inflation.

The bar was raised higher than for pupils who submitted papers inside the earlier January marking round.

“There has been at the face of it an unfairness which had to be explained,” the judges said. “However, having now reviewed the evidence intimately, i’m satisfied that it was indeed the structure of the qualification itself that’s the source of such unfairness as was demonstrated subsequently and never any unlawful action.”

The case were brought by 167 individual pupils, supported by 150 schools and 42 councils, plus six professional bodies, including teaching unions.

The ruling is a blow to teachers’ organisations and pupils, a number of whom claim they missed out on sixth-form places due to changes.

In December, Ofqual’s own inquiry concluded that January’s GCSE English assessments, which accounted for roughly 10% of entries, were “graded generously” and the June boundaries were properly set.

Two thousand 300 students who took exams set by the Welsh exam board WJEC in Wales have already been regraded at the orders of the Welsh government, which regulates exams set there.

Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary of the Association of faculty and faculty Leaders, said the alliance would take advice from leading counsel within the coming days over the opportunity of launching a challenge to the decision.

“We still believe that thousands of young people had their exams unfairly downgraded last June in order to compensate for mistakes made earlier in the year,” he said.

Sir Steve Bullock, the mayor of Lewisham, one of the boroughs that brought the case, said the outcome was “very frustrating” and although the judges ruled the structure of the qualification was unfair, it was “no consolation for the thousands of students up and down the country who will have to continue to live with the consequences of this unfairness”.

Joan McVitie, head of Woodside High school in north London, which was among the applicants, said the judges’ ruling that there had been unfairness for students was “a hard lesson for children to learn”. She added: “This is about the law and wasn’t about fairness.”

The chief regulator of Ofqual, Glenys Stacey, said: “We welcome the verdict of the courts that, faced with a difficult situation, Ofqual did the right thing and the fairest thing, for the right reasons. We know some students and schools will be disappointed with this. We understand that. But it’s our job to secure standards.”

She said the court agreed with Ofqual’s conclusion that the root of the problem was the poor design of the GCSE English qualification.

“We have been trusted with a key role in reforming GCSEs,” Stacey said. “We will work now with all those with an interest in doing the best for our adolescents, to shape new qualifications which are worthwhile to check and stimulating to educate, and to make sure that they aren’t bent off form by the pressures of faculty accountability measures.”

Education secretary Michael Gove’s decision to desert plans to exchange GCSEs in key subjects in England with the English Baccalaureate Certificates (EBCs) appears like history repeating itself. This debate, and the entrenched position taken by such a lot of of my very own profession, mirrors the plethora of ‘blocking’ strategies that have been placed in front of Sir Mike Tomlinson, a former chief inspector of colleges, when he tried to radically reform A-levels in 2002.

The fact remains that GCSEs want a deep-rooted overhaul if the education sector and the teaching profession are to ensure that the scholars in our care meet their full potential.

Without rigorous, stimulating and stretching examination and assessment frameworks, we run the chance of youngsters not being furnished with the talents set essential to pursue a delightful career, or the certainty so one can make a meaningful contribution to the nation’s economic development and prosperity.

GCSEs are a curate’s egg of mixed practice.

At their best, akin to with the present GCSE English literature and GCSE history specifications, they effectively challenge children and kids. The GCSE engineering and newly developed GCSE computing courses enable students to cultivate skills for both employment and life. Additionally, GCSEs have a longtime track record and reputation in accordance with greater than 25 years development.

However, at their worst, GCSEs are a countrywide disgrace.

All of the GCSE sciences are under-challenging and do nothing to completely prepare adolescents for A-level and undergraduate sciences. GCSE mathematics is in a similar way simply not robust enough should you want to take the study of mathematics further.

To counter this, at Nunthorpe we now offer our upper ability students the choice of studying the international GCSE in mathematics. This more taxing and hard examination and course has traditionally been a route offered only within the independent schools/some grammar schools sector. However, that picture is changing as more meaningful GCSE qualifications are sought within the more ambitious parts of the all ability state sector.

Too a few of the GCSE qualifications on offer within the ‘examinations market’ don’t adequately stretch young people’s intellect.

This is reflected within the much observed lowly position of england within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Within the PISA 2011 report, England sadly came 25th in reading and 28th in maths.

As an all-ability state academy, Nunthorpe has no qualms about offering curriculum and qualifications which might be properly fit for purpose and which properly stretch and challenge all of our students in any respect ability levels. The EBC was a good chance to start to correctly differentiate between people who were truly on the upper ability end and those that were stretched sufficiently by the more traditional GCSE and /or BTEC qualifications diet.

Michael Gove said plans for the recent exams have been “a bridge too far”. However, failing to realise the risk to lay an examination structure in place that might do future generations justice is a lost opportunity.

The ridiculous national obsession with ‘equality’ and ‘inclusion’ in any respect costs means adolescents pays the final word price of not being given the standard education that they not just need but deserve. Here, we had a secretary of state who was brave enough to challenge many of the sacred cows of our education sector.

Unfortunately, I fear that because Mr Gove was impeded in his ambitions to substantially reform the examination system, the nation will continue to pay a heavy price as we remain rapidly overtaken by our international education rivals.

Debbie Clinton is principal of Nunthorpe Academy, Middlesbrough.

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It’s lunchtime, but within the offices of the National League for Democracy (NLD), nobody is stopping work. As we go up a decent staircase into an office hung with portraits of leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her father General Aung San, activists work energetically around tables strewn with documents and maps. Student volunteers flick between drafting policy papers on antiquated PCs and checking Facebook on their iPhones.

The NLD, Burma’s main opposition party, is investing great energy in drafting the country’s new higher education bill. It’s a political priority for the party and its leader, who has called on international support to rebuild the country’s universities.

Last week we arrived in Burma for the primary UK higher education sector-wide mission because the civilian government was returned last year. Led by the united kingdom Higher Education International Unit and coaching Gateway, the mission includes sector organisations and representatives from the colleges of Manchester, Nottingham, Roehampton, UEA and the Institute of Education. On this, the mission is following within the footsteps of many UK institutions which have visited the rustic and sometimes are already developed successful partnerships here.

Why now Despite the true optimism generated by 18 months of rapid political reform, the generals retain control. The newest budget, hailed as a breakthrough, still allocates thrice as much funding to the army as to education.

But with the easing of international sanctions, that is timely for UK institutions to reengage with the educational community in Burma. In London last year, Aung San Suu Kyi told a joint session of the homes of Parliament: “It’s miles in education particularly that i am hoping the British can play a main role. We’d like short-term results, in order that our people may even see that democratisation has a tangible, positive impact on their lives.”

Daw Suu, as she is affectionately known by supporters, has described Burma’s education system as “desperately weak”. Inside the 1950s, Yangon University was the jewel within the crown of south-east Asian higher education. University leaders and government officials came to Burma to be informed design a successful higher education system.

Today, Burma’s universities bear the scars of decades of under-investment, neglect, or even deliberate degradation. University campuses are lacking basic communication infrastructure. Scientific equipment in laboratories is restricted and outdated, and libraries are under-resourced.

There is, though, a sincere enthusiasm to collaborate internationally. In the course of the delegation, we heard from university rectors, government officials and opposition leaders who all saw greater collaboration overseas as paramount to raising quality at home.

Attracting foreign academics to Burma for brief-term visits for teaching and research is a direct priority. After decades of isolation, Burma’s academics want contact with their counterparts overseas. Academics from Japan, Germany and South Korea are already in Yangon University, funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. They’re delivering lectures and seminars, supervise and view PhD candidates, and develop plans for joint research projects.

In teaching, the govt desires to encourage foreign universities to run programmes in Burma. Opportunities exist to develop joint and double degrees, but within the short term delivering certificate and diploma programmes may prove to be worthwhile place to begin for partnerships between UK and Burmese universities. “These are quick wins,” U Zaw Htay, director general for higher education, told us. “We need to work out these start tomorrow.”

International branch campuses also are portion of the government’s plans. a personal universities bill is planned, so that you can allow overseas institutions to set up joint or wholly-owned campuses in Burma. The policy also has the support of the opposition NLD.

Overlapping reviews

However, these opportunities exist in a policy environment that is beset by complications. Both government and opposition are leading simultaneous and overlapping reviews of upper education policy. The great Education Sector Review (CESR) is led by the Ministry of Education, with considerable financial and technical support from major international donors including UNICEF, AusAid and the UK’s DfID. Its first rapid-review phase has just been completed.

Meanwhile, a parallel review process is being led by parliamentarians and the NLD to develop and draft the brand new higher education bill. Although no overarching vision has yet been articulated, three clear policies can already be identified: firstly, freeing university leadership from the direct control of the govt; secondly, prioritising resources to support the restoration of Yangon University as a global-standard research university; and thirdly, enshrining academic freedom – not only academics’ and students’ freedom of speech and freedom to publish, but additionally allowing university applicants to select their very own disciplines, rather than being assigned subjects in response to highschool grades.

The two processes are neither complementary nor cooperative. The govt. is unlikely to simply accept the NLD’s key demand of full institutional autonomy. Contact between the 2 sides has all but led to recent months.

A clash of timetables is additionally imminent. The NLD expects to table the hot higher education bill later this year, in which point the CESR is not going to yet have completed its main review process or made its recommendations. It’s unclear where this will leave the federal government-led CESR should the bill pass into law.

There is another uncertainty, altogether more fundamental. The velocity of the political transformation in Burma for the reason that release of Aung San Suu Kyi last year was encouraging. But she herself has warned against “reckless optimism” and locals remain sceptical that the present ‘opening up’ is genuine and permanent. The elections scheduled for 2015 represent a real unknown or even the foremost confident Burma-watchers are reluctant to invest at the political landscape beyond this point.

Andy Heath is Asia policy officer on the UK Higher Education International Unit – follow it on Twitter @InternationalUt

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Protests against outsourcing campus services at Sussex University escalated yesterday, when around 100 more students forced their way right into a university conference room where a four-day long occupation is happening.

There are actually some 150 students contained in the top floor of Bramber House. They’re refusing to depart until the university management halts the bidding process for selling off services together with catering to personal companies.

The occupation has received much media attention, in addition to support from celebrities reminiscent of Noam Chomsky, journalist Tariq Ali and Acadamy award-wining actor Peter Capaldi, best known for his part as Malcolm Tucker in BBC sitcom The Thick of It.

But it was not until yesterday that the university’s vice-chancellor, Michael Farthing, responded to the protesters by asking them to depart the building in return for a gathering with the registrar, John Duffy.

Farthing’s eventual response to the occupation did little to entice students clear of their pitch. The occupiers replied by saying: “If dissolving this occupation is the sole condition upon which we will meet, then we won’t have a gathering.”

When asked why the university’s management had not acted more promptly, Duffy replied: “We have not had time to reply yet, it’s not a concern in the mean time.” The university did, however, find time to rent additional security guards over the weekend.

The occupation is not only a one-off event, it is the climax of an eight-month long campaign that has encompassed demonstrations, open talks and a web-based petition. All of it began in May 2012, when Sussex University management said it was to outsource 10% of the university’s workforce. This implies 235 staff – mostly catering and waste disposal workers – shall be transfered to external contracts. Many fear that such workers, who’re already on low wages, can have their terms and prerequisites undermined.

So far, the university management has did not explain its decision, says first-year student Kirsty Chan. “One main frustration is that we aren’t ready to access the university’s reasons for privatisation. Without the occupation many folks on campus would haven’t known concerning the university’s plans to outsource.”

What’s happening here at Sussex is an indication of broader changes in higher education, writes Michael Chessum, organiser for the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. He writes that the government’s push towards privatisation is transforming universities “faraway from a conception of educational or critical community, and towards a model by which managerial governance, research and admissions are directly associated with private business models.”

Not all students are bothered by the changes at Sussex. As third-year undergraduate Noel Kanyama points out, they might not have a right away impact on students. “i admire to believe that the university would outsource to the fitting and best bidder; and that the services can be quality-controlled by the university.”

What is definite is that the Sussex University occupiers won’t leave and not using a fight. With spirits high and excitement within the air, they tell me they “want to continue into the foreseeable future.”