On the first day of school, the secret to success is in the planning, not the pedagogy. How's your back-to-school planning going? Have you forgotten anything? Our checklist can help! Included: Online resources for a variety of back-to-school planning needs, including welcome letters, bulletin board ideas, and back-to-school activities.
It's official. You're a teacher! You aced all your education courses, know the subject matter backward and forward, can rattle off the names and philosophies of dozens of educational theorists, and achieved a pretty respectable score on the state certification exam. You finally have an actual job and an official class list. There's only one problem. The first day of school is drawing near and you have no idea what to do. Are you really ready to face that first terrifying day?
The secret to success in any new endeavor is planning. But for this particular endeavor, don't just plan, over plan. Don't just prepare, over prepare. Don't just write enough lessons plans to fill one class or a single day. (They never do!) Write more than enough!
When it comes to planning ahead, of course, the secret to success is in the details. Use the checklist below to help you with any details you might have overlooked in planning for your first day at school as the teacher.
PREPARE YOURSELF
Although it's not generally a good idea to clutter your classroom with framed family pictures or your collection of ceramic apples, there are a few personal items that can help you make it through the year. They include:
A diary. Take a few minutes at the end of each day to jot down your thoughts and impressions about the day's events. Was there a lesson that went particularly well, or particularly badly? Why? Did a difficult discipline problem arise? How did you handle it? What was the result? What successes did you experience? What compliments did you receive? As the year progresses, the diary will help you identify what works and what doesn't word, and it will help you find alternate strategies. It will also document your growth as a teacher, something you may not recognize otherwise. Who knows? There might even be a book in it!
A personal appointment calendar. Yes, a date book will come in handy for reminding yourself of faculty meetings, PPTs, and scheduled observations. More importantly, it can be used to document the unscheduled events that crop up during the day, and often come back to haunt you weeks later. You might think you'll never forget the day Darrell's father called to complain about your discipline policies (the first time!), or that Tamika's mother stopped in to request a speech evaluation, or what you did when Patrick bloodied Jose's nose on the playground. But you will! Jot it down immediately in your date book. And keep the date bookin, not on, your desk!
A personal survival kit. Store (out of reach of students!) a personal teacher survival kit. Include such items as a small sewing kit, safety pins, bandages, suntan lotion, change, snacks, tea bags or coffee singles, bottled water, breath mints, tissues, hand sanitizer, a spare pair of pantyhose (if appropriate!), sneakers and socks, a scarf and gloves, and any other items that will make bad days and minor catastrophes a little easier to deal with. None of those things are absolutely necessary to your success as a teacher, of course, but having them handy will make your life a lot less stressful.
A sturdy canvas bag to keep it all in.
PREPARE THE WAY
Confidence breeds competence. You'll feel a lot better about facing that first day of school if you take the time to become familiar with the school and with the people you'll be working with. Before school starts:
Familiarize yourself with the school building and grounds. Sure the principal took you on a quick tour, but how much did you absorb, or remember? Take the time before school starts to retrace your steps. Locate the bathrooms (not just the one closest to your classroom!), the gym, the cafeteria, the media center, and the nurse's office. Note where they are in relation to your classroom. Ask where resource classes are held. Find the audio-visual equipment and supply closet and ask about checkout procedures. Take notes or draw yourself a map.
Visit the school Web site. A school Web site can provide valuable information about the school and community, as well as insight into what's expected of students and teachers.
Review school policies and procedures. Ask about any procedures that are unclear. Learn the reasons for any policies that don't seem to make sense. Every school has its own history and problems. You'll be better equipped to follow policies and procedures correctly if you understand the reasoning behind them.
Make friends with the school support staff. They're the best friends a new teacher can have. Introduce, or re-introduce, yourself. Remember names. Ask about attendance and lunch count procedures, if you're not sure about them. Find out how to get an e-mail address. Make it clear you expect to make mistakes at first and that you know they might be inconvenienced. Ask how you can make their lives easier. Bring doughnuts!
Make a friend. Choose a teacher at your grade level or in a nearby classroom and ask if he or she would be available to answer questions or give friendly advice during the first few weeks of school. Let that teacher know that you're open to suggestions and eager to learn.
PREPARE YOUR CLASSROOM
Your classroom will be your home-away-from-home for the next nine months. You'll want it to reflect your personality, your educational philosophy, and your goals for your students. How do you do that? Consider some of these suggestions from veteran teachers.
Prepare bulletin boards. Most of your bulletin boards should be reserved for displaying student work. Simply cover the surfaces with butcher paper or a sturdy fabric and add a title and appropriate graphic. Depending on the grade level of your students, you might want to designate one bulletin board as a calendar board, which will remain constant throughout the year. Elementary and many middle school students also enjoy a student-of-the-week bulletin board. (To get the ball rolling, start with an autobiographical bulletin board of yourself!) For older students, consider setting aside a section of a bulletin board for posting the day's schedule, objectives, class assignments, homework, and upcoming events. Another section of the same board could hold a running assignment log and a handout folder (for students who are absent). For additional bulletin board ideas, check out the Education World articleYour Search for Bulletin Board Ideas Is Over!
Set up the room. Desks and activity centers can be arranged in a number of ways, depending on your individual teaching style. You'll find some of the most common room arrangements, along with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each, atCreating an Effective Physical Classroom Environment, Teachers Helping Teachers: Classroom Management, and the Education World article Do Seating Arrangements and Assignments = Classroom Management? Assign seats, at least initially. It will help you learn students' names, establish mutual respect, and maintain classroom control.
Obtain student supplies. Depending on the grade level of your students, you may need paper, pencils, crayons, scissors, glue, construction paper, rulers, or calculators. You'll also need textbooks and possibly workbooks. Be sure to count them!
Obtain teacher supplies. You'll probably need (among other things!) pens and markers, a stapler and staples, paper clips, tape, rubber bands, a plan book, a seating chart, hall passes, and attendance and lunch forms.
Post classroom information. Post your name, room number, and the grade or class you teach, both inside the classroom and outside the classroom door. If you have a telephone in your classroom, post important school numbers next to the phone. Include the main office, the nurse's office, and the phone numbers of nearby classrooms.
Although not, strictly speaking, part of preparing your classroom, this is also a good time to:
Review lesson plans. Look over your first day's lesson plans and obtain all necessary materials.
Prepare materials for students to take home the first day. These might include emergency data cards, a school welcome letter, a calendar showing the class specials schedule and upcoming events, a syllabus, and a homework assignment.
Check books out of the school or public library. Start a habit of reading aloud to your students for a few minutes each day, whatever their grade level!
PREPARE YOUR STUDENTS' PARENTS
Establishing rapport and a cooperative working relationship with parents is essential to any teacher, but it's especially important to the first-year teacher, whose inexperience may be an issue for some parents. You can get off on the right foot with a welcome letter, sent to the parents of each student on your class list. Mail the letters a week or two before school starts. If that's not possible, send it home with students on the first day of school. You might include information about yourself, a list of supplies students will need to bring from home, a schedule of opening day activities, policies for parents' visits, phone calls, and volunteer opportunities (include a volunteer sign-up sheet!), a discussion of classroom rules and consequences, a curriculum overview or syllabus, and your school phone number and school e-mail address.
You can find a teacher welcome letter template among Education World's Back-to-School Templates, and in the Education World article Back-to-School Letters and Survival Kits Build Communication. You might want to send an introductory letter to your students too!
Be sure to have your principal, mentor teacher, or another veteran teacher check out parent or student welcome letters before you mail them. They know the community and school policies better than you do and are in a better position to evaluate whether your letter is effective and appropriate.
THE BIG DAY ARRIVES
You're as ready as you'll ever be! Now what?
- Arrive early! Give the classroom one last check. Turn on the lights and open the blinds.
- Greet students at the door. Introduce yourself and welcome them. Smile!
- As students arrive, hand them an assignment and ask them to get started immediately.
- Help students prepare their own nametags. You'll find name tag templates among Education World's Back-to-School Templates.
- Review, explain, and discuss school rules and procedures.
- Work together to develop a list of classroom rules and consequences, or provide students with a copy of your class rules.
- As you move through the day, explain and practice class routines.
- Take pictures of students at work and play. Save some for Parents' Night and for student-of-the-week bulletin boards. Use others to start a class scrapbook.
- Discuss class or individual goals and expectations. Younger students may enjoy hearing and discussing Judith Viorst's "The First Day" poem.
- Try to include an activity that provides opportunities for students to interact or problem-solve. Check out the Education World article Icebreakers: Sixteen Getting to Know You Activities.
- Congratulate yourself on a job well done!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR NEW TEACHERS
Survival Guide for New Teachers This guide from the U.S. Department of Education offers lots of stories and advice from teachers who have been there.
Works4Me Tips Library The NEA offers tips for teachers on such topics as content, teaching techniques, classroom management, technology, organization, and relationships.
The First Days of Middle School MiddleWeb provides an extensive list of links to resources for all middle school teachers.
Ideas for New Teachers and Education Students This site contains many links to valuable teaching resources, on such topics as how to write behavioral objectives, lesson planning, teaching methods, and much more!
New Teacher's Home Page About.com provides lots of resources, including articles, tools, suggested student reading lists, and more.
Educator Kathleen Modenbach reflects on the enormous influence teachers have on the kids they teach. A recent student/counselor survey suggests that using that influence can save vulnerable kids from violence. Modenbach believes that providing opportunities for student expression -- with no strings (no grades!) attached -- is the key. Included: Simple ways to encourage student expression and increase communication.
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A teacher friend of mine recently got a late-night phone call. A former student had committed suicide. It had been just a year since her own son's death, so she could relate to the grief. But she struggled to remember the student whom she had taught four years before. He was so quiet, and she remembered no special connection with him; yet, he had left instructions for authorities to call his parents and her.
Had she been that important to him?
As my friend told me the story, we both reflected on the tremendous influence teachers can have on the kids they teach. Often, we don't realize how important our presence is in their lives. We give of ourselves without thinking about it. Still, we often get too busy to consider the effect we have on kids -- especially the quiet ones, the struggling ones.
I remember a similar experience.
Years ago, I taught a learning disabled class. Steven (not his real name) worked hard to graduate with his class; then he joined the military. A year or so later, his mom told me Steven had killed himself while stationed in Germany. She said he would want me to know.
Thinking back on that conversation, I have to wonder: How many do we save? Can we save more? I usually hear about the success stories or the tragedies, but what about those quiet or struggling or "average" students?
A SURVEY OF KIDS, TEACHERS
After Columbine, educators brainstormed ways to reduce school violence through smaller classes and more personal contact between teachers and students. Whether students kill themselves and others in a school setting or commit suicide privately, the result is the same. The crucial question remains: How can our influence be channeled to save more kids?
On Law Day in 2001, a survey of 300 junior and senior high school students from public, charter, and private schools in New Jersey delved into the causes of student violence. Among the reasons at the top of students' lists were the lack of personal involvement and interaction with teachers and other students and the need for a release for pent-up emotions. Whether those problems came from school or home, they were trapped, waiting to explode. Other causes included low self-esteem; not knowing where to go to talk about problems in their lives; problems away from school that end up in school; and bottled-up anger, frustration, and other bad feelings.
In that same study, teachers and counselors were asked what they could do to prevent violence. Among the ideas educators expressed were encouraging students to speak their minds; giving awards to increase recognition of students' special talents and kindnesses; assigning faculty mentors; and holding self-esteem and communication classes.
ENCOURAGE EXPRESSION BY REMOVING GRADES
In addition, the survey revealed that students wanted more classes where they could express themselves in small groups. They were particularly excited about letting their feelings out by writing poetry with no strings attached -- that is, no grades!
I, for one, was not at all surprised by their "no grades" comments. My high school students love to share their original poems and take part in small-group presentations. But teachers have to loosen up on grading those activities. Make them count, but base the grades on completion of the tasks assigned; and give extra points for those who go above and beyond the average effort.
Most of my students get A's or B's on those assignments. No one gets below a C unless the assignment is not completed. I never grade poetry for grammar -- expression is the key!
The Huckleberry Finn Shadow Box assignment is another un-graded assignment I gave recently. After reading the novel, students worked in small groups to decorate a medium-size box to represent things, character elements, and themes of significance in the novel. As the students worked on the project, I dropped in on groups to talk with students about what they were doing and thinking, and what they learned. I made a special effort to draw out comments from students who were usually the quiet ones.
In those projects, and other similar ones, grading is the least important thing. Grades are high for everybody who participates. With the shadow box activity, credit was given to the student who constructed a small fishing pole or drew a picture of a significant event or wrote a poem about a character. The benefits and rewards of such projects are less on the finished product and more on the pride of participating, being included, and being heard.
In another project, my senior students dressed up like pilgrims from Chaucer'sCanterburyTales and performed skits in small groups. Those who costumed according to Chaucer's descriptions and revealed the pilgrims' lifestyle in their skits got high grades. After a class vote, I awarded extra points for the best costume and best skit.
"I WANT TO BE A TEACHER..."
Recently, I ran into a former student who told me she'd changed her college major. "I want to be a teacher just like you," she told me. Now, that's the ultimate in influence! But it doesn't stop me from thinking about those who might fall through the cracks and what I might do to help them.
Kathleen Modenbach is an English teacher in Louisiana's St. Tammany Parish Schools. She teaches at Northshore High School and writes for The Times Picayune in New Orleans.
It's more than 11,000 kilometers from Shakargarh, a city in Pakistan’s Punjab province, to the venerated halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the top universities in the United States.
Twenty-five-year-old Khalid Raza lives in Shakargarh but is taking "The Challenges of Global Poverty," a course taught by a former adviser to the World Bank and a professor of international economics at MIT.
Recently, while on the bus, he pulled out his laptop and submitted one of his first assignments. "It was an amazing experience when I was submitting my assignment," he told The Atlantic. "I was travelling and my friend was sitting with me. When I submitted my assignment, after some time he asked me a question, 'What are you doing?' So I told him the whole story, that I am taking a course from the USA. He was so surprised and shocked." The experience -- something Raza says he never thought would be possible -- doesn't cost him a single rupee.
All he needed was the interest and an Internet connection to reserve his seat in a virtual MIT classroom. Raza is one of the several million learners worldwide to have discovered "massive open online courses," or MOOCs. While a number of universities attempted to introduce free online courses in the early 2000s, MOOCs have only begun to catch fire in the last year. Today, the silly-sounding acronym has become a buzz word, and is one of the hottest topics in education. A group of US education technology startups, in partnership with dozens of top US universities, now offers MOOCs on everything from poetry to physics.
Course platforms feature lecture videos, other multimedia content, embedded quizzes, discussion boards, and online study groups. Essays and other projects less suited to automated grading are reviewed by classmates based on rubrics. Interaction with professors and teaching assistants is rare. Completing a course earns you a certificate, and several U.S. schools have begun to accept MOOCs for credit. The startups' founders say their goals are at once practical and humanistic --
an effort to overcome rising education costs and a shortage of resources and make top-quality learning accessible to the masses. Anant Agarwal, an MIT professor, is the president of edX, a nonprofit collaboration between his university and Harvard University that currently offers more than 60 MOOCs. He believes his and similar projects are nothing short of transformative. "I think education is not going to be the same ever again," Agarwal says. "I really describe this technology and MOOCs as the biggest revolution in education since the printing press -- and that happened 500 years ago." Other, more impartial observers have high hopes for MOOCS, too. But given their novelty, some assessments are more cautious. Critics point to the courses' high dropout rates,
the lack of face-to-face interaction, and the risk that the for-profit companies offering MOOCs may one day begin charging students if they fail to secure other revenue sources. One company, Coursera, has attracted over $20 million in venture capital. It currently makes much of its money by licensing course content to universities. It also gives students the option to pay for perks including electronically verified course certificates and electronic course records to send to employers or schools. One thing that no one doubts is that MOOCs are gaining in popularity --
and fast. Agarwal says that after just a year, edX is approaching 1 million learners from 192 countries. In the same time span, Coursera has attracted more than 3 million students. Agarwal boldly predicts that over the next decade or so his initiative will attract 1 billion international learners. But he concedes that subjects such as politics, history, and philosophy, provided by generally liberal, Western institutions,
could cause problems if MOOCs gain such reach. "I expect that challenges will continue as what might be considered gainful education in one part of the world might be considered disruptive in a different part of the world," Agarwal says. "We haven't had examples of nations or others blocking edX content itself, but some of the infrastructure over which our content is distributed are not accessible all over the world. YouTube was blocked in some nations, for example in Pakistan and China, and we distribute video over YouTube.
So there, what we did was we made the video available for download on our site so students could have an alternate way [to watch]." Another issue to confront is language, as almost all MOOCs are currently in English. Coursera has taken the lead in responding. The company announced in May that it was partnering with several organizations, including the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation in Ukraine, to provide subtitling for lectures in select courses in Arabic, Japanese, Kazakh, Portuguese, Russian, and Ukrainian. A Coursera spokesperson said that the languages "reflect those spoken by the student population." "Additionally, regional growth in Russia and Eastern European countries has increased by 230 percent in the last six months," the spokesperson said. Aleksei Gryatskikh, 32, is a new-media manager living near Moscow.
He has taken several MOOCs through Coursera, which he says have helped him professionally. "The gamification course essentially systematized all the knowledge I accumulated before in my previous work as the creative director at an advertisement agency," Gryatskikh says. "But even though I already possessed the knowledge, the lectures helped me systematize it. Without that it might have been challenging to apply that knowledge in real life." "There's no way that this doesn't have huge potential," he adds. -
See more at: http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/07/13/news/national/what-happens-when-people-in-pakistan-start-taking-mit-classes/#sthash.4NqfSicF.dpuf
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| Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, visits the British Gas Training Academy in March 2013. |
Virtually the whole of Europe faces a crisis of escalating youth unemployment, and Britain is no exception. More than a million under-24s are out of work and not studying or training – over 15% of young people.
The low-skilled comprise the bulk of the unemployed. The OECD reported last week that 19% of 25- to 34-year-olds in the UK who left school at 16 are now unemployed in contrast to 9% in 2000, while for those with degrees the unemployment rate is only 4.7%. It is not being young that makes you unemployed, but being young and unskilled.
A striking exception to the European norm is Germany, with youth unemployment of only 7.5%. The German economy is the strongest in Europe, but Germany also has far fewer unskilled young people because of the success of its apprenticeship system, which embraces most school-leavers who do not go on to higher education.
Among Britain's school-leavers, one in three now go straight to higher education; barely one in 10 take an apprenticeship. Even these apprenticeships are often of questionable value. In recent years almost half of youth apprenticeships have lasted less than a year – many a matter of weeks – and barely a quarter of apprentices are studying at the equivalent of A-level or higher.
Britain needs to reform its apprenticeship system from top to bottom if youth unemployment is to be tackled. As Angel Gurria, the OECD secretary general, said of last week's statistics: "High youth unemployment is not inevitable, even during an economic crisis; it is the product of the interaction between economic context and particular policies." For decades, British governments – including the Blair-Brown government in which I was an education minister – have done a good job of enhancing higher education but paid too little attention to apprenticeships and technical education. This neglect continues. The number of youth apprenticeships fell last year.
Three key reforms are needed. First, the public and private sectors need to offer apprenticeships, and be funded by the state to do so, in far larger numbers. Barely one in three large companies, and one in 10 small companies, offer apprenticeships. The public sector is just as bad: the government department responsible for apprenticeships has only one apprentice under the age of 21, out of 2,500 employees. If the state does not take the lead, it cannot expect the private sector to follow.
Second, quality must improve. A staggering 11,775 apprenticeship qualifications are eligible for public funding. But employers rate very few; there is no proper test of competence for most of those who complete them; and although apprentices are expected to be "working towards" an acceptable standard of functional maths, English and information technology, it is unclear how often that is achieved. The businessman Doug Richard, in a recent report for the government, recommends there be one apprenticeship qualification per occupation, devised by employers. Literacy and numeracy should be embedded, and there should be a concluding test of competence – like a driving test – in place of the present box-ticking regime that many apprenticeships never even complete. These tests should be graded. In Germany, apprentices undergo a final examination in the vocational school and an oral examination and practical test in the workplace. The same should happen in Britain.
Third, information about apprenticeships is poor. The National Apprenticeships Service advertises some nationwide, but there is no marketing and co-ordination of places and applications on a par with theUniversities and Colleges Admissions Service for higher education. Ucas should become a clearing house for apprenticeships, starting with higher level apprenticeships, as well as for higher education places.
Another reason to reform? So short is Germany of apprentices that it has started recruiting from Britain. "Knowledge of some basic German is an advantage but not required," says the International Business Academy appointed for the task. They are particularly interested in young people with an aptitude for engineering, luring them with 170 hours of free German lessons and a net salary of €818 a month for three years to complete one of the best apprenticeships in the world. These are the very last teenagers Britain should want to lose.
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| Pasi Sahlberg believes that Gove's education reforms are a backward step. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian |
Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so is sorting pupils into ability groups by streaming or setting. There are no inspectors, no exams until the age of 18, no school league tables, no private tuition industry, no school uniforms. Children address teachers by their first names. Even 15-year-olds do no more than 30 minutes' homework a night.
The national curriculum is confined to broad outlines. All teachers take five-year degree courses (there are no fast tracks) and, if they intend to work in primary schools, are thoroughly immersed in educational theory. They teach only four lessons daily, and their professional autonomy is sacrosanct. So attractive (some might say cushy) is a teacher's life that there are 10 applicants for every place on a primary education course, and only 10-15% drop out of a teaching career.
It sounds like Michael Gove's worst nightmare, a country where some combination of teachers' union leaders and trendy academics, "valuing Marxism, revering jargon and fighting excellence" (to use the education secretary's words), have taken over the asylum.
Yet since 2000, this same country, Finland, has consistently featured at or near the top of international league tables for educational performance, whether children are tested on literacy, numeracy or science. More than 60% of its young people enrol in higher education, roughly evenly divided between universities and polytechnics.
Even the management consultancy McKinsey, which has spearheaded the global movement for testing, "accountability" and marketisation, acknowledges that Finland is top. The country's defiance of current political orthodoxies appears to do little economic harm.
According to the World Economic Forum, Finland ranks third in the world for competitiveness thanks to the strength of its schooling, which overcomes the nation's drawbacks, in the forum's view, such as restrictive labour market regulations and high tax rates.
The story, at least for Guardian readers, sounds too good to be true. Is it possible to pick holes in it? I met Pasi Sahlberg, a rather dour (though not, I am told, by Finnish standards) 53-year-old former maths teacher and education academic, during his recent visit to London.
Sahlberg, who now heads an international centre at the education ministry, was Finland's last chief inspector of schools in the early 1990s before politicians decided that teachers could be trusted to do their jobs without Ofsted-style surveillance. "I only ever inspected one school," he says.
Now he has emerged as the global spokesman for Finnish schooling. His book, Finnish Lessons, has been translated into 15 languages, including Chinese, Russian and Arabic, and each day he receives two or three invitations from across the planet to give talks or lectures.
I met him the day after Gove had announced his plans to transform GCSEs, restoring traditional three-hour exams to their former glory. He's never met Gove, but what would he say to him if he did? "I would say: 'I am afraid, Mr Secretary, that the evidence is clear. If you rely on prescription, testing and external control over schools, they are not likely to improve. The GCSE proposals are a step backwards'."
He is similarly dismissive about Gove's enthusiasm for academies and free schools, largely modelled on those in Finland's neighbour, Sweden. "In Sweden," Sahlberg says, "everybody now agrees free schools were a mistake. The quality has not improved and equity has disappeared. If that is what Mr Gove wants, that is what he will get."
Finland hasn't always been an educational superstar. Before the 1970s, fewer than 10% continued their education until the age of 18. The schools were similar to those of England in the 1950s, only worse. After taking tests at the age of 11, children whose results were in the top 25% went mostly to private grammar schools – if their parents could afford the fees. Sahlberg himself, initially educated in a tiny village primary in northern Finland, where both his parents were teachers, was one of the last to go through this system.
By the time he left school in the mid-1970s, the move towardsperuskoulu (or comprehensives), had begun, heavily influenced by British thinking. Mixed-ability teaching, teacher education reforms, abolition of the national curriculum (once 700 pages), and devolution of schooling to local authorities followed later.
While England began to dilute its comprehensive system almost as soon as it was established – in the early 1980s, the Tories introduced "parental choice" and offered subsidised places in elite private schools – Finland was further extending its ideal of the common school.
Like England, it had a vociferous lobby demanding a return to selection as well as Swedish-style free schools. Business leaders and rightwing politicians argued that comprehensives held back the gifted and talented and jeopardised the country's economic future.
But the critics were silenced early this century when the first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) emerged. All of a sudden, politicians and educators flocked to Finland in their hundreds, seeking the secret of its success. Finnish education became almost as big a global brand as Nokia. "Pisa stopped the arguments for privatisation and national testing," says Sahlberg. "Many say it saved the Finnish school system."
Sahlberg is reluctant to attribute Finland's economic success to its schools. "Some would say it's the other way round: we have educational success because we have economic success." To him and other Finns, equity is the schools' greatest achievement: the gap between high and low achievers is the smallest in the world and nobody talks of failing schools because there isn't that much difference between schools' results.
Sahlberg insists: "Pisa is not what we are about. League tables are not a good measure of a school system. We never aimed to be the best in education, only to have good schools for all. Equity came before a 'race to the top' mentality." Like many other educational researchers, he argues that most pupil achievement is explained by factors outside of school authorities' control and that, if politicians wish to elevate children out of poverty, they should look to other public policy areas.
Which leaves the question of whether Finnish schooling is exportable. Finland is an unusually homogeneous society: child poverty is low, and the ratio of income share between the richest 20% of the population and the poorest 20% is only a little over four-to-one, against nine-to-one in the UK. Its proportion of foreign-born citizens, moreover, is under 5%, and was much lower a decade ago.
All this, critics argue, makes it easy for Finland to put all children through comprehensives without social or educational strain. Other critics point to the Finnish language which, like Korean (South Korea is also near the top of the Pisa tables), is written almost exactly as it is pronounced. Young Finns and Koreans have little trouble with spelling, which not only makes reading and writing easier, but leaves more time for other subjects.
Sahlberg doesn't wholly dismiss either of these arguments, but suggests that other influences outside the schools are more important. Finnish adults, he says, are the world's most active readers. They take out more library books, own more books and read more newspapers than any other nation.
"Reading is part of our culture. At one time, you couldn't marry unless you could read. If you belonged to the Lutheran state church, you had to go a camp for two weeks before confirmation, as I did. I had to read the Bible and other religious books to the priest and answer questions to show I understood them. Only then could I be confirmed and only if I was confirmed could I get a licence to marry in church. That is still the case. Now, of course, you can get married anywhere, but 50 years ago there were very few options other than marrying in church and, 100 years ago, none at all."
There is another issue. Finnish education isn't quite what it seems. Exams and competitive pressures may have been eradicated from schools, leaving teachers and pupils free for the co-operative pursuit of cultural, creative and moral improvement. But this educational idyll eventually comes to an abrupt end.
Pupils who stay beyond 16, as more than 90% do, move into separate (allegedly self-selected) streams: "general" and "vocational" upper secondary schools. Though there is some crossover between the two, the vocational school students usually go to polytechnics or directly into jobs.
Only the general school – catering for what, in effect, is the academic stream – offers the 155-year-old national matriculation exam, a minimum requirement for university entry. Wholly financed from student fees (in a system in which everything else, including school meals, is completely free until university graduation), the exam comprises traditional essay-based external tests covering at least four subject areas. To study a particular subject at a particular institution, students must take yet more exams set by the universities themselves.
As Sahlberg acknowledges, Finland hasn't abolished competition; it has just moved it to a different part of the system. "It is getting tougher and tougher to reach the end points," he says. "It is the Finnish compromise."
In other words, although Finland unarguably achieves better results for more of its children than almost any other country in the world, success may (and I emphasise "may") be attributable less to its laid-back school regime than to the children's expectations of later competitive pressures. Exporting what appear to be educational success stories is a dubious enterprise, because it is so easy to misread how another country's system works and to discount its cultural background.
Sahlberg, I think, would agree. He is an odd, diffident sort of ambassador, spreading the message about "the Finnish miracle" but not really believing in the data that supposedly proves that it works. His fear now is that Finland's educational success is breeding complacency.
"Ask Finns about how our system will look in 2030, and they will say it will look like it does now. We don't have many ideas about how to renew our system. We need less formal, class-based teaching, more personalised learning, more focus on developing social and team skills. We are not talking about these things at all."
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| The grief-stricken students gathered at the site of deadly blast and chanted full-throated slogans against government and university administration for their failure to avert the tragedy, which struck the university on June 15. |
QUETTA: Despite threats and intimidation, students of Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University appeared to be determined to carry on their educational journey.
SBK women university was opened amid tight security on Wednesday after 25 days of deadly suicide bombing, which left more than a dozen female students dead.
Academic activities were resumed in Balochistan's only female university.
The students gathered at the site of deadly blast and chanted full throated slogans against the government and university administration for their failure to avert the tragedy, which struck the university on June 15.
Around 40 female students reached university to resume their studies. "We will not bow our heads before terrorists", an emotionally charged female student Bakhtawar Bibi told Dawn.com.
Women university was closed for an indefinite time soon after the bombing. Intelligence officials revealed that a female suicide bomber had carried the attack inside the university bus. "We will continue our struggle despite odds", she said.
Vice Chancellor SBK Women University Farzana Jabeen told reporters that strict security measures were adopted to ensure protection of female students.
"Secret cameras have also been installed to make sure proper monitoring inside university", she said.
Moreover, scanners have also been installed at the entrance gate of university to check vehicles and barbed wires were placed at walls.
Shaista, another female student told Dawn.com that her parents stopped her from going to university owing to looming security threats. "I will be coming to university, no matter what happens", Shaista said.
Police and paramilitary troops were also deployed outside women university to avoid occurrence of any untoward incident.
Advanced web cameras that turn use faces as passwords, intelligent tail lights that can save lives and smart apps that offer a personalized shopping experience were just a few of the R&D projects showcased at the 11th Research@Intel event in San Francisco.
Developed by Intel Labs, these projects are a sample of advancements in technology that will soon reshape our daily lives.
Assessing cognitive overload
This is technology developed to track a driver's performance and to alert the driver in case of danger. It tracks where a driver is looking and measures brain activity, oxygen levels and heartbeat to monitor the driver's attentiveness. If it detects a loss of attention, it immediately alerts the driver.
Shelf-edge technology
Imagine a smartphone app that stores all your personal shopping experiences -- what kind of foods you like, a special product you're looking for or the foods that trigger an allergic reaction in you. When you walk into a supermarket, your phone connects with smart displays located on the store shelves, via Bluetooth, and displays personalized product information even before you ask for it.
Advanced data protection
In a world of infinite digital services such as emails, social networks, apps, bank accounts or location-based services, the protection of identity and financial information is vital. A compromised email account can easily turn into a nightmare. With a depth-of-field enabled 3D camera, this prototype turns faces into passwords to prevent software-based attacks on our digital accounts.
Intelligent everything
Imagine a graphical user interface that enables us to manage our home appliances, which are connected to each other via the Internet and smart sensors. In a house with the “Intelligent Everything” concept, when your morning alarm rings, the curtains can open automatically to let the sun in, you can turn on your music by just waving your hand and a web camera can receive contextual cues from a baby in a crib to alert the parents to anything needed, acting as an intelligent baby monitor.
Talking tail lights
Intelligent tail lights enable communication between vehicles. By receiving information from the tail lights of another, a scooter can stop or accelerate automatically. In this demo project, the scooters communicate with each other via a VLC FrontEnd board that talks to the tail light on one scooter and a photo diode with a 120-degree viewing angle on the other.
The Internet of Displays
The Internet of Displays eliminates the need for physical cables when we want to display video content. With this technology, any number of interconnected devices can display the same content, anywhere, without the need for long cables.
Data communities
In a world of big data, data agents that actively analyze data can connect us to the people or resources we need most. Mass data analysis can allow us to pick up the right present for a colleague, or air quality sensors can gather information about the hotspots of pollen in our neighborhood and alert us to a possible allergy attack.
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| UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.—File Photo |
UNITED NATIONS: Ahead of education activist Malala Yousufzai’s visit to the United Nations headquarters on Friday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has highlighted the importance of ensuring global access to quality education, and said that no girl or boy should face unsafe circumstances when exercising this basic right.
“On 12 July, Malala will be joined by hundreds of students from more than 80 countries in a unique Youth Assembly where diplomats will take a back seat as young people take over the UN,” Mr Ban said in an article for the Huffington Post.
“They will gather to issue a global call for quality education for all.
“We must do all we can to ensure that schools are safe and secure learning spaces. Nowhere in the world should it be an act of bravery for an adult to teach or a girl to go to school.”
During her UN visit, which coincides with her 16th birthday, Malala will share her experiences and raise awareness about the importance of education, particularly for girls around the world.
“In far too many places, students like Malala and their teachers are threatened, assaulted, even killed,” Mr Ban said.
“Through hate-filled actions, extremists have shown what frightens them the most: a girl with a book.”
KARACHI: Nine leading universities in Pakistan have joined the Oracle Academy and have integrated its Advanced Computer Science program into their IT curricula to provide their students hands-on experience with Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware.
As a result, nearly 4500 students from these participating universities will have access to world-class Oracle software, technical curriculum, and industry-recognized certification resources.
Students who participate in the Oracle Academy develop vital business and technology skills, gaining a competitive advantage as they prepare to enter the global workforce of the 21st century.
Participating universities include University of Engineering & Technology (UET) – Taxila, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) – Karachi, GC University Faisalabad, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology – Lahore, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, University of Peshawar, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) – Islamabad, University of Agriculture – Faisalabad and The Superior Group of Colleges – Lahore.
The Oracle Academy helps to equip students with world-class IT skills that help them prepare for careers in exciting fields such as computer engineering, application development, web development, IT consulting, systems integration, database design/administration, IT product management, IT product marketing, technical support, and more.
"It is essential that our next generation have the right skill set before entering the workforce. Using industry-relevant and engaging computer science education resources offered by Oracle Academy, these students can benefit from hands-on experience with real world business software," said Ahsen Javed, Managing Director, Oracle Pakistan and SAGE-W. "We are proud to support the universities in Pakistan in preparing the students for IT and business careers and hope that this young workforce will soon contribute to the success of the organizations they will work for."
The Oracle Academy provides a complete portfolio of software, curriculum, hosted technology, faculty training, support, and certification resources to secondary and higher education institutions for teaching use. Faculty can insert these resources into computer science and business programs, helping to ensure that students gain industry-relevant skills prior to entering the workforce.
"The Oracle Academy has been very effective as we have not only been able to enrich our existing courses but our faculty is also in the process of designing more courses with major practical and hands-on outlines," said M.N. Khokhar, Assistant Professor and Coordinator MS(CS), SZABIST Islamabad Campus.
"We are confident that the Oracle Academy will help our faculty and students to enhance their understanding in various areas where Oracle has been the leader and innovator," said Dr. Adeel Akram, Dean – Faculty of Telecom, & Information Engineering, UET Taxila. "Our Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering and Telecommunication Engineering Departments are identifying the gaps in our existing curriculum where courses and other material developed by Oracle can be introduced to improve their practicality and acceptance in the field."
"We at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Lahore campus have been benefiting from our Oracle Academy Advanced Computer Science Membership since March 2013," said Dr. Hamid Turab Mirza, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Lahore Campus. "Curriculum and software support is very useful and is helping our students to master database systems concepts, and specifically Oracle Database technology, in a better way."
"We have recently subscribed to Oracle Academy to let our students and faculty members learn the state-of-art Oracle software," said Dr. Azhar Rauf, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Peshawar. "We are planning to incorporate some courses from Oracle Certification Programs into the BS program, bringing it at par with the industry standards."
"Oracle Academy Pakistan is actively involving academia. This will help students understand the latest technologies so that they can use them in their projects and later in job market," said Dr Imran Amin, Head of Department – Computing, Shahid Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, Karachi.
"We are really thankful to Oracle Academy for providing us with this precious opportunity to get the benefit of its valuable resources," said Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shahid Naweed, Chairman, Department of Computer Science & IT, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur. "Almost 500 students study the subject of Databases each year and it will be a great opportunity for our students to get familiar with the premiere DBMS, Oracle Database."
To a philosopher all
news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women
over their tea.
Everyone has inside of
him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you
can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential
is!
It's amazing that the
amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the
newspaper.
Honesty and integrity
are absolutely essential for success in life - all areas of life. The really
good news is that anyone can develop both honesty and integrity.
Here's the good news. If
I realize that I'm insane, then I'm okay with it. I'm not dangerous insane.
If people in the media
cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or
manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public
understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
The only gossip I'm
interested in is things from the Weekly World News - 'Woman's bra bursts, 11
injured'. That kind of thing.
The paramedic called the
press and sold me like a loaf of bread. This was news, and he wanted to be the
one to report it.
This battle for
'common-sense' gun control laws pits emotion and passion against logic and
reason. All too often in such a contest, logic loses. So, expect more
meaningless, if not harmful, 'gun control' legislation. Good news - if you're a
crook.
Decades of fund involvement has changed the economic narrative permanently in Pakistan. Before IMF involvement we used to talk of growth and investment; now everyone talks only of tax/GDP ratio as if that will solve all problems of Pakistan. There was a time when national policy not only built institutions for economic growth such as the Planning Commission and governance infrastructure, government also engaged in developing social infrastructure through agencies such as Bureau of National Reconstruction (libraries) and National Film Development corporation.
Now the national conversation seems to be dominated by the IMF requirement of ambitious fiscal targets based on increased tax collection and arbitrary expenditure cuts. Growth, employment and development are almost forgotten subjects. Even development donors such as World Bank, Asian Development Bank, DFID and USAID have nothing for growth and development. Succumbing to IMF pressure, these agencies push only for revenue collection and severe fiscal correction. The little development work that they do is now social protection and some health and education. We have been bitten by the bug of austerity without realizing it. The whole world has now recognized the harmful effects of the policies of austerity while we continue to follow them. In this series, I will examine the harmful effects of austerity in Pakistan.
We should all review these policies and change our narrative from austerity to growth. Let us begin with an examination of the proposition that there can be no development without increasing our tax/GDP ratio.
It is said that out tax/GDP ratio is 9 percent of GDP which by international standards is very low. To justify their proposition, they point to selected countries with a higher tax GDP ratio without establishing the basis for a comparison. Are they implying all countries should have the same tax/GDP ratio? But just examine the advanced countries: US 27 percent, UK 39 percent, Sweden 46 percent, and Germany 41 percent. Does this mean US should increase taxes to 46 percent? Yet the US wants to lower taxes. Let us face it there is no theory that tells us that all tax/GDP ratios should be the same. Those who use this argument on the media should be reminded of this simple truth. If we want to compare our tax performance to anyone, perhaps we should go back in history and see how the advanced countries did when they were at our level of development. In 1901 the US and UK had a per-capita income of about $4,500 and $3,700 respectively. Their tax/GDP ratios were 7 percent and 10 percent respectively. Through most of the World War-I the UK tax GDP ratio remained in the low teens. Pakistan has a per capita income of around $1000; should we really be aiming for OECD tax rates? Why then has our focus been on tax-GDP ratio for the last few decades and not on growth. What if our tax GDP ratio went up to about 15 percent would that mean higher growth more employment for people. All over the world people associate a tax-cut as a policy instrument for stimulating growth. Only in Pakistan will a tax increase stimulate growth. For some strange reason investors will invest more, workers will work harder, savers will save more to pay higher taxes. This strange theory prevails only in the minds of media commentators in Pakistan – commentators too lazy to go beyond simplistic donor propositions. This theory belies all received wisdom as well as empirical evidence: taxes take from production not increase it. There is also another belief that if we get more revenues the government will spend the money wisely and judiciously giving us more public goods like education, health and infrastructure. Let us recall that in 2002 we got a rescheduling which did allow us to generate ample fiscal space to do all these good things. Where did we end up? With a humungous energy deficit, bankrupt PSEs, failing education systems, deteriorating law and order situation. Did we make the societal investments for public goods? NO! Why then do we hold on to the assumption that more revenues will automatically increase welfare through better public good generation. Another theory that donors love to put forward is that when people pay taxes they have (or will have) more control over governance. The fee-paying theory of revenue is not cognizant of literature. The Sheriff of Nottingham despite continuously increasing taxes gave no representation to people. This brings us to the heart of the problem. Taxes follow a social contract and a certain need for creating public goods. That is why through history, sovereign's power to tax has been severely curbed through parliaments and popular vote. Kings and governments had to prove a need to tax through identifying clear public welfare programs that the tax was going to finance. This was at the heart of enlightenment thinking. Now it seems we do not need to show what our taxes are used for. Without regard to public welfare we have to give the government more money to reach a target of 15 percent of GDP without questioning where the target came from. People everywhere in Pakistan are asking what are my taxes used for? “What are my taxes used for? I get no public service, yet pay high taxes. Why?” is a frequent lament. People are intuitively in line with enlightenment thinking. Surprisingly donor philosophy remains anti enlightenment forcing all Pakistanis to pay more regardless of the quality and quantity of public service. Remember no one claps when the Sheriff of Nottingham raises his tax collection because everyone knows he is collecting for his own welfare. International observers have benchmarked our poor governance and failed public service delivery mechanisms every which way. Should we hand such a system more revenues? Surprisingly that has become the mantra. What has the system done very well when they had more money in their hands. They engaged in poor quality projects that did not deliver a social return. They also engaged in self-dealing maximizing their own perks, plots and welfare schemes. They created unnecessary and unprofitable public sector enterprises. When I raise this argument with donors they point to the need to raise taxes to meet with the variety of donor initiatives that they want in the country, ranging from social protection to money-laundering to environment. So we should tax our people more to follow agendas determined in some dark corridor where we had no say. Growth is about productivity, investment, jobs and opportunity. Educated kids without jobs and opportunity remain unemployed and potentially a destabilizing force in society. I do not understand why serious people think growth will happen with an increase in revenues? It is a spurious argument and we should not take it seriously. Taxes and revenues should be increased in line with what enlightenment has taught us. Our governance system needs reform to make it responsive to people's needs and to develop its capacity for public service delivery and for public policy. Reform will also remove the mechanisms of rent seeking such as perks and plots and align public servants incentives with public service delivery. When people see a responsive and capable public sector, their willingness to pay will increase. - See more at: http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/07/09/news/profit/should-taxgdp-ratio-be-our-top-priority-2/#sthash.n2mrOt6T.dpuf
