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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (IRIN) – Instead of providing much needed opportunities, South Africa’s ailing education system is keeping children from poor households at the back of the job queue and locking families into poverty for another generation.

By the age of eight, school children from the most affluent 20 percent of South Africa’s population are already significantly out-performing children from poorer backgrounds, according to new research by the Social Policy Research Group at Stellenbosch University.

The study, “Low Quality Education as Poverty Trap”, found that the schooling available to children in poor communities is reinforcing rather than challenging the racial and economic inequities created by South Africa’s apartheid-era policies.

Using newly available data sets, including those linking information on income with numeracy skills, the report analyzed how low-quality tuition in the post-apartheid education system is perpetuating “exclusion and marginalization”.

The government allocated R190 billion (US$28 billion) or 21 percent of its 2011/12 budget to education, but 80 percent is spent on personnel and the remainder is not enough to supply thousands of schools in mainly poor areas with basic requirements like electricity and textbooks.

Yet the top 20 percent of state schools – which largely correspond to historically white schools and charge fees to compensate for insufficient public funding – enjoy adequate facilities and attract the best teachers.

South Africa’s status as one of the wealthiest countries on the continent has not helped its educational performance – the poorest 25 percent of students ranked-th out of 15 sub-Saharan countries in reading performance, and 12th for mathematics, according to the Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality surveys of 2000 and 2007.

“When seen in regional context, South Africa grossly under-performs, given that it has more qualified teachers, lower pupil-to-teacher-ratios and better access to resources,” the report on the study noted.

Nomusa Cembi, spokesperson for the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU), whose nearly 250,000 members make it the country’s largest public sector union, said many teachers had received an inferior education as a result of apartheid’s “Bantu” education system, which was deliberately designed to disadvantage black learners and only ended in’94 when a new democratic government came into power.

There are a host of other problems besetting schools in poor areas. According to Yoliswa Dwane, spokesperson for the education advocacy group, Equal Education, over 2,000 schools had no piped water supply, 3,600 lacked electricity, and over 90 percent were without libraries or a functioning laboratory.

SADTU and other teachers’ unions have opposed national calls for education to become an essential service, which would prevent strike action. In August 2010 a teachers’ strike closed schools across the country for three weeks, contributing to a public perception that SADTU and some of its members did not have learners’ interests at heart.

“The focus needs to be on teachers’ development,” said Cembi. “We’ve had changes in the curriculum since the new [post-apartheid] era, but we find not much focus on training teachers.”

Many teacher training colleges were closed in the late’90s after new legislation required them to merge with existing higher education institutions. Plans to transform the training colleges into university-level institutions have not materialized, leaving thousands of teachers without any specialized training.

In recent years, SADTU has called for the reopening of training colleges because the shortage of teachers has meant that some schools in poor and rural areas have had to hire individuals who do not meet the official requirement of holding a teaching diploma.

According to the report, insufficient teacher knowledge is a problem, with many teachers scoring poorly in basic reading and mathematics tests.

A large number of changes to the national curriculum, beginning with the’97 adoption of Outcomes Based Education, many subsequent adjustments, and the final decision -announced in 2010 – to scrap it, have further stressed an already failing system.

Equal Education’s Dwane said the debate needed to move past “blaming teachers” and towards how to achieve a “serious commitment to a national education programme that would spell out what needs to be done over the next 20-30 years”.

Such a plan would have to include an assessment of existing teacher knowledge, followed by a national teacher training programme, but Dwane stressed the need to consider factors beyond teacher knowledge, including teacher motivation, and a lack of community and parental involvement.

Her view was backed up by the Stellenbosch study, which identified the lack of regular and meaningful student assessments and feedback to parents as another major weakness in the education system.

“For the parents to know how their child is performing, and by proxy to know how the teachers are performing, is very helpful,” said Ronelle Burger, one of the study’s lead researchers. “Very few top-down measures can be as effective as getting the people who are affected to act to correct the problems.”

The researchers found that the job prospects of school leavers were determined not only by the number of years of education attained, but the quality of that education.

“The labour market is at the heart of inequality, and central to labour market inequality is the quality of education,” they concluded. “Policies that address inequality by intervening in the labour market will have limited success as long as the considerable pre-labour market inequalities in the form of differential school quality persist.”

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– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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Mogadishu, Somalia (IRIN) – There are a lot of boots to shine in heavily militarized Mogadishu, and a lot of boys to shine them, despite the risks of bombs, bullets and beatings.

Two decades of civil war in Somalia’s capital have left many civilians, particularly the youth, without employment or viable alternative means of earning a livelihood.

Ahmed Dini, a civil society activist involved in children’s welfare, told IRIN that exact figures were not available but estimated that “roughly between 4,000 and 4,500 children live on the streets of Mogadishu”.

He said the numbers had been increasing in the past few years. “Some have lost their parents and others have been separated from families who fled the violence.”

Halimo Ahmed*, an official of a women’s business association in Mogadishu, told IRIN: “These children live under difficult situations while working in the streets. Sometimes, a child shining the shoes of soldier is caught up in conflict if rivals attack while the task is going on. In such situations, the children are [sometimes] killed accidentally.

“Two children were shot dead three months ago in K4 [a neighbourhood of southern Mogadishu] when the soldiers whose shoes they were shining were attacked by a militia group.”

Fighting between government troops, backed by the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM), and opposition Islamist groups, continues in Mogadishu and other parts of the country and has caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Somalis.

Most of the children work as shoe-shiners in the southern part of Mogadishu, which is controlled by the Transitional Federal Government, or in the northern part controlled by opposition Islamist group, Al-Shabab.

Harassment

Due to daily conflict in the city, Ahmed said, these children are often harassed or denied payment by their customers.

“Sometimes, soldiers promise the children khat [mild stimulant widely chewed in the country] for shining their shoes then they later refuse to hand over the khat; if the children insist on being paid, they could even be shot,” Ahmed said.

Both military and civilian customers sometimes abuse the shoe-shiners.

Osman Ali*, 9, has been shining shoes in Mogadishu for two years. “I was born in the north of Mogadishu and I have been working as a shoe shiner for two years now because my father is taking care of my mother, who is too ill, leaving me as the main provider for my five younger brothers.

“Sometimes TFG soldiers ask us to shine their shoes but when we ask for payment, they threaten us or even beat us.”

Abdi Omar,-, told IRIN: “I remember one Wednesday a few weeks ago when two soldiers came to me and asked me to shine their shoes. When I completed shining their shoes, they complained that I had not done the job properly. They left without paying me. In such cases, I just ask Allah to give them a hard time.”

Displacement

Ali Abdi, 12, who works near Eil-gaab in the south, has not only been displaced several times, but survived a bomb attack.

“Initially, my family lived in Karan district [north]. One day, after I had left for work, war broke out in the area. When I returned home, my family had fled. I resorted to sleeping on the streets for about eight days. I later made my way to Eil-gaab where I met someone I knew. He told me my family had fled to Xamar-weyne [south Mogadishu].

“One of my worst experiences took place here in Eil-gaab. It happened early one morning after I had reported to work. Shooting started and a bomb exploded near my spot. A friend of mine, who was also shining shoes, was hit. He lost his leg and an arm; somehow, I managed to survive without an injury. I did not turn up to work for days after the incident.”

Abdi said he later returned to work because he is the family’s bread winner. “I earn about 40,000 shillings [US$1.50] daily and for this reason, I will not stop working despite the uncertainty involved.”

High hopes

Many of the shoe-shining children expressed their desire for schooling.

“It is circumstances that have forced me to work for my family but if I can get an education I will be happy to go to school because I know that in future, education can help me,” Mustaf Khadar, another shoe-shiner, said.

Several women’s organizations are involved in efforts to support children who have to work to help their families.

“With the support of [international organizations] we have identified about 480 children in Galgadud and Mogadishu,” an official of one, who declined to be named, told IRIN. “Some we feed while others we enrol in vocational training. However, we cannot host them in one place because we are afraid they could be bombed.”

Despite the difficulties of working on Mogadishu’s streets, many shoe-shiners are optimistic that the city will be peaceful some day.

“My mother tells me that fighting will end, but we are waiting to see this happening,” Ismail Abdi said. “We hope that one day, we will go to school and that peace will come to Mogadishu.”

*Not their real names

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– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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Kathmandu, Nepal (AHN) – More than 82,000 former bonded laborers, called Haliya locally, are living in miserable conditions in mid- and far-western Nepal as successive governments have repeatedly failed to end labor exploitation and oppression the workers face, fueling anxieties about their future.

In a landmark decision, the former government led by the Maoist party in September 2008 outlawed the Haliya (slavery) tradition and liberated Haliyas, who are mostly Dalits, one of the lowest social classes in the country. The Maoists also decided to pay back the loans the laborers had borrowed from landlords and moneylenders. Under this century-old system, poor and economically vulnerable families are forced to plow farmlands owned by landlords and the rich until they repay the debt.

“Their (Haliyas) condition is worsening day by day after governments couldn’t rehabilitate them properly. They are yet to be rehabilitated in the society and are forced to live in a pitiable situation with basic human needs even being a far cry,” says Hari Shripali, a Maoist lawmaker who was involved in collecting data on Haliyas and a member of a sub-committee formed to study problems of Haliya under the Women, Children and Social Welfare Committee of the Parliament. Currently, he is visiting to western Nepal to assess the situation of freed Haliyas as he prepares a final report.

“They are facing social blockade and stigma without access to education and health facility and are deprived of income-generating opportunities,” he says, revealing the report in Dhangadi, a western city where a majority of freed Haliyas live.

Freed Haliyas face a tough struggle every day to secure a livelihood in the face of adverse social and economic circumstances. Some still continue to till land for peanuts. “The money that my landlord gives to me for tilling his land does not feed my family throughout the year,” says Gangaram Lohar, a freed Haliya living in the Bajura district. The likes of Lohar are many in the midwestern parts of Nepal. Despite their year-round efforts to feed themselves and their families by either tilling other people’s land or being daily-wagers, former Haliyas today are happy that they are no longer slaves following their emancipation. “Our lives have become easier,” says Lohar.

The government doesn’t have any official data on the exact number of freed Haliyas. However, Dalit organizations and activists do have estimates. Shripali, the legislator, says 20,048 households of freed Haliyas are living in the far-and mid-western regions with a total population over 82,000 in 12 districts. More than 97 percent of them are Dalits, according to Bhakta Bishowkarma, chairman of the Nepal National Dalit Social Welfare Organization, a local NGO fighting for the cause of minority people, including freed Haliyas. Dalit activists say the freed Haliyas have not received anything from the state. “Though they were freed, the government snubbed our call to provide them compensation on the basis of the data provided by us and non-governmental organizations,” says Bishowkarma.

While the government has decided to collect their own data, no report has been made public, even though two years have passed since the government’s decision. “The previous governments failed to come up with any data. Now since a new government is in place we are hopeful to see a report,” says Bishowkarma.

The day the Haliya system was outlawed, Haliyas forwarded an 11-point charter of demands to the government, demanding rights to education, health and employment, income-generation programs, peace and security, land for farming and other livelihood options. They also demanded cash for immediate relief. “But none of these demands were fulfilled,” says lawmaker Shripali.

False Promise

According to Shripali, the former government had formed a seven-member committee to resolve the Haliya issue and he was one of the members. “Besides fulfilling the 11-point demands, we had urged the government to immediately allocate Rs. 100,000 to each freed Haliya as compensation in a rehabilitation package. It is unfortunate that none of these demands have been met as of now,” he says. The former government and freed Haliya had clinched a five-point understanding in September 2008.

Despite the agreement, government officials slightly disagree with the modality prepared for the rehabilitation of freed Haliyas. “It took two years to collect the data and whether or not all of them are genuine is yet to be verified. We have received a data claiming that 20,048 families are genuine Haliyas. First, we will verify the decoded data and categorize them as genuine, highly deprived and less affected. And then we will classify them and provide identity cards,” says Laxman Kumar Hamal, member secretary of the Freed Kamaiya Rehabilitation Execution Committee under the Ministry of Land Reform.

The Nepal government has prepared a law regarding rehabilitation of freed Haliays, which is yet to be introduced in the Parliament. Every year the Land Reform Ministry receives a budget to redress the woes of freed Haliyas but a large chunk of the money returns to the Ministry of Finance at the end of each fiscal year.

Officials claim that due to the tough geographical terrain of western Nepal, unstable political conditions and bureaucratic hurdles, the population of freed Haliyas can’t be ascertained. “We do not have enough land to distribute to them if all the claimants turn out to be genuine Haliyas,” says Hamal.

Nepal has a bad history of dealing with bonded laborers. A similar announcement was made 10 years ago when the government declared some 30,000 Kamaiyas to be free. However, they are yet be properly rehabilitated.

Concerned over the problems faced by freed Haliyas, national and international agencies have warned the government to address the issue. In September, three international organizations—The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal (OHCHR-Nepal), International Labor Organization (ILO) and National Dalit Commission (NDC)—issued a statement urging the government to implement the five-point agreement signed with the Haliya community.

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Educators are asked to churn out more college graduates, but money for effort is lacking.

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Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (AHN) – Manitoba Education Minister Nancy Allan announced Thursday the province will push for a new law that would increase the truancy age to 18. That means young residents would be required to acquire an education or training until they reach 18.

Allan said the change was necessary because of global educational and work benchmarks going higher and that a high school diploma is often not sufficient to acquire a good job or carve a successful career.

Allan said in a statement, “Success in the modern economy will be dependent on students having every opportunity to pursue post-secondary education, training and apprenticeships. Those opportunities are lost when a young person does not have a high-school diploma or equivalent. Raising the compulsory education age to 18 will help ensure kids stay in school and are well prepared for life beyond the classroom.”

The current law in Manitoba requires students to remain in school until they reach 16. While the present truancy age has yielded an improvement in high school graduation rate to 80.9 percent in 2009 from 72.4 percent in 2001, Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger said the planned change should not be seen as dictating to the youth what they should do, but as helping them become successful in life.

Ontario and New Brunswick were the first Canadian provinces to adjust upward their truancy age to 18 in 2006. Alberta will discuss a similar measure this weekend. Nova Scotia is mulling a similar policy.

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Need candidates for office – Can you help? The header on the “urgent call to action” email sent out by the chair of the San Diego County Republican Party delivered its message in unambiguous terms. In case there was any doubt about the theme, the first sentence amplified the point: “I need your help to field candidates for specific office where an incumbent did not file for re-election, and we don’t have enough (in some cases, any) Republicans running.” Coming from the chair of the local Republican Party, this plea for more Republican candidates seemed an appropriate call to action. It did, that is, until one read the offices listed in the email for which Republicans were being sought – among them, school board races. I thought school board races were supposed to be nonpartisan. How naïve of me. I was brought to my senses after reading all of Republican Party Chair Tony Krvaric’s email blast, wherein he implored recipients to recruit Republican candidates for 40 races county-wide – among them 21 school board races, including the north county school districts of Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe, San Dieguito, Cardiff and Carlsbad. The letter was sent Aug. 10, one day before the filing deadline for races where an incumbent chose not to run again. “The opportunity is tremendous; we can pick up seats and win by default if no one else filed,” the letter continued. “We can make sure that the Democrat who filed has a contest and doesn’t win by default, and – with an incumbent not filing – we have a great chance to win seats.” Krvaric’s letter concluded with the following statement: “Thank you for helping us put more Republicans in office throughout San Diego County. As you very well know, these offices are stepping stones to higher office, and I’ll be darned if I will sit idly by and allow Democrats to get on these. As a wise man once told me, ‘Little Democrats become big Democrats.’” When contacted about this email, Krvaric wrote, “We’re here to elect Republicans to ALL offices. There are no nonpartisan offices. All offices are opportunities to put Republican ideas of smaller government, lower taxes and fiscal responsibility into action.” It would be hard to argue with those three particular ideas, not exclusively Republican by the way. It’s the other, more controversial positions endorsed by many ultra-conservatives in the Republican Party that, when applied to school districts and children, are more problematic. School boards are no place for partisan politics. Remember the debacle the past two years over Obama’s innocuous speech to school children at the start of school, asking them to work hard and be good citizens? You would have thought he was asking each child to join the Communist Party, the way conservatives protested. The Republican agenda has at times included such far-right ideology as the promotion of creationism over evolution in biology classes, distortion of historical facts in textbooks, censorship of English literature and library books, prayer and religious activity in school, questionable First Amendment rights positions, anti-gay views and undue interference in health and sex education classes. Obviously, not every Republican on every school board thinks it appropriate to advocate any of these views at their schools. But the point of having nonpartisan elections for school boards is to avoid exposing children to the kinds of coarse political shenanigans we see at the national and state levels. What happened with the Obama speech underscores the risk we run when we allow politics into our classrooms. Krvaric’s description of school board seats as stepping stones to higher office is objectionable. School boards are no place for Republican or Democratic party platforms – and for no agendas other than the daily syllabus. Local Republican endorsements With this in mind, it was disconcerting to discover that two of the five candidates for the Del Mar Union School District’s Board of Education, Steven McDowell and Scott Wooden, include on their Web sites that they are endorsed by the San Diego County Republican Party. The same with John Salazar in the San Dieguito Union High School District election. People registered as Democrats or Republicans are usually endorsed by their respective political party, and that’s one thing. But to announce it and include that endorsement on one’s Web page seems quite another. In Del Mar, neither McDowell nor Wooden seem particularly taken with right-wing ideology, which makes their public proclamations slightly puzzling. An incumbent, McDowell has a track record of not applying political litmus tests to issues, and Wooden’s long list of endorsements by people across the political spectrum offers some assurance that he too, if elected, would not inject party politics into the boardroom. Although recent letters to the editor have been focused on the Del Mar election, it’s San Dieguito that voters should be more concerned about. There, the situation is more worrisome, because Salazar, unlike McDowell and Wooden, wears his Republicanism on his sleeve and lacks both history in office and broad-based endorsements that could serve to reassure voters that he has no political agenda. Six candidates are vying for three seats in the San Dieguito district, and only one incumbent – Barbara Groth – is running for re-election. (As an aside, the district mourns the departure of outstanding board members Linda Friedman and Dee Rich who have chosen not to run again. Both trustees have been instrumental in helping the district achieve its enviable level of innovation and excellence, and their replacements will have large shoes to fill.) A candidates’ forum on Oct. 13 introduced the public to five of the six candidates: Groth, Salazar, Andrew Brown, Sandra Timmons and Amy Herman. Candidate Rick Shea was unable to attend. In answer to a question about the role of partisanship in a school board race, Salazar and Brown both said they were Republicans. Timmons and Herman did not state any party affiliation, while Groth, in an interview later, said she was registered nonpartisan. Brown said the district should focus on what’s in the best interest of the kids. Although Republican, he did not list the Republican Party on the League of Women Voters “Smart Voter” list of key endorsements, an indication that party politics is not relevant to his candidacy. Timmons said the issue was not important “as long as board members can focus on student achievement.” Herman said she did not seek any political endorsement. Groth said it’s important to keep school boards nonpartisan. “Our kids are nonpartisan,” she said. Salazar called it a complicated question. He said he is proud to be a Republican but he “did not solicit the endorsement of the Republican Party,” even though he included this on his Smart Voter list of endorsements. Blood from a turnip Salazar’s pledge on his Smart voter page “to find and eliminate administrative wasteful spending [and] protect taxpayers by ensuring all money spent benefits students and not the bloated bureaucracy” implies mismanagement of the district’s finances. But these charges ring hollow. The top-ranked district has done a remarkable job maintaining high standards with fewer and fewer dollars, thanks in no small measure to direction from current school board members, which includes Groth. Are there problems? Surely. Increased class sizes is an unfortunate consequence of the state’s bleak financial condition. But the district runs a tight ship in tough times, with talented administrators at the top and a solid board behind them. At San Dieguito, it sometimes seems you really can squeeze blood from a turnip. After hearing both Brown and Salazar repeatedly defer to Groth at the forum to address questions they could not answer, it was apparent that even her opponents consider her the go-to person who best understands the district, its priorities and how it functions. And Groth’s track record of years of nonpartisan service on the San Dieguito school board demonstrates her apolitical approach to school governance. Timmons and Herman both come armed with a long list of volunteer activity and years of involvement in the district, especially Timmons who offered sensible, thoughtful comments on a wide range of issues. And they, like Groth, appear to have no interest in promoting personal political agendas. Voters should look for experience in the school district and knowledge of district funding and operations, as well as an open, inquisitive, civil attitude that will contribute meaningfully to the difficult discussions sure to come. San Dieguito needs trustees who can set aside distracting allegiances, clearing the way for sound decisions made purely on the basis of what’s best for students.

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Debt-free u How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching off My Parents By Zac Bissonnette Portfolio Trade, 304 p. $16.00 Let’s see, there was the tech bubble in the mid- to late 1990s that eventually busted a lot of people financially. We’re suffering …

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