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Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh (AHN) – Bangladesh authorities have imposed a ban on use of mobile phones by school teachers in class rooms.

In a 2010 study, the disadvantaged children’s organization Child Parliament found that 75 percent of school teachers speak on the phone during class, interrupting lessons of their students.

Nurul Islam Nahid, the country’s education minister, announced the ban on Sunday at the 8th Child Parliament session held in the capital Dhaka.

Child Parliament organized by Save the Children Australia, the Manusher Jonno Foundation and Plan International, is a platform where disadvantaged children discuss their rights and advocacy with policy makers and voice their agenda.

Nahid lamented that his earlier warning was ignored, but said he would issue an official guideline. He believed that the new rule would act as a deterrent for the disobedient teachers.

He warned that the teachers would be punished for negligence of duties to impart lessons in schools.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – According to a statement by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Cathie Black, the publishing executive who became New York City schools chancellor, is resigning from the position after three months in office.

Once referred to as the “First Lady of American Magazines,” Black was appointed the city’s first female schools chancellor, but was met with criticism from opponents who were skeptical that her business savvy would translate into effective public leadership.

During her short time in the position, she oversaw the country’s largest school system, including 1,600 schools, more than 1 million students and 136,000 employees.

Black’s appointment by Bloomberg in November was controversial.

She left her position amidst a string of recent resignations by high-level city officials. Black replaced Joel Klein, who had been chancellor since 2002. She will be replaced by Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott.

Klein was New York City’s longest-serving chancellor.

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Cranston, RI, United States (AHN) – The American Civil Liberties Union is suing a Rhode Island high school over a prayer banner the group says violates the Constitution and excludes students who do not share the same beliefs.

The lawsuit against the school district in the state’s largest city concerns a banner at Cranston West High School that became the center of controversy last summer despite having been posted since 1963.

The ACLU received a complaint from a parent and told Superintendent Peter Nero in July that the banner violates the First Amendment. The group cited U.S. Supreme Court decisions on unconstitutional school-sponsored prayers and the posting of Ten Commandments in public classrooms.

Last month, however, the school committee voted 4-3 to keep the prayer posted in the campus auditorium.

Public hearings were held before the vote, after which there were concerns about the safety of a sophomore student, Jessica Ahlquist, who spoke against the banner.

“The public hearings that I have attended have added to that feeling– that my views and beliefs don’t count, or have less value than those of the Christian majority,” Ahlquist said on Monday. I don’t feel that I or anyone else should have to feel that way at school. The prayer does not belong in a public school.”

The ACLU filed the suit on behalf of Ahlquist, who is an atheist, with the endorsement of the Rev. Donald Anderson of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, which consists of Protestant and Orthodox denominations, and Rabbi Peter Stein of a Jewish congregation in Cranston.

In a statement on Monday, the civil rights group chastised school officials for “ignoring warnings about the cost of litigation and despite the school district’s ongoing and severe budgetary problems, which have led to layoffs and program cuts.”

The school committee has retained the pro bono services of Joseph Cavanagh, a partner for Providence-based Blish & Cavanagh who graduated from Cranston High School East.

Cavanagh will serve as local counsel and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty will serve as outside counsel in the lawsuit, also on a pro bono basis.

Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence has made clear his support to keep the banner, which begins with, “Our Heavenly Father,” and ends with, “Amen.”

“The ACLU should avoid these silly little squabbles and move on to other more important issues where civil liberties are really threatened,” Tobin wrote last month in an op-ed.

“Those who are fighting to have the prayer remain in the school – students, parents and others – I presume that they take some personal time throughout the day to pray,” the bishop added. “No one’s preventing that free exercise of religion. If they’re fighting over the banner and not really practicing faith on other occasions, their passion for the banner is suspect.”

The 8-foot-high, 3-foot-wide banner was written by a member of the school’s first graduating class when students were asked to choose a school creed, school colors and a school mascot. It was recited by students for some time.

In its letter to the school about the banner, the ACLU said, “Even if there have been few, if any, formal complaints in the past from parents or students about this display… there are people, like our complainant, who have been offended by or concerned about it but who were fearful of coming forward.”

The group cited the Cranston school district policy, which says, “The proper setting for religious observance is the home and the place of worship.”

Tobin, however, said in his op-ed, “Why would that inspiration offend anyone? Because it begins with a rather generic reference to ‘our heavenly Father’ and ends with ‘Amen’? The use of our national currency that carries a far more religious sentiment – ‘In God We Trust.’ And I suppose that they hold their ears during the singing of “God Bless America.’ “

The ACLU had dismissed such arguments in its letter, saying it is akin to efforts by Pawtucket city officials years ago to justify sponsoring a nativity scene by comparing Christmas to Thanksgiving.

“Justify[ing] prayers like this one as being merely ‘ceremonial’ or ‘non-sectarian’ … only serves to trivialize what is, at its core, a deeply religious message,” the group said.

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Mogadishu, Somalia (AHN) – Al Shabaab militants, the al Qaeda proxy in Somalia, have ordered Somali teachers and their school children to pay a monthly contribution to help finance the group’s combat operations against the United Nations-backed government and African Union peacekeepers in the capital.

During a meeting with school principals in the Elasha Biyaha neighborhood outside the capital on Friday, militants declared Somali students must pay one dollar and as well as every teacher must pay 10% of their salary at the end of every month.

“The holy war in Somalia will continue and every Somali must take part in the war that means if you cannot come to the battle zone you have to contribute money to the holly war,” senior al Shabaab leader Sheik Fu’ad Mohamed Qalaf told school principals.

A Somali school teacher who demanded anonymity because of security reasons told All Headlines News that the latest order from al Shabaab cannot be met because of the amount of money they are demanding.

“We live in a very poor situation because the monthly salary we take doesn’t even cover the whole needs of our families and most of the students we have don’t pay school fees because they include orphans and some from poorer families so how they can be able to pay one dollar per month,” the anonymous teacher told AHN on Saturday.

For the past several months al Shabaab have been suffering from economical problems and that is because most of the big companies whom they used to take money by force moved from the militant hotbed Bakaara market to the government controlled- side of the capital.

Last month, al Shabaab ordered business owners in the Elasha Biyaha neighborhood to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash as contribution to their ongoing conflict against the central government. Elasha Biyaha is home to more than 1.5 million people who fled from their homes in the capital Mogadishu.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands (AHN) – A 12-year-old Dutch girl on a school trip who complained of stomach pains turned out to be going into labor. A teacher suspicious of the pains called paramedics who delivered the baby.

Dutch authorities have now launched an investigation into the pregnancy of the child, from Groningen in the north of the Netherlands.

Kirsten Smit, a spokeswoman for the country’s prosecutor’s office, said the 12-year-old girl became pregnant at the age of 11. She was also reportedly unaware that she was pregnant. Both mother and child are reported to be in good condition.

It’s unknown who the father of the baby is, however police have begun an investigation and have interviewed the girl. “It is in any case a criminal offense,” Smit said. The age of consent in the Netherlands is 16.

The girl has been taken from her family home and will be placed with a foster family when she is released from hospital. State welfare agencies are now caring for the girl and her baby. Counseling is also being offered to the girl’s classmates, whose parents were notified by letter of the incident.

According to De Telegraaf newspaper, the 52-year-old father of the girl was previously convicted of sexually abusing a child in a previous marriage and served two years for the abuse.

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Saint Albans, WV, United States (AHN) – A 74-year-old grandmother punched a man who had exposed himself near a school.

Joan William son was picking up her granddaughter Lexi, from George C. Weimer elementary school when she was startled by the man’s actions.

“He was right in front of my car, and masturbating,” she said. “I mean, exposed, and drinking out of a peroxide bottle.”

Williamson said she’d noticed him before acting suspicious and hanging around the school for several weeks.

However this time she hit him and he ran.

Police said the man is Jett Wilcher, 34, and they were able to catch him with Williamson’s help. She took off in her car and followed Wilcher as he tried to get away.

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Antananarivo, Madagascar (IRIN) – The burden of paying for education in Madagascar has shifted to the poor after donor funding was frozen in the wake of a coup on 17 March 2009.

About 70 percent of the education sector had been funded by donor countries, but since Andry Rajoelina seized power from former President Marc Ravalomanana with the backing of the military, state financial support to the education sector has become erratic.

“The question is what we have lost… over these years; how much damage has been done by vulnerable families having to pick up the bill for their children’s education,” said Margarita Focas Licht, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) head of education in Madagascar.

She said the government had not allocated any funds to the education sector in the 2009/10 academic year, which begins in October, but had begun transfers for 2010/11. However, it had not been established how much the state was paying per learner. In the past, the annual subsidy had been US$1.50 each for of the about 4.3 million primary school pupils.

According to 2008 estimates by the Ministry of Education, the average Malagasy has less than five years’ education and only 60 percent of learners completed primary school, which is considered low by regional standards.

The government’s failure to fund the education sector in the 2009/10 school year has led to the effective demise of free primary school education, with public schools demanding registration fees to compensate for the loss of income.

There is no uniformity in the registration fees. Some schools in the capital, Antananarivo, have been asking as much as $13 in a country where about three-quarters of the 20 million population live below the poverty line. An average class has about 50 learners, but some classes have as many as 100 learners.

Marie-Angele Ramanandraitsiory, principal of the Manakambahiny public primary school in Antananarivo, told IRIN the $4 registration fee her school charged was the cheapest of the city’s 92 public primary schools.

The money is being used to help pay the salaries of “community teachers”, who have no formal training but account for about two-thirds of the country’s roughly 70,000 primary school teachers. The government usually paid them, but not in the previous school year. The salaries of formally trained teachers had not been affected.

“We ask for things everywhere. We know that we don’t have enough money, but we work with the available means as we have to try and get all the kids to study, with or without funding,” Ramanandraitsiory said. But the money does not stretch to repairing roof leaks in some classrooms, which have become unusable because of knee-deep water.

School food

“There are many children who can’t come to school if there is no subsidized food. If they eat, and if parents receive help and starter packs for their children, they will come. If not, the children will be kept at home, or sent out to the streets to beg or work,” she said.

Starter packs include stationery items like pens, notebooks and rulers, but the supply of these has also become inconsistent.

A $730 grant from the education ministry fed the school’s 580 learners beyond the prescribed 60 days and reduced absenteeism, Ramanandraitsiory said. Four of the 12 educators at Manakambahiny primary are community teachers

In 2008 there was a proposal to provide training to all community teachers, but this has yet to materialize. Focas Licht said the ministry of education used to have the capacity to train about 2,800 teachers annually, but the teacher training system was “dysfunctional at the moment”.

“The local coping mechanism is to hire community teachers locally and pay them,” Focas Licht said, and this was why public schools had instituted registration fees, effectively ending free primary school education. “There would be a serious risk of sector collapse if two-thirds of the primary school teachers were no longer paid,” she said.

After donors froze funding in the wake of the 17 March 2009 coup, UNICEF assumed management of the $64 million Education For All – Fast Track Initiative, previously the domain of government under supervision of the World Bank, which still maintains its supervisory role.

In the 2009/10 school year 15$ million was used, in the 2010/11 academic year $22 million will be spent and $26 million remains for the 2011/12 school year, but beyond that no funding has been allocated.

Focas Licht said the money was being used to pay community teachers, maintain school feeding schemes with the assistance of the World Food Program (WFP) in the food insecure south of the island, fund school construction projects in partnership with the International Labour Organization, and reduce disparities in schools.

Last year the only money that 10,000 schools in 10 regions of Madagascar received was sourced from the Education For All Initiative.

The WFP supports 1,200 school canteens in the southern rural areas of Madagascar, feeding 215,000 beneficiaries in the drought-affected regions of Anosy, Androy and Atsimo Andrefana. UNICEF has a separate $13 million budget for supporting schools in seven other regions.

Fewer enrollments

Although there is no formal data available, Focas Licht said spot checks by UNICEF at schools in October 2010 indicated that enrollments were experiencing a downward trend.

“What we are noticing… on weekly visits to the poorest neighborhoods, is that the number of families that are no longer in a position to pay enrollment costs for their children in public primary schools is increasing,” Céline Guillaud, coordinator of Graines de Bitume (Pavement Seeds), an NGO in Antananarivo supporting poor and homeless children, told IRIN.

The NGO provides day care centers, assists in enrollment of primary school children and helps with school equipment, meals and medical expenses.

Although the NGO usually focused on families living on the streets, she said “non-single parented families, living in proper houses, where both parents work but can’t meet the expenses linked to schooling for their children,” were now seeking their help.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Harvard University remains the nation’s leading medical school but was overtaken by Stanford as the number one business school in the 2012 rankings of the U.S. News & World Report. Among law schools, a new school has moved up into the top 14 for the first time.

Yale maintained its ranking as the best law school for the 20th consecutive year. Harvard Law School kept second place for another year, as did all the others in the top 5, Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chicago Law School.

A new school entered the top 14, which has featured an elite group of the same schools in different orders since the rankings began nearly three decades ago. The University of Texas-Austin School of Law broke into the T14, as it is known in the legal community, tying with the Georgetown Law Center in 14th place.

Among medical schools, Harvard is still in first place, followed by the University of Pennsylvania, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine.

Duke University shares fifth place with three other schools: Stanford, the University of California in San Francisco, and Yale. The University of Washington and Columbia University round out the top 10 medical schools.

Harvard slipped one notch to second place in U.S. News’ list of best graduate business schools, making way for Stanford to occupy first place. The two schools tied last year for the top spot.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School both came in third, followed by Northwestern University (Kellogg), which also tied with the University of Chicago (Booth) for fifth place.

Dartmouth and the University of California Berkeley (Haas) share seventh place, followed by Columbia and New York University (Stern).

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Two Echo projects and the music and English departments at Echo School recently received funding from the Umatilla County Cultural Coalition.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan recommended Wednesday an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind law because of shortcomings. According to Duncan, more than 80,000 of 100,000 public schools in the U.S. could be classified as failing, based on the law.

Duncan gave the estimate based on analysis of testing trends and the impact of the law’s pass-fail school rating system. Duncan told Congress that some of the country’s best-run schools would likely fail the No Child Left Behind fast-rising standardized testing targets.

While some experts challenged Duncan’s projection, educators said the secretary’s statement confirms their conclusion that the average American public school will never reach the standards in the law, introduced by President George W. Bush and passed in 2002, that aimed math and reading proficiency for all students by 2014.

The law requires all public schools to hold yearly testing of reading and math skills from third to eighth grades and once in high school. Average results for all students and results by ethnic groups and other criteria must be published. States were mandated to outline their statistical paths for the next 12 years.

Duncan stressed the law is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed this year, otherwise he forecast 82 percent of the schools could miss testing targets. That would be up from 37 percent in 2010.

Many educators have complained that they are unfairly penalized even if only few of their students perform poorly. The law placed a school on probation if students from any ethnic groups miss the targets. Schools that miss targets for two straight years are classified as “needing improvement” and face sanctions such as staff changes or shutdowns.

President Barack Obama favored loosening accountability rules for most schools, but tightening regulations for the lowest performers. Although Obama made public his recommendation in 2010, Congress has not acted on the president’s proposal although a substantial number of key Republic and Democratic legislators agree the law is due for amendment.

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