The ever changing education system.

Here I am again about two months too late. Once more life seems to get
in the way of any kind of sensible writing (if you can call this
sensible) and quiet.



In approximately 8 weeks our eldest son, Ben, will sit his A levels (or
A2s as they are sometimes referred to here). It is quite mind blowing
that his first, and last, two years in school are nearing an end. How he
has fared I will leave for another post, perhaps I'll ask him to write
one, if I can catch him at home for long enough once he's 'free' again!



Much to my surprise (and to be honest, relief) the A levels are yet
again, being reformed. From September 2015 the A level course will be
linear; assessment only after two years, rather like it was when I did
my A levels all those years ago.  The AS level will be retained but will
be a qualification in itself and so one can no longer go and and
complete a second year and turn it into an A level as Ben has done.



Additionally there is no longer any January exams available. Ben has
decided to re-sit one Unit of his first year and instead of being able
to do this in January just past, he has had to add it to his final exams
which has caused some extra pressure and worry. (More on my part it
must be said but then is it not a Mother's job to worry?)



Are these sensible and beneficial changes? I feel more at ease with two
years for A levels with no break for exams after what is really about 6
months. When Ben went into sixth form to study A levels, he found
himself after five tender months being told to begin preparing and
revising for the summer exams. It is much to take on and most students
(especially having gone from GCSEs which they do in schools and are a
poorer standard than the IGCSEs) have a tremendous shock at the work
load and the standard required of them to pass these exams well.

Here the home educated student is at an advantage- they have already
learnt to work independently and do not need constant guidance in their
research and learning. The depth of learning and requirements is a huge
 difference for A levels- the schooled child suddenly finds they are no
longer spoon fed but feeding themselves.



So reforming the A levels to a two year course seems a good option to
me. It allows the student to master their subject more deeply and become
proficient at answering the exam questions and learning content more
assiduously without the constant reminder of threatening exams after
only a few months.



A levels remain well respected for their rigour and Universities require
them and prefer them to other qualifications. If your student is
seriously considering University, especially a Russell Group one
 http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/, then it might be worth considering the
more traditional A levels rather than the 'soft' options.



It feels like yesterday when Ben made his debut into school for the
first time ever. Now he is nearing the end and will, after a year doing
some voluntary work and seeing the world, enter a new phase of his life;
most probably University and I'm sure there will be a tale to tell
about that too...



May the most Holy Family keep all our dear children ever in their
prayers, and guide and govern them in their studies with discernment and
good judgement.

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Exam contemplations

As I write we are amid the exam season once again. This is the fourth
year we have experienced exams as a home educating family, and I think
with trepidation of the next, ooh ten years or so, we have to go!



Exams; one chance, or perhaps two, if one has two papers, to gain decent
grades and be successful. No matter if the student feels under the
weather, has a serious worry, suffers 'exam freeze'...it is all down to
how they perform in those exams, and woe besides anything or anyone who
distracts them.



Is this fair and just? Probably not. Yet for years this is how the UK
educational system has functioned  and A levels seem to be becoming
harder and more demanding and the IGCSEs the home educated children must
do, in place of the GCSEs, are far more rigorous.



 Marie, my 16yr old daughter - now there's is a story and reminds me
always to be prepared for surprises. All her educational life she has
been astute and clever gaining very high marks in every subject she's
applied herself to. She is our second child and even though I knew how
bright Ben was, Marie always seemed slightly more academic and seemed to
absorb and understand subjects like Latin and Maths with more ease than
Ben. It was only natural, I naively presumed, that she'd breeze through
her IGCSEs. How wrong I was! It isn't that Marie has failed in any way,
yet she has not achieved what she is capable of.



As home educators, we usually have to teach at quite a high level, or at
least guide (in my home!) and I knew from Marie's work she was very
intelligent. She would return from the first two exams reasonably happy
and certainly not flustered only to find a few months later she had not
gained the high grades she had hoped for. On exam number three (Biology
ICGSE) we sat down and discussed it. 'No, no, I absolutely do not
panic!' she exclaimed, yet something was wrong. On asking for her Latin
paper back (she gained a C at 14years old which in retrospect is not
that bad!) her tutor said he would not have recognised that it was her
as it was so far from her usual high standard.

We realised she was experiencing 'exam freeze', where she would just
clam up and think she had forgotten everything through nerves and then
write either muddled answers or even be unable to answer at all.



So, what to do? Over that year, Marie's confidence in her studies
wavered, so much so that at times she would ask me never to put her in
for an exam again. She re-sat a couple of exams and did better, but life
is not for re-sits and it hurt me to see her self esteem diminish
because of the exam world.



We discussed it in length and as Marie is blessed to know what she would
like to do for a career - midwifery -  she went and found the simplest
way she could enter this profession. (Another skill home educated
children seem to acquire- the gift of being independent enough to find
things out for themselves).



She completed three more IGCSEs this year (the minimum I suggested!)-
English Language, English Literature and Art. This will give her (if,
please God, she passes!) six IGCSEs (and  German too), and she has
discovered she can take an Access course to Midwifery which will allow
her to bypass A levels and any further exams until degree level.



The Access course is in place of three A levels and one needs no
qualifications to apply. I had previously thought one had to be over 18
years old to begin yet they are happy to accept Marie at just 17. The
bonus of it as well is it is from home, so she will not be entering a
school as Ben has done, and which she is opposed to.



As for Ben he is nearing the end of his two years in sixth form, in fact
school life is now complete and he just goes in to write his exams.

It has had it's pros and cons and I still believe it was best for Ben,
but entering a secular school as a traditional Catholic previously home
schooled brings it's difficulties and it was only because I had great
faith in his strengths and purity of heart was I less reluctant for him
to go.



That said, he has now seen a little of the world and had a taste for
what will come next. He would return home at night, discuss his day and
the conversations he had been involved in or overheard (if he needed to,
but as a boy, he is never too eager to evaluate things!) and made some
good friends whom accepted and liked him for who he is. It has not been
detrimental to him in any way, and in some areas it has been very
beneficial, especially the rugby and football playing and the two trips
abroad.



Secondary education, but especially post-14 yrs, is a real battle for
Catholic parents and their children, Where to send them, which subjects
to study, which school if any, which course online...it is a continuing
minefield and we can only, as I have tried to do here, help each other
along with our own experiences.



Please keep all children sitting exams and discerning their educational
future in your prayers, and May the most Holy Family protect and guide
them!





(For the Distance Learning courses where the Access course is see
this link- http://www.distancelearningcentre.com/about_DLC.php)

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The amazing truth about PISA scores: USA beats Western Europe, ties with Asia.

What I have learned recently and want to share with you is that once we correct (even crudely) for demography in the 2009 PISA scores, American students outperform Western Europe by significant margins and tie with Asian students. Jump to the graphs if you don't want to read my boring set-up and methodology.

The main theme in my blog is that we shouldn’t confuse policy with culture, and with demographic factors.

For instance, education scholars have known for decades that the home environment of the kids and the education levels of the parents are very important for student outcomes. We also know that immigrant kids have a more difficult time at school, in part because they don’t know the language.

Take me as an example. The school me and my brother attended was in a basement in Tehran, had no modern resources, and largely focused on religious indoctrination. But we had a good home background. Our father attended a college in the west a few years (our mother didn’t, despite stratospheric scores test scores, because at the time you didn’t send a good Kurdish girl to another city to study). So we did well in school. Conversely, the first few years in Sweden I had bad grades, in part because I didn’t master the language.

The point I am trying to make is that the school in Sweden was objectively superior to the school in Iran. But I scored lower in Sweden, because of factors outside the control of the education system. If you want to compare the effect of the school, you have to isolate those external factors and make an apples-to-apples comparison.

However, this is not at all how the media is presenting the recent PISA scores. For example there is a lot of attention of the score of the kids in Shanghai, the according to the NYT is supposed to “stun” us or something.

It's dumb to compare one of the most elite cities in a country with entire nations, and to draw policy-inference from such a comparison. Shanghai has 3 times the average income of China! It is also naive to trust the Chinese government when they tell us the data is representative of the entire nation. Either you compare Shanghai to New York City, or you compare the entire country of China, including the rural part, with other large nations. Most of the news and policy conclusions we read about PISA-scores in the New York Times is thus pure nonsense.

1. Correcting for the demography:

In almost all European countries, immigrants from third world countries score lower than native born kids.

Why? No one know exactly why. Language, culture, home environment, income of parents, the education level of the parents and social problems in the neighborhood and peer groups norms are among likely explanations. But it is generally not true that the schools themselves are worse for immigrants than natives. In welfare states, immigrants often (thought not always) go to the same or similar schools and have as much or likely more resources per student.

So the fact that immigrant students in mixed schools do worse than Swedish kids used to a few decades ago in homogeneous schools does not it out of itself prove that Swedish public schools have become worse.

Of course, the biggest myth that the media reporting of PISA scores propagates is that the American public school system is horrible.

The liberal left in U.S and in Europe loves this myth, because they get to demand more government spending, and at the same time get to gloat about how much smarter Europeans are than Americans. The right also kind of likes the myth, because they get to blame social problems on the government, and scare the public about Chinese competitiveness.

We all know that Asian students beat Americans students, which "proves" that they must have a better education system. This inference is considered common sense among public intellectuals. Well, expect for the fact that Asian kids in the American school system actually score slightly better than Asian kids in North-East-Asia!

So maybe it’s not that there is something magical about Asian schools, and has more to do with the extraordinary focus on education in Asian culture, with their self-discipline and with their favorable home environment.

There are 3 parts to the PISA test, Reading, Math, and Science. I will just make it simple and use the average score of the 3 tests. This is not strictly correct, but in practice it doesn’t influence the results, while making it much easier for the reader. (the reason it doesn't influence the results is that countries that are good at one part tend to be good at other parts of the test.)

The simplest thing to do in order to get an apples-to-apples comparison is to at least correct for demography and cultural background. For instance, Finland scores the best of any European country. However first and second generation immigrant students in Finland do not outperform native Swedish, and score 50 points below native Finns (more on this later).

On PISA, 50 points is a lot. To give you a comparison, 50 points is larger than the difference between Sweden and Turkey. A crude rule of thumb here is that 50 points is 0.5 standard deviations.

The problem is that different countries have different share of immigrants. Sweden in 2009 PISA data had 17%, and Finland 4%. It’s just not fair to the Swedish public school system to demand that they must produce the same outcome, when Sweden has many more disadvantaged students. Similarly schools with African-American students who are plagued by racism, discrimination, crime, broken homes, poverty and other social problems are not necessarily worse just because their students don’t achieve the same results as affluent suburbs of Chicago. In fact, the most reliable data I have seen suggests that American minority schools on average have slightly more money than white schools. It’s just that the social problems they face are too much to overcome for the schools. It is illogical to blame the public school system for things out of its hands.

So let’s start by removing those with foreign background immigrants from the sample when comparing European countries with each other. I define immigrants here as those with a parent born outside the country, so it includes second generation immigrants. This is fairly easy for Europe.

In the case of America, 99% of the population originates from other countries, be they England, Italy, Sweden, India, Africa, Hong-Kong or Mexico. If we want to isolate the effect of the United States public school system, we should compare the immigrant groups with their home country. For those majority of Americans whose ancestors originate from Europe, we obviously want to compare them with Europe. For some groups, such as Indians, this is inappropriate. The reason is that mainly the most gifted Indians get to migrate to America to work or study.

However, as I have argued previously, there is strong reason to believe that this problem of so called biased selection does not apply to historic European migration to the United States at the aggregate level. The people who left Europe were not better educated than those who stayed. Immigrants were perhaps more motivated, but often poorer than average.

So similar to my comparison of GDP levels, let us compare Americans with European ancestry (about 65% of the U.S population, and not some sort of elite) with Europeans in Europe. We remove Asians, Mexicans, African-Americans and other countries that are best compared to their home nations. In Europe, we remove immigrants.

The results are astonishing at least to me. Rather than being at the bottom of the class, United States students are 7th best out of 28, and far better than the average of Western European nations where they largely originate from.



The mean score of Americans with European ancestry is 524, compared to 506 in Europe, when first and second generation immigrants are excluded. So much for the bigoted notions that Americans are dumb and Europeans are smart. This is also opposed to everything I have been taught about the American public school system.

For Asian-American students (remember this includes Vietnam, Thailand and other less developed countries outside Northeast Asia), the mean PISA score is 534, same as 533 for the average of Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. Here we have two biases going in opposite directions: Asians in the U.S are selected. On the other hand we are comparing the richest and best scoring Asian countries with all Americans with origin in South and East Asia.


2. Policy-Implications

Libertarians in the United States have often claimed that the public school system (which has more than 90% of the students) is a disaster. They blame this on government control and on teachers unions. However, it is completely unfair to demand that a public school in southern California where most of the students are recent immigrants from Mexico whose parents have no experience in higher education (only 4% of all Mexican immigrates have a college degree, compared to over 50% of Indian immigrants) should perform as well as a private school in Silicon Valley.

The libertarians have no answer why European and Asian countries that also have public school systems score higher than the United States (unadjusted for demography). Top scoring Finland has strong teacher unions, just as California.

Similarly, the left claims that the American education system is horrible, because Americans don’t invest enough in education. The left has no answer when you point out that the United States spends insanely more than Europe and East Asia on education. According to the OECD, the United States spends about 50% more per pupil than the average for Western Europe, and 40% more than Japan.



Another policy implication is that Europe can learn from American public schools, which appear to be better than most European countries. I can only compare Sweden with the U.S, but I can tell you that from my experience, the American system is superior. I always thought this was just anecdotal evidence, but I am beginning to realize that American schools are indeed better.

For example, we don’t have any real equivalent to Advanced Placements classes. We have cheaper and worse textbooks. The teachers on average have far less education. I could go on.

Nor is it any longer a mystery to me why Americans spend so much more on education and (falsely appear) to get out less in output.

But of course the biggest implication is that most Europeans and all American liberals have lost the bragging right about their side being smarter than Americans.

3. Immigrant PISA scores compared to natives

This is again the mean difference of the 3 parts of PISA.


Australia is the only country with a negative gap, which means Australian immigrants actually score better than natives. Canada is similar. The Australian-Canadian skill based migration system is at work here, generating less inequality (even short term).

The other pattern appears to be that the gap is almost constant in the remaining Western European countries. This may be important to keep in mind, whenever people claim that uniquely Swedish policies are causing poor immigrant educational outcomes.

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Learning the American Language, Stanford style

At Tongji University, one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher education in China, Meng "Melissa" Xu designed a new fluorescent nanoparticle to detect pathological changes in the retina associated with diabetes.

Xu, now a graduate student in materials science and engineering at Stanford, is studying thermodynamics, nanobiotechnology and programming methodology.

Yet one recent afternoon, sitting in the Stanford Bookstore Café, she was puzzling over a decidedly nonscientific concept: "I'm proud to say she's my buttercup."

"What does buttercup mean," she asked Christopher Stroop, a doctoral candidate in history, pointing to the word she had underlined in the lyrics of All Shook Up, a rock 'n' roll song recorded by Elvis Presley in 1957.

Stroop is a tutor in the Language and Orientation Tutoring Program, which pairs graduate students in the humanities with international graduate students who are interested in improving their English language skills and also learning more about academic culture at Stanford and American popular culture.

Stroop, who explained I'm all shook up, My friends say I'm actin' wild as a bug and My insides shake like a leaf on a tree, told Xu that buttercup, a flower, was a term of endearment in the song – and then explained "term of endearment."

"A lot of the expressions in All Shook Up are just playful," he told her. "They're meant to be silly. They're meant to be fun."

"Oh," Xu said, a smile brightening her face. "I thought it was a small cup for holding butter," she said, forming an imaginary cup in the air with her hands.

Since the beginning of winter quarter, Stroop and Xu have been exploring American English through the medium of song. It is a journey that started with protest songs, delved into classic country and continued with the blues and early rock 'n' roll. Recently, the duo began exploring the blues and jazz.

"Using music to learn American culture and history is pretty fun," Xu said.

Stroop said songs help teach American geography, too.

"You can't really talk about blues, jazz and rock without talking about New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago and Harlem," he said. "Nor can you talk about alternative music without talking about Seattle. Songs often make geographical references. We used John Mellencamp's Pink Housestoward the beginning of the quarter, which talks about people taking vacations 'down at the Gulf of Mexico.' We have pulled up maps on Google. There's a lot more packed into music that will help foreigners with both linguistic and cultural orientation than you might think at first blush."

 Pairing up far-flung fields

This quarter, about 100 international graduate students are enrolled in the program, which provides free, one-on-one tutoring in weekly, one-hour sessions.

Stanford also offers group classes for international graduate students under the university'sEnglish for Foreign Students program.

Most of the international graduate students in the Language and Orientation Tutoring program speak Chinese (49 percent) or Korean (45 percent) as their native language. The rest speak Japanese, Portuguese, Thai and Arabic, said Bronwen Tate, a graduate student in comparative literature who has served as a tutor.

L.A. Cicero

Tutor Christopher Stroop has helped Meng Xu explore American English through music ranging from protest songs to early rock 'n' roll to country, blues and jazz.

Tate runs the program with Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature and of German studies. The program was Berman's idea.

Tate said there is a wide range of English-speaking skills among international students in the program, which is sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education.

"Some have just arrived on campus and they're great scientists who read English really well, but are not at ease speaking it," she said.

"Some are in their third or fourth years of a doctoral program and are really pretty comfortable speaking English, but want to work on becoming more idiomatic, or on varying their vocabulary."

Tutors – currently, there are about 20 – receive $20 a session. Most of the tutors are PhD students in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages and the Department of Anthropology.

Tate said 65 percent of the international graduate students in the program are studying engineering. Twenty-five percent are enrolled in the School of Humanities and Sciences. The rest are studying business, education, law and medicine.

"Pairing humanities graduate students with international graduate students, primarily from STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, makes a lot of sense in both directions," said Berman.

"The international students get an opportunity to build their English and to learn about everyday culture, but the humanities graduate students – nearly all native English speakers, and all with excellent English language – benefit, too. They develop their profiles as teachers in this new setting, and they have an opportunity to learn from the STEM students about fields far from their own."

Tate's experiences as a tutor illustrate how far afield those fields could be.

For the past few years, Tate has been the managing editor of Mantis, an annual Stanford journal that publishes the work of talented poets, translators and critics around the world. As a tutor, she has conversed with a graduate student working in the Palanker Lab on an electronic retinal prosthesis; an earthquake expert working in structural engineering and geomechanics; and a PhD candidate studying at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.

Howdy Pardner!

Lisa Barge, a graduate student in German studies, said the students she has tutored fall into two groups. Some want to work on a specific project, such as a slide presentation or journal article. Others want to learn how to talk to native speakers in a casual way. For all, the sessions are safe places to ask cultural questions: Is it OK to ask someone their political party? Why do Californians sunbathe?

Over the past year, Barge helped an international graduate student prepare to give a talk on quantum mechanics to high school students by editing his slides, listening to his presentation and peppering him with questions during a mock Q&A.

"When students prepare for a presentation, it is nearly impossible for them to accurately predict what questions they will be asked during the Q&A, so they cannot plan what to say in advance," Barge said.

"Practicing answering questions with a tutor helps them feel more comfortable speaking freely about their topic, instead of from a script."

She has joined another student to watch the television sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. He hits "pause" when he wants to discuss how a joke worked and why it was funny.

Barge used tongue twisters to help a South Korean graduate student practice the letters "r" and "l." They took turns reciting sentences like "Thirty-three thirsty, thundering thoroughbreds thumped Mr. Thurber on Thursday" and "Luke Luck likes lakes." Barge also recorded the sentences on the student's cell phone so she could listen to them later.

TED Talks – riveting talks by remarkable people – have been popular in the tutoring program. Viewers can toggle subtitles on and off on the videos, and can click on a transcript to find a particular moment in a talk. Once tutor and student have mined a talk for new vocabulary and discussed the speaker's ideas, the video provides a topic of conversation with someone else on campus – in the lab, at CoHo or at the gym.

Also, emails have been the focus of many tutoring sessions. Tutors help international students understand the difference between informal and formal writing styles, so they can learn how to write emails in the appropriate register.

Some emails, though, require a "translation" only a native speaker could give, like the one a Korean graduate student received from a lab partner. It was an invitation to a barbecue written in cowboy slang – buckaroos, rootin' tootin', howdy pardner!

Humor me

Non-fiction books have been a focal point of conversation between Jihee Kim, a PhD candidate inManagement Science and Engineering, and tutor Jeff Knott, a PhD candidate in East Asian Languages and Cultures.

"I wanted to learn about American politics, economics and social issues, and Jeff was the perfect person to talk to about these things," said Kim, who earned a bachelor's degree at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology – the M.I.T of Korea – in 2005 and a master's degree in economics at Stanford in 2011.

One of the books they discussed was Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard.

During a tutoring session, Kim would read a paragraph aloud, and Knott would correct her pronunciation, intonation and flow. Then they'd discuss the ideas in the selection she'd read, with Knott providing cultural and historical context.

Kim said it helps that Knott speaks Korean, which has a different sentence structure – subject-object-verb – than English.

"Jeff knows why I make certain mistakes, because he knows what's going on in my head," Kim said. "There are certain vowels and consonants I try to avoid using, but Jeff encourages me to try them."

During their tutoring sessions, Kim takes notes on vocabulary, idioms and pronunciation.

Among her notes are the following idioms: "slip like sand through your fingers," "sleep like a log," "humor me," "under the weather," "awe-inspiring," "I was writing like crazy" and "It took longer than I thought (it would)."

"We've been doing this together for more than a year," Kim said. "We spend about half the time talking about random things – our lives, politics, the news, the presidential campaign – and rest of the time talking about the book. He's a really good friend now."

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How to Choose Classes

My name is KMHR. I go by Caroline in the States and to
some folks back home too. I’m currently a junior at NYU studying Economics and
Comparative Literature and would like to share some tips on finding classes to
take.

There are many things to consider when taking up new classes for the semester. Here are a few I constantly have to ask myself:

1) What is the class about? Is the subject matter interesting to me/is it intellectually stimulating?

2) Is the professor good at teaching? 

3) How hard is the class? Is the workload heavy? Might this negatively affect my GPA?

4) Will I learn anything practical/technical?

5) Does this fit into my schedule?

Since you get so much freedom to pick and choose your classes AND professors, one needs to be extra careful because a good or bad professor might make a huge difference in your perception of the subject matter. At the same time you might learn a lot from the class but maybe his past students have mentioned that it is a hard class to get an A in. On the
contrary, you might be looking for something to boost your GPA this semester so you might look into something fun and has a relatively lighter workload. Also, some classes like “Intro to Programming” will be more practical to put on your resume than a class like “Renaissance Art” for example. However, you might be very interested in Art History in general, so you may opt to take a class some time down the road if not right now (I did). Lastly, since you are making your
own schedule, YOU need to decide what kind of a schedule fits your lifestyle the best. For example, maybe you are not a morning person and hate 9am classes, so opt for afternoon classes instead then! Or perhaps you want to pursue on-campus jobs/internships while studying, so you want to keep 1 or 2 of your days free for that. 

Making all these decisions can be very time-consuming and frustrating at times, however I personally enjoy doing the research because frankly it's fun to have total control over how you want the next few months of your life to be like!

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Some thoughts from an exam room

So I've been spending time in the wound care clinic and learning about the healing process for bodies and souls...

The majority of the patients who are referred for wound care have diabetes. One common complication of diabetes is neuropathy, which is a nerve disorder that often leads to numbness in hands, arms, feet, and legs. Once a person loses feeling in their hands or feet it is easy for them to injure their bodies without even realizing it. A small blister that might be a painful nuisance for a non-diabetic person can lead to infection and even amputation for a diabetic patient if it is not properly treated. Diabetes is an extremely demanding disease that requires discipline with nutrition, exercise, monitoring of blood sugar, and checking your feet.

I have been amazed and touched by the loving care that the wound care nurse and physician provide for their patients. They patiently listen to the concerns and needs of the patient before they ask them to sit in the exam chair in order to examine their wound. They thoroughly understand the healing process-cutting back calluses and applying ointment and bandages when needed.

Some patients enter the exam room with smiles on their faces, but as one woman stepped through the door her body language and tone of voice seemed to indicate that she was feeling downtrodden. She had been referred to wound care because she had two large blisters on her feet from walking. As she commented about the situation, she said that she was disgusted. I asked her if she was disgusted about the actual blisters on her feet or that she was not able to walk. Tears streamed down her face as she told us, “I’ve been doing everything they have been telling me to do—checking my blood sugar six times a day, walking five days a week to try to lose some weight—but now I can’t even walk because of these blisters. I’m just disgusted because I’m trying so hard but for no use. I’m afraid I am going to start to get depressed over it all.”

I spent some time just listening to her, giving her some space to cry, and responding with some empathy. Then, I shared with her about some of the exercises that I learned about in the Diabetes group meeting that she could do from a chair while her blisters heal. I also got her some information about Diabetes group meetings and a fellowship group that meets once a week to support one another because she felt like talking to some others with similar struggles might help and give her hope. The physician asked me to call around to area pharmacies to try to locate lamb’s wool to prevent further blisters. I was able to find a pharmacy and ask them to hold it at the front for our patient.

This encounter with this disgusted patient has stuck with me. How can we as churches and faith-based community agencies best support and care for patients who are overwhelmed by their diseases? Her situation brings to light the intimate connection between physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Where are calloused places in our lives that need to be cut away in order for us to spiritually heal and provide space for others to heal?

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Education disparity trends in South Asia

An article on education disparity in South Asia described a newly developed Education Parity Index (EPI). This index combines data on primary school attendance, secondary school attendance and the survival rate to the last grade of primary school, disaggregated by gender, area of residence and household wealth. The value of the EPI has a theoretical range of 0 to 1, where 1 indicates absolute parity.

Through a combination of survey data from several years it is possible to analyze trends in disparity as measured by the EPI. For the trend analysis, data from the following South Asian household surveys - mainly Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) - were available.

• Afghanistan: 2003 MICS
• Bangladesh: 1999-2000 DHS, 2004 DHS, 2006 DHS
• India: 1998-99 DHS, 2000 MICS, 2005-06 DHS
• Nepal: 1996 DHS, 2000 MICS, 2001 DHS, 2006 DHS
• Pakistan: 2000-01 survey, 2006-07 DHS

The graph below plots the EPI values calculated from each survey. Due to a lack of data, no trends can be shown for Afghanistan.

Education disparity trends in South Asia, 1996-2007

Data source: Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), 1996-2007.

In Bangladesh, India and Nepal, the EPI has increased from the earliest to the latest year with data, indicating a decrease in disparity over the period of observation. In Bangladesh, the EPI grew from 0.79 in 2000 to 0.84 in 2006. In India, the EPI was at 0.77 in 1999 and 0.82 in 2006. In Nepal, the EPI shows the biggest increase, from 0.67 in 1996 to 0.83 in 2006, interrupted by a decrease from 2000 to 2001. Compared to the other countries, Nepal has thus made the most progress toward parity in the education system.

For Pakistan, the EPI has decreased from 2000 to 2007, indicating an increase in disparity. However, an inspection of the underlying data reveals that the earlier survey did not provide data on household wealth. Disparities related to wealth are usually greater than disparities related to gender or area of residence. If data on wealth had been available, the EPI for 2000 would most likely have been lower. The data from the 2006-07 DHS confirm this assumption. Children from the poorest quintile have much lower attendance and survival rates than children from the richest quintile, and the disparity between these two groups of children is much greater than the disparity between boys and girls and between children from urban and rural households. For example, the primary school net attendance rate (NAR) in Pakistan is 46 percent among children from the poorest household quintile but twice as high, 93 percent, among children from the richest quintile. In comparison, the primary NAR is 76 percent for boys, 67 percent for girls, 82 percent for urban children, and 67 percent for rural children according to the 2006-07 DHS.

The data gaps in the graph bring to attention one limitation of the EPI. The net enrollment rate and other data published annually by UNESCO in the Global Education Digest or the Education For All Global Monitoring Report are not disaggregated beyond gender and can therefore not be used to calculate the EPI. On the other hand, national household survey data, which permit the required level of disaggregation, are not collected every year but only every four or five years, on average.

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School attendance in Brazil

Brazil is the largest and most populous country in South America. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) estimates that the population of Brazil grew to 190 million in 2008. The World Bank ranks Brazil as the world's tenth largest economy with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $1.3 trillion in 2007.

Brazil has achieved high levels of school attendance and literacy. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) estimates that 94 percent of all children of primary school age were enrolled in primary school in 2005, the latest year with data. The youth literacy rate, for persons aged 15 to 24 years, was 99 percent in 2007 according to the UIS. Among the adult population aged 15 years and older, 91 percent were literate in 2007. In contrast, in 1980 only 75 percent of the adult population of Brazil could read and write.

The patterns of school attendance in Brazil can be studied in greater detail with data from the 2006 National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios, PNAD). The survey collected data on current and past school attendance for all household members, regardless of age. For the analysis that follows, the levels of education in the PNAD data were recoded to match the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) of 1997. Five levels of education are identified:

• Pre-primary education
• Primary education
• Secondary education
• Tertiary education
• Adult literacy programs

Adult literacy programs are not part of the ISCED classification but they play an important role in Brazil and are therefore included as a separate group. The graph below illustrates current school attendance by age and level of education for the population aged 0 to 30 years. The number at the top of each bar is the percent of persons of a particular age that are currently in school. For example, 97 percent of all 7-year-olds were in school at the time of the survey; the majority attended primary school but more than 10 percent of all 7-year-olds were still in preschool.

The official school ages in Brazil are indicated along the horizontal axis. The official entrance age for pre-primary education is 4 years, primary education begins at 7 years, and secondary education at 11 years. Education is compulsory for all children aged 7 to 14 years.

Brazil: Current school attendance by age and level of education, 2006

Data source: Brazil National Household Sample Survey (PNAD), 2006.

The PNAD data show that many young children in Brazil attend pre-primary education. Two thirds of all children between 4 and 6 years are in preschool or day care. The laws on compulsory education have the desired effect and almost all children between 7 and 14 years are in fact in school. The attendance rates in this age group range from 94 percent among 14-year-olds to 99 percent among 8- to 11-year-olds. Among children of secondary school age, the attendance rate drops steadily from 99 percent at age 11 to 74 percent at age 17. About 8 percent of 18-year-olds are in tertiary education. University attendance rates reach a peak of 15 percent among 20- to 22-year-olds.

Overage school attendance is relatively common in Brazil and many children older than 10 years are still in primary school. Persons up to and beyond age 30 attend secondary education. These high levels of primary and secondary school attendance among the older population are partly a result of a system of education that offers persons who dropped out of school an opportunity to continue their education later in life. Adult literacy programs reach a relatively small part of the population but they contribute to the high level of literacy in Brazil. About 0.5 to 1 percent of the population between 30 and 75 years participate in programs that teach reading and writing.

Data sources

• Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios, PNAD), 2006
• Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), population clock, November 2008
• World Bank, quick reference tables, GDP 2007, September 2008
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Data Centre, November 2008

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Teacher and Student ratio in secondary school

The pupil/teacher ratio is an indicator of education quality. In crowded classrooms with a high number of pupils per teacher the quality of education suffers. For pupils it is difficult to follow the course and teachers can dedicate less time to the needs of each individual student. Data from UNESCO on the pupil/teacher ratio in primary school show that crowded classrooms are more common in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia than in other parts of the world. 22 of the 27 countries with 40 or more pupils per primary school teacher are located in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In secondary school, pupil/teacher ratios are lower than in primary school. The Data Centre of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics provides the pupil/teacher ratio in secondary school for 189 countries and territories. For 100 countries, the pupil/teacher ratios are from 2006, 9 countries have data from 2007, 51 countries have data from 2004 or 2005, and the remaining 29 countries have data from 1999 to 2003. For the map below, all countries with data were divided into five groups:

• Fewer than 10 pupils per teacher: 24 countries
• 10 to 19 pupils per teacher: 107 countries
• 20 to 29 pupils per teacher: 41 countries
• 30 to 39 pupils per teacher: 13 countries
• 40 or more pupils per teacher: 4 countries

Pupil/teacher ratio in secondary school, circa 2006

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, May 2008.

The lowest pupil/teacher ratios in secondary school were reported for Bermuda (6.0), Tokelau (7.0), Portugal (7.1), and Andorra (7.8). 20 additional countries have pupil/teacher ratios above 8 and below 10: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, Niue, Norway, Qatar, Russia, Sweden, and Turks and Caicos Islands.

More than half of all countries - including most countries in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia - have pupil/teacher ratios between 10 and 19. The group also includes some countries in other regions. Although pupil/teacher ratios in Sub-Saharan Africa are generally higher than in other parts of the world, the following countries from the region have only 10 to 19 pupils per secondary school teacher: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Swaziland. 22 of the 41 countries with pupil/teacher ratios between 20 and 29 are also located in Sub-Saharan Africa.

17 countries have 30 or more pupils per teacher in secondary school and 10 of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa. The countries with 30 to 39 pupils per teacher are Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Honduras, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Philippines, South Africa, and Zambia. Classes at the secondary level of education are most crowded in Nigeria (pupil/teacher ratio 40.2), Pakistan (41.9), Malawi (45.6), and Eritrea (54.4).

The following table lists the average pupil/teacher ratio in secondary school by Millennium Development Goal region. The Commonwealth of Independent States (10.9), the developed countries (11.4), Oceania (14.8), Western Asia (15.3), Latin America and the Caribbean (16.6), Eastern Asia (19.0), and Northern Africa (19.0) have average pupil/teacher ratios below 20. Pupil/teacher ratios are highest in South-Eastern Asia (22.8), Sub-Saharan Africa (25.8), and Southern Asia (26.4). The global average is 18.0 pupils per teacher in secondary school. These average values are unweighted, which means that each country is given the same weight within its region, regardless of the size of its population.

Average pupil/teacher ratio in secondary school by MDG region, circa 2006

MDG region	Pupil/teacher ratio
Developed countries	11.4
Commonwealth of Independent States	10.9
Eastern Asia	19.0
South-Eastern Asia	22.8
Oceania	14.8
Southern Asia	26.4
Western Asia	15.3
Northern Africa	19.0
Sub-Saharan Africa	25.8
Latin America and the Caribbean	16.6
World	18.0

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, May 2008. Regional and global averages are unweighted.

The data analyzed in this article can be downloaded from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics Data Centre, under Predefined Tables - Education - Table 11: Indicators on teaching staff at ISCED levels 0 to 3.

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Global Education Digest 2008

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) has announced the publication of the Global Education Digest 2008: Comparing Education Statistics Across the World. This annual publication contains detailed statistical tables with the latest UIS data on pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary education, education finance and literacy.

The introductory chapters in the this year's edition of the Digest discuss the data collection process at UIS, the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) and differences between national and international education data, the use of historical time series to track educational trends, and programs of cooperation between UIS and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat).

The Global Education Digest 2008 contains several tables that were not available in the 2007 edition. New tables with time series data provide statistics for more than 200 countries and territories from 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2005 for the following indicators: primary and secondary school age; population of secondary school age (the population of primary school age is available at the UIS Data Centre, see below); enrollment in primary, secondary and post-secondary education; total enrollment from primary to tertiary education; primary and secondary school gross enrollment ratio (GER); primary school gross intake ratio; gross intake ratio to the last grade of primary school (a proxy indicator for the primary completion rate); repetition rate in primary and secondary school; school life expectancy (primary to secondary and primary to tertiary); pupil/teacher ratio in primary and secondary school; and public expenditure on education.

A further addition in the new publication is a set of tables with data for 62 UOE and WEI countries. UOE refers to a joint data collection program by UIS, OECD and Eurostat in high- and middle-income countries. WEI stands for World Education Indicators, a UIS program for middle-income countries. The participating countries are listed on pages 30 and 31 of the Global Education Digest 2008.

The data from the tables in the Global Education Digest can be downloaded from the UIS Data Centre (click on "Predefined Tables" and then "Education"). The time series data for the years 1970 to 2005 are available in Excel format in Tables 21 to 23. The population of primary school age between 1970 and 2005 is not shown in the printed report but included in Table 21. In addition, the Data Centre offers annual data for the years 1999 to 2008, while the Digest only shows data for one or two years, depending on the indicator.

References

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2008. Global education digest 2008: Comparing education statistics across the world. Montreal: UIS. (Download PDF, 7.3 MB)
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). 2007. Global education digest 2007: Comparing education statistics across the world. Montreal: UIS. (Download PDF, 3.7 MB)

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