16% increase expected in enrollees to alternative learning system in 2010

MANILA (PNA)—The number of enrollees in the Department of Education’s Alternative Learning System (ALS) is expected to increase to more than 390,000 this year as the department continues to intensify its drive to bring education to learners outside the formal system.

ALS is a non-traditional learning delivery to out-of-school children, youth and adults who may either be indigenous people, rebel-returnees, those living in highly inaccessible areas, persons with disability, jobless adults, senior citizen, drop-outs and others not served by formal education.

“This is a more relaxed learning system where lessons are taught outside classroom and learning sites can be a barangay hall, a church courtyard, a cockpit, under the shade of tree or any other areas where learning can take place,” said Education Secretary Mona Valisno.

She added that learning delivery can be through face-to-face interaction, radio-based and computer-based instruction and independent learning facilitated by DepEd’s mobile teachers, District ALS coordinators (DALSCs), facilitators and instructional managers.

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425 Mindanao public high schools to receive computers from Japan, DTI

MANILA (PNA)—The Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) Personal Computers for Public Schools (PCPS) Project has gained renewed support from the government of Japan with a total of P170-million fund that will provide 11 desktop computers and computer peripherals to each of the 425 public high school beneficiaries in Mindanao, Trade Secretary Jesli A. Lapus said.

With funding support from the government of Japan, the DTI has been spearheading the implementation of PCPS since June 2001.

DTI’s PCPS 4 project Mindanao component is designed to give attention to the needs of Muslim basic education by providing computers to public high schools catering to Muslim students, former Department of Education (DepEd) now DTI Secretary Lapus said.

“The project is in line with the Department of Education’s move to close the gap between the traditional madrasah (Muslim community school) curriculum and the DepEd basic education,” he said.

”PCPS 4 Mindanao Component will start deployment soon to provide students in Mindanao countryside the opportunity to have badly needed Information Technology (IT) education,” he added.

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40 masteral grants opened for public school teachers

MANILA (PNA)—Education Secretary Mona Valisno on Tuesday announced that forty masteral scholarship grants were made available by the University of Asia and Pacific (UA&P) to public school teachers who wish to prepare for leadership positions in school or specialize in early childhood education.

Valisno said the two-year masteral program which offers a 48 percent subsidy on tuition and school fees is for teachers who will major in Educational Leadership or Child Development and Education. The grant offers 20 slots for each field of study.

The Educational Leadership program is meant primarily for teachers who are being prepared for leadership and key academic and administrative positions in their schools, especially those in basic education.

“We welcome this opportunity being opened to our teachers which could boost their personal and professional advancement,” Valisno said.

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Cebu student journalists and faculty attend online campus journalism seminar

CEBU CITY—An advanced seminar on online campus journalism was conducted by Smart Communications Inc. (Smart) here recently for invited student journalists and faculty advisers from six colleges and universities in the city.

The participants in the two-day seminar were students and faculty from Benedicto College, the University of the Philippines, the University of San Carlos, the University of San Jose-Recoletos, the University of the Visayas, and St. Theresa’s College.

The seminar is part of Smart’s journ.ph program, an initiative to promote online campus journalism through partnerships and trainings using the journ.ph online platform.

The seminar resource persons were lawyer Rose Versoza, who discussed journalism ethics; Ritchie Quijano, Cebu situationer; Nini Cabaero, online journalism; Michelle So, community journalism; and Alex Badayos, photojournalism. Blogger and journalist Max Limpag acted as moderator and critic for the participant’s outputs.

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Shanghai trying to untangle the mangled English of Chinglish
By Jackson Lowen, The New York Times

SHANGHAI—For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for “cash withdrawing” and “cash recycling.” The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as “fried enema,” “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as “The Jew’s Ear Juice.”

Those who have had a bit too much monolithic tree mushroom stem squid could find themselves requiring roomier attire: extra-large sizes sometimes come in “fatso” or “lard bucket” categories. These and other fashions can be had at the clothing chain known as Scat.

Go ahead and snicker, although by last Saturday’s opening of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, drawing more than 70 million visitors over its six-month run, these and other uniquely Chinese maladaptations of the English language were supposed to have been largely excised.

Well, that at least is what the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use has been trying to accomplish during the past two years.

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Growth in Indian IT sector boosts English-language school enrolment
By Pallavi Singh, LiveMint.com

NEW DELHI—The value of a college degree dawned on Tabassum Naaz’s family only when the 22-year-old village woman landed a job at Aegis business process outsourcing in Gurgaon, a hub of information technology-enabled services (ITeS) on the outskirts of New Delhi.

“When I was preparing to come to Delhi for a job, everyone in the village laughed and asked how was it possible that my village education would find me a job in a big city,” recalls Naaz, who studied at the little-known Sant Sri BM College at Jagdishpur in Bihar.

A little over a year into her job, which pays Rs5,200 a month, Naaz does not have to answer any more questions about the value of education. Her success, she says, is also inspiring others at her village to take up studies.

Far from being a one-off case, Naaz exemplifies a trend—the extraordinary growth of the ITeS sector in India over the past two decades has had a significant impact on education, particularly English education.

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School principals say pursuit of rankings harms curriculum

More than two-thirds of secondary schools in Australia have spent more time on practice literacy and numeracy tests since the results were published on the controversial My School website, a survey shows.

Principals are making extensive changes to improve their students’ performance in the test, raising fears the curriculum will be narrowed.

The survey of principals at almost half of Australia’s secondary schools comes as the teachers union vows to boycott the tests next month because of the “misleading way data is being presented on the My School website.”

The Age this year revealed teachers were told by the Victorian Education Department to “explicitly teach for NAPLAN.”

A memo, sent to principals in the Loddon-Mallee region two days before the January launch of the My School website, also told teachers to focus on literacy and numeracy and give students a “daily NAPLAN item.”

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Census reveals foreign-language households on the rise in United States

The number of U.S. households in which languages other than English are spoken is growing rapidly.

A new study published by the Census Bureau finds that the number of Americans age 5 and older who regularly speak non-English languages at home grew by 140 percent from 1980 to 2007. During that same period, the country’s population grew by just 34 percent.

The languages with the biggest percentage gains were Vietnamese, which rose by 511 percent over the 27-year period, and Spanish, which rose by 211 percent.

According to the Census Bureau’s figures, approximately 280 million Americans age 5 and older speak only English in their homes, while a little more than 55 million Americans speak a language other than English.

By far, Spanish was the most common language other than English to be used in the American household, with more than 34 million people in 2007, up from 11 million in 1980.

“When it comes to those families who are speaking Spanish in the home, half were native born, and half were recent immigrants,” Hyon B. Shin, a statistician at the Census Bureau and one of the authors of the report, told AOL News. “Past research shows that by the third generation, immigrant families almost exclusively speak English.”

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And the same census reveals that US women are better educated than men

WASHINGTON DC (AFP)—More US women than men are obtaining advanced degrees, making women poised to predominate in the highly skilled medical, legal, and academic professions, data released Tuesday show.

Nine percent of young adult American women held either a master’s, doctoral or professional degree, such as in medicine or law, compared with six percent of men, and women make up nearly six in 10 holders of advanced degrees, data compiled by the Census Bureau show.

Women also outpaced men in terms of bachelor’s degrees, with 35 percent of women aged 25-29 and 27 percent of men obtaining the four-year university degree.

The percentage of US men with bachelor’s degrees has held steady since 1999, while the rate for women has grown from 30 percent that year.

The findings held true for white, black, and Hispanic women, with only Asian women and men showing no statistical difference in educational attainment.

Asian-Americans also outpaced the other three groups in terms of percentages who hold bachelor’s degrees or higher.

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In UK schools, students are increasingly taking neuro-enhancing drugs

Students are increasingly taking neuro-enhancing drugs to fight fatigue and help them concentrate. But how safe are they – and is it cheating?

It is an all too common story: a diligent student works hard and finally achieves a coveted place at Cambridge University. Once there, the pressure becomes too great and they turn to drugs. These days, however, the old narrative has changed. Instead of the spliffs that apparently so delighted generations of our politicians, the latest fad is for educational, not recreational, drugs.

“It was the summer term of my second year,” explains Raj Perera, in his final year of a natural sciences degree at Cambridge University. “I’m an international student, which means my parents are paying £20,000 for every year I am here. That sort of money puts a huge pressure on you. But last summer, I had two weeks to go before my exams, and I had done pretty much no revision. It was a make-or-break moment. So I bought modafinil.”

Modafinil is one of the new neuroenhancing "smart drugs" now being taken by growing numbers of students. It was originally developed for the treatment of narcolepsy, but is now used by students to combat fatigue.

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Translations of Emirati books bring English language to life
By Anna Seaman, TheNational.ae

ABU DHABI—Omar al Zaabi’s eyes light up as he talks about the short story he read for a recent class—One Day a Week by the Emirati author Mohammed al Murr.

“It is about a man living and working in Abu Dhabi who only sees his wife on Fridays when he drives to Dubai,” said Mr. al Zaabi, 24, from Sharjah, waving a copy in the air. “It was my favourite story because life for all men in Abu Dhabi is like this.” But Mr. al Zaabi is no regular student.

He is a federal police officer based at Al Baniyas Police Station – and just one of some 650 working Emiratis and mature students taking part in a pilot project at Abu Dhabi Men’s College that aims to help nationals master English and teach them more about their history and culture.

What is unique about the project is that it is using Emirati literature and books that have been translated into English.

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More hours in English to bring positive results

The Malaysian Education Ministry is of the view that the extended time for the teaching of English will benefit pupils as its objectives are to strengthen and enhance pupils’ learning experience in the subject.

The move to increase the number of hours for the teaching of English in national and vernacular schools by 2011 is a strategy to encourage the mastery of the English language through the transformation of the curriculum.

The new curriculum that begins with Year One, is a modular structure and focuses on the learner acquiring basic literacy and communicative skills.

With curriculum structure, schools will be notified of the adjustments to be made within the existing timetable.

The ministry is also aware of the need to bring the standard of teaching English to be on par with Bahasa Malaysia. Therefore, the increase in the number of hours for the subject will allow pupils to use language in a meaningful manner.

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Madonna lays first brick for her Malawi school

CHINKHOTA (AFP)—US pop star Madonna Tuesday laid the first brick at the 15 million dollar (11 million euro) girls’ academy that she is building in Malawi, promising to bring quality education to young girls.

The singer and actress laid a stone with an inscription “Raising Malawi Academy for Girls” and the motto, Dare to Dream.

“It has always been my dream to train women leaders who can help develop the country,” Madonna said during the event. “I grew up as a poor girl with my mother, I had no chance for good education. It is my aim to see Malawian girls get the right education.”

The colorful ceremony at the site of the school in Chinkhota village, some 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the capital Lilongwe, was attended by education officials and curious villagers.

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US diplomat advises Angola to invest in the English language

CABINDA—The US ambassador to Angola, Dan Mozena, on Tuesday suggested that the Angolan government should invest in the diffusion of the English language, which can help the country to play its legitimate role as leader of central and southern Africa, as well as in the international arena.

Mozena said so at a ceremony that served to symbolically hand over a donation of English books to the Education Sciences Higher Institute (ISCED), linked to the public 11 de Novembro University (UON), an incentive for the creation of an English Language Department in this institution.

The North American diplomat said that Angola is an emerging power in Africa, a fact that has been recognised by the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, when she visited this country.

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