Blog

Dates: 24-27 October 2024.

Location: Online.

Register to attend.

How can we re-imagine education with the earth?

The education system was built to feed a predatory economy that is now destroying the planet. Who still wants to be part of that? What can we learn from what has not worked? What can we do differently today? How can we compost our failures into fertile soil? What if we bring our territories, lands, trees, flowers, mountains, oceans, rocks, and subterranean knowledge to this conference?

Join this experiment in collective learning, to be in better service of life and care for the Earth.

Read more details and register online.

Date: 29 October 2024.

Time: 13:00-14:00 GMT.

Location: In person at Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, and online.

Speaker: Professor Tassew Woldehanna, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

This seminar will examine how conflict has disrupted education in Ethiopia and the challenges of recovery once the war has ended. This will build on other sessions in our seminar series of this term, which focus on education in crises, covering a broad range of topics.

This event is organised by the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Register online.

Date: 16 October 2024.

Time: 15:00-16:30 UK.

Location: Webinar.

This Amnesty International webinar will highlight the devastation of the education system in Gaza and the human rights impact on teachers at the frontline of this crisis, who have been killed, injured, displaced and affected by the trauma of war. Education remains a fundamental human right during conflict and all parties need to respect international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and protect educational institutions, teachers, and students.

The event will have external and internal panelists who will share the experience of Palestinian teachers and present new research conducted by a team of academics from the University of Cambridge, in partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), on the devastation of education in Gaza.

The event will offer simultaneous interpretation in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish, and is open to Amnesty’s staff, educators, activists, and external audiences.

Register online.

Date: 16 October 2024.

Time: 15:00 (UK).

Location: online.

UN SDG4 has helped to focus international and national attention on improving the quality of education – and on learning. This has led to substantial increases in attention to, and international development assistance towards, the improvement of educational quality worldwide. This has led many policymakers to focus on what is often described as a “learning crisis.” The UN goals are mainly normative – they tend to emphasize averages across nations, with relatively limited attention to variations within countries and to the groups performing at the low end of the distribution. If one focuses on what some call those at the “bottom of the pyramid” – in low-income countries, we find that there is actually a “a crisis within this learning crisis.” For many decades, there has been a nearly unchanging pattern of children and youth at the bottom quintile or two quintiles (depending on the country) where intergenerational change in learning has remained largely static. This is especially the case for marginalized communities that encounter significant disadvantages in learning outcomes and life-long trajectories.

Recently, increasing attention is being paid to the growing gap between the rich and the poor in learning. To help all children learn requires great attention to policies that specifically focus on marginalized populations. The present paper is based on recent research based on my 2018 book “Learning as Development: Rethinking International Education in a Changing World”, a second edition of which is now in production.

Register online.

Date: Monday 18 November 2024.

Time: 10:00-15:30 (UK).

Location: Friend’s Meeting House, Euston Square, London NW1 2BJ; and online.

This event is co-organised by UKFIET; the Centre for International and Comparative Education (CIRE), University of Bristol; the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, University of Cambridge; and the Friends of Birzeit University (FOBZU), an education charity championing the right to education in Palestine.

Aims and objectives

• To hear first-hand from representatives of Palestinian education institutions in Gaza and Palestinian experts in the field about the background, nature and extent of the crisis in Gazan education and their priorities for international assistance.
• To launch a report on the crisis in schooling in Gaza and to hear updates from the Emergency Committee for Universities in Gaza.
• To consider how the UK international education and training community can best respond to the immediate needs of learners and educators in Gaza and how the community can contribute to the longer-term reconstruction of the education system in Gaza in partnership with Palestinian education institutions.

Register online.