Blog

Our management/admin office will be closed over the Christmas holiday from Wednesday 19 December, opening again on 2 January 2019. Only very urgent messages will be dealt with during this time. Please note, however, that individual volunteers and consultants may be taking leave at slightly different times, so if you are working with one of our team members on a particular project or activity, please check their holiday dates with them. We’d like to wish all our supporters and readers a very peaceful Christmas holiday season.

There are lots of reasons why education is not as inclusive or effective as we want and need it to be. One reason why education faces so many challenges in some countries is corruption. Corrupt practices can happen at all levels in the education system, perpetrated by stakeholders from senior policy-makers through to teachers.

A useful overview of corruption in education has been published on the Curbing Corruption website. It looks not only at the nature of corruption but at strategies to address it and the types of reform that are needed.

Our latest blog introduces Ayman Qwaider, EENET’s Arabic Language Community Facilitator. The blog is available in English and Arabic.

We have a section on the website for the Arabic Language Community. With the help of education stakeholders across the Arabic-speaking world, Ayman will be expanding this web resource during 2019. So keep an eye on it, spread the word and contribute if you can.

In October, UKFIET in partnership with Cambridge Education held a one-day conference to bring together expertise and experience on education in emergencies. A detailed set of resources from this event is available online, including: recordings of live-stream plenaries, slides and reports from workshop sessions, interviews and a blog from each of the thematic stream leaders. Various sessions have a focus on access, equality and inclusion.

ILET is a package from Save the Children that helps facilitate community participation in assessments for improving learning environments in humanitarian contexts. It builds on Save the Children’s Quality Learning Framework and empowers communities to improve the quality of the learning environment.

ILET offers a set of easy-to-use data collection tools, real-time analysis, and visualisation via a user-friendly web-based platform, with both mobile and paper data collection features. ILET follows the principle that collecting data and sharing results with the communities in a timely manner enforces transparency, increases accountability and ownership, and stimulates the creation of local solutions. 

Visit Save the Children’s resource centre to access:

• Overview of ILET
• Guidance documents
• Data management tools
• Programme templates.

Malala Fund (2018) “Raise your voice with Malala: A guide to taking action for girls’ education”.

Girls know that education can change the direction their lives take. Around the world girls are challenging people in power and demanding their right to go to school and pursue the careers they want. To support the next generation of activists, Malala Fund has developed a new resource, “Raise your voice with Malala: A guide to taking action for girls’ education”

The guide features real stories about advocacy tactics girls have successfully used to fight for their education. It provides girls aged 13-18 living in marginalised communities with the information and tools they need to speak out, take action and create change.

“Equipping girls with advocacy tools can help them structure their passion into targeted strategies and give them a fighting chance for success in their local campaigns,” said Malala Fund CEO Farah Mohamed. “If Malala’s voice could stand out and affect change, imagine what millions more could do.”

Malala Fund’s Gulmakai Champions in Afghanistan, Brazil, Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Turkey will circulate the guide through national campaign efforts and use the guide with girls in their programmes — training them on how to advocate for girls’ education. Malala Fund hopes to engage 25,000 girl activists with the guide.

“This is an important advocacy toolkit that will help girls know how to use their voice to demand their right to education and to live the life they deserve,” said Gulmakai Champion Habiba Mohammed from Nigeria.

The guide is available in 10 languages (see list below). Visit the Malala Fund website for links. You will be asked to fill in a form with some details about yourself and then you will receive an email with a link to the downloads. Malala Fund may email you with a user survey at a later date.

Resource available in:

• Arabic
• Dari
• English
• French
• Hausa
• Hindi
• Pashto
• Portuguese
• Spanish
• Urdu

Article title: Universal Design for Learning in the Classroom: A Way Forward? by Anupam Ahuja and Richa Shrivastava.

Download in PDF format (2.5mb).

Download in Word format (1.8mb).

This article has recently been uploaded to our document library. It introduces some exciting accessible learning materials from India’s National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT). The materials follow universal design principles and support children with and without disabilities to learn to read – together. The reading materials are multi-sensory, with the idea that every child in class can receive the same book and access the content through reading text, looking at pictures, reading Braille, feeling tactile images and other features that respond to individual learning styles and practical needs.

If you have developed or used similar multi-sensory materials as part of your work to make learning more inclusive and to help diverse learners learn together, we would love to hear your story, so please contact us.