User:Vtaylor/CIS2/Summer 2009/Group 2

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CIS 2 Computers and the Internet in Society SUMMER 2009 Final Projects Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

Section 2.1: Net enrollment ratio in primary education (Jacob Saucedo)

As of 2006, the net enrollment ratio in primary education is 92%. That means that roughly 92% of children in the United States of America are enrolled in primary education.

Some solutions for the 8% of children not enrolled would be to have the local children and a teacher gather whenever possible for that teacher. Somewhat like what's going on in some native American reservations. Another way to help get those children their education would be to home school. There have been many technological updates to the home schooling system to help make it more practical and efficient.

Section 2.2: Proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach last grade of primary (Dang Nguyen)

Definition The proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach grade 5, known as the survival rate to grade 5, is the percentage of a cohort of pupils enrolled in grade 1 of the primary level of education in a given school year who are expected to reach grade 5.

Rationale The indicator measures an education system’s success in retaining students from one grade to the next as well as its internal efficiency. Various factors account for poor performance on this indicator, including low quality of schooling, discouragement over poor performance and the direct and indirect costs of schooling.

Data: Indicator data in Reference

Conclusion: According to the data of pupils starting grade 1 who reach grade 5, the rate of each 4-school-year from 2001/02-2004/05 to 2004/05-2007/08 has been decreased. Other than school supply, the reason that cause decreasing is because the school did not keep the students interested in education. Another reason for that is children now a day playing game too much, and that fact keep children away from interested in school. Therefore, they can fail the class. However, the biggest reason to blame is parents. Our economic is going down, people afraid of losing job, they need to focus on their job, so they didn't take a good care of their children.

What needs to be done: (1) Have a better training system for teachers. (2) Free school buses. (3) Free meals for students. (4) School fees need to lower a little bit for low income family. (5) Always keep an eye on children education status.

Section 2.3: Literacy rate of 15-24 year-olds, women and men (SEANA AZAD)

How is literacy rate measured?

According to Millennium Development Project, literacy rate is measured by who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement on everyday life.

What goals does the Millennium Project hope to achieve?

The millennium project hopes to give children around the world in developing countries, both boys and girls, the opportunity to attend primary school for free in order to help make a better future for themselves.

What is one reason these countries can not just educate more children?

Many countries throughout the world are suffering from the lack of funds to provide children the fundamental education needed to help them read and write. Many of these countries are developing and third world countries. For example, many developing countries and poor countries in Africa do not have the money to build school houses, afford many teachers or have money for school supplies such as books or paper. The lack of these materials makes it extremely hard to educate more and more students in rural areas.

How can the use of computers and the internet help create more opportunities and expand educational opportunities for developing and third world countries?

The use of computers and the internet would greatly help increase the number of students countries would be able to teach. If developing countries were able to raise funds for the use of computers in rural areas, they would be able to teach a greater number of students and be able to teach more subjects better with the use of the internet. The concept of distant learning has been around for many years and is used by many schools around the world, including the united states. The concept of have a teacher teach a student where ever they live is one which can help revolutionize teaching techniques of many subjects and languages for students in poor countries and rural areas. Along with the distant learning, students can also use the computers to watch videos to improve their lives, such as health care, how-to videos and many more.

Has there been any progress in the last few years in helping children read and write?

There has been much progress over the pass few years in helping educate children to read and write. One of the biggest achievements happened in 2000 during the Millennium Summit when many world leaders got together and uniting to achieve a set of goals, with one of them being universal primary education. This was a big step because it shined light on the issue of education in developing countries. Many low income countries have began setting up better systems to make school more affordable for children. For example in 2002, Tanzania eliminated primary school fees, which resulted in an additional enrollment of 1.5 million students. Some countries have set up a system of incentives to get children to enroll. In Bangladesh, a Food for Education program was set up, where families with students enrolled in participating schools were provided with a monthly food transfer. In kenya, a school health program was set up for children enrolled and attending school. This health program helped reduce student absents by one quarter. There have been many other programs set up by governments like these to help children get enrolled and attend school. Programs like these have been a great progress in the past few years.

How are women treated differently in the enrolling of schools in developing countries?

In many countries, women are looked at less important to receive a education then men and are “looked over” when it comes to education. According to the action aid organization, 46% of girls in poor countries have no access to primary education. In the past few years, many countries have been focusing on helping women enroll in primary schools just as much as men.

What is being done? (Kyle Dorris)

Mercy Corps is an organization with 3700 people who work with people to “turn crisis into opportunity”. They use their website to show people what they are doing around the world and who it is helping. They recently posted a Youtube video on their website that showed how they helped a family have enough money for school with just giving them peanut seeds. Every year the family would have to sell all the crops they had just to get by, and would not be able to save the seeds for the following year. Mercy Corps gave the family enough seeds to grow many peanut plants and to still have some left for the next year and through the money they made, they were able to send their children to school so they would have the opportunity to do more than just farm.

UNICEF is another organization that is trying to help with the issue of universal primary education. Their main focus is of course the children. They have launched campaigns such as the back to school campaign to gather school supplies for thousands of children. They too have a very easy to navigate website that anybody can donate through and also see what UNICEF is doing to help today.

For project communication, draft document sharing, revision, final submission preparation and publication, we will be using space in the public WikiEducator wiki.

References

[1] Basic Education and Gender Equality by UNICEF

[2] How to Farmers Can Keep Their Kids in School by MercyCorps

[3] Millennium Development Project

[4] UNFPA education data

[5] Millennium Project Educational Report

[6] Earthtrends

[7] Indicator data