Stephen Twigg, education junior minister told Parliament in November that an estimated 1 percent of pupils — 73,000 — had carried a knife to school for offensive reasons last year. Twice the number carried a knife for self-defence. According to the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), two teachers were shot by children bringing ball-bearing guns into classrooms last year.

The union has campaigned for airport-style security checks in schools. Says Chris Keates, NASUWT general secretary: "Schools remain relatively safe havens, but there is a growing weapon-carrying culture among young people and school security needs to be tightened in response. We are not saying every child should go through security checks before they enter a school but there should be a system of random checks with hand-held metal detectors to act as a deterrent."

Twigg: knife alarm

Unions will also welcome measures to speed up cases involving allegations of abuse against teachers, but the government’s refusal to allow anonymity for the accused is a disappointment. Wrongly accused teachers have faced public abuse, marriage breakdowns and even prison before clearing their name. For instance Marjorie Evans, head of St. Mary’s primary, Gwent, became a cause celebre in 2000 after being accused of assaulting a pupil. She spent 18 months clearing her name and later returned to school.

United States

Religious Right expects political dividend

Schools are at the forefront in the battle over moral values that divides the US in the wake of President Bush’s re-election. The religious Right, whose support was seen as decisive in re-electing Bush — an avowed born-again Christian — hopes to be repaid by changes in policy over public prayer, gay rights, the sanctity of marriage and creationism in schools.

The president is widely tipped to challenge the ban on school-sanctioned prayer, outlawed in 1963 under the constitutional separation of church and state. Reinstating voluntary prayers at sports events and assemblies is a long-standing goal of evangelical Christians, and may be a less thorny issue to tackle than abortion or positive discrimination for minorities in university admissions. Any move would be mounted through the Supreme Court, where the president can nominate sympathetic judges with the support of enhanced Republican majorities in Congress. Comments David Wilkins, professor of law at Harvard University: "To the extent that he’ll use political capital from the election in the courts, the move towards bedrock conservative values will come through issues like school prayer."

Beyond the prayer showdown, local wrangles will reflect the religious Right’s rising clout. In early November, Texas approved health-education textbooks that omit references to contraception — in line with White House "abstinence only" sex education policies. Supporters say that informing students about condoms condones promiscuity and pre-marital sex. Instead, books counsel students to "get plenty of rest" to keep a clear head to avoid temptation. But some experts believe that educating young people about their options is more effective in reducing unwanted pregnancies.

Indeed, this argument is bolstered by the fact that Texas, which has had an abstinence-based sex education policy since President Bush was governor, has the nation’s highest rates of teen pregnancy. References to same-sex relationships were also struck from textbooks in the state, and wording that defined marriage as between men and women replaced what Republicans call "asexual stealth phrases".

During the US election, 11 states voted to ban gay marriage. But legal battles over anti-gay and gay-pride T-shirts worn by students in California and Missouri underline deep divisions. Earlier, a San Diego judge upheld a school’s decision to bar a student from wearing a T-shirt with a slogan that denounced homosexuality, but the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue a Missouri school if it does not reverse its decision to expel a student for wearing a T-shirt carrying the slogan, "I’m gay and I’m proud."

France

Tepid response to English

A proposal to make learning english obligatory in French state schools from age eight, so that students leave school competent in "English for international communication", has raised protest from teachers, unions and defenders of France’s francophone culture. The proposal was put forward last November by an official commission led by Claude Thelot, on the future of education in France and has received backing from the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

The government is due to unveil education reforms and it is expected to include compulsory English classes in new legislation, despite opposition from members of the government’s right-of-centre UMP Party. "This is an error. English may be the most widely spoken language today, but that’s not going to last," UMP MP Jacques Mayard told Le Monde. "Spanish is gaining ground in America, as well as Chinese and Japanese. If we have to make one language compulsory it should be Arabic. In 1914 French officers learned German," he added. "They were right."

Raffarin: compulsory English proponent

Nevertheless a survey by his ministry released in March last year underlined the language lag French pupils have when it comes to English. Their general level of oral and written English and its comprehension, was well below that of their counterparts in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden — and had fallen significantly on a comparative basis since 1996, the study showed.

Currently 97 percent of French students opt to study English to some extent, often as their elective first foreign language, but overall results are "relatively mediocre", according to Le Monde. In many other EU countries, English is a compulsory subject in primary school, but in France only about half of all students choose to take it up at that point, although measures were implemented two years ago to encourage more to do so. Business leaders have voiced support for the proposals. Muriel Penicaud, head of human resources at Dassault, says that the ability to communicate in English is one of the skills businesses needed to innovate.

The proposal has touched a particularly raw nerve among guardians of the national language, who appear to have a powerful ally — the English-speaking president Jacques Chirac. They are quick to point out that during an official visit to Hanoi recently, the president had expressed his concern about the dominance of English.

"Nothing would be worse for humanity than the move towards a situation in which we spoke only one language," he said. A spokesman for the Elysee palace says that further discussions about compulsory English classes are not ruled out.

Australia

Falling enrollments cloud IDP future

The Australian universities’ main foreign student recruitment agency is to close its UK offices amid a slump in overseas applications to study in Australia and a sharp reduction in international student market share. IDP Education Australia is to lay off staff and close six of its bases abroad as a forecasted profit of A$2.5 million (Rs.6.5 crore) turned into a loss of more than A$2 million (Rs.5.2 crore).

Australian universities have enjoyed more than a decade of rapidly increasing enrollment of foreign students. Their fees contribute more than A$ 1.5 billion (Rs.3,900 crore) a year to university budgets. But a 10 percent drop in enrollment growth this year has caused alarm and threatens IDP’s future.

The company employs 800 staff in its 100 offices, including 160 in Australia. This number will be reduced as it tries to rein in expenses. Office closures began last October when IDP shut down its operations in the US and sacked all its staff in Washington.

As increasing numbers of foreign students use the internet or approach universities directly about enrolling, IDP has seen its market share fall steadily. IDP had an 11 percent share of the growing Chinese market last year but it dropped to 9 percent this year. Recruitment from Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong has also suffered.

Senior staff say poor management has resulted in low morale and that ten general managers have resigned in the past 12 months. A meeting of vice-chancellors in Sydney recently discussed what action could be taken. One rejected option was for IDP to become a global recruiter of international students, which would mean attracting students for countries that compete with Australia.

A recent global study by IDP of the comparative costs of higher education among the main English-speaking nations that recruit foreign students found that Australia was second only to Britain in its high cost of living. Therefore Australia will have to work harder to capitalise on the global demand for international education, particularly from Asia, the study warns.

Pakistan

Mukhtar Mai’s spirited response

Mango trees and cotton fields in bloom surround the Punjabi village of Meerwala. Oxen stroll between one-room houses, and children with ruffled hair run barefoot through their doorways. It could be almost anywhere in Pakistan’s agricultural heartland.

Mukhtar Mai: revolutionary educationist

Hours before she was attacked, Mukhtar Mai saw her 12-year-old brother, Shakoor, abducted by three men from the village’s dominant Mastoi family. He was locked in a room for six hours and repeatedly raped. The police refused to help as his captors had lodged a fabricated charge of rape against Shakoor himself. In the evening, the Mastoi demanded that Mai apologise on behalf of her brother before a panchayat. Later, they promised she could take Shakoor home.

A Mastoi jury, including Shakoor’s attackers, decided he should be punished for his alleged crime with a reciprocal attack on the ‘honour’ of his sister. Some 150 people watched her being dragged away by the four men designated to mete out the sentence of gang rape. In much of Pakistan, women who are raped are expected to commit suicide from shame. Few ever call the police. "The first day after the attack, I did want to die," says Mai. "But the next day, between 200 and 250 people came to my home and said they were ready to help me."

The four rapists and two other panchayat judges received death sentences and Shakoor’s three attackers were each sentenced to two years in prison. The verdict prompted such anger among the attackers’ relatives that the Punjab government allocated Mai a 24-hour guard. But within seven months of the attack, she had opened the Mukhtar Mai School for girls and the Farid Gujjar school for boys, named after her father. They are simple concrete buildings with no desks or chairs. Children sit on wheat sacks and proudly show off their books and slates.

These schools have been nothing short of a revolution in Meerwala. Women here were once seen only in their homes or picking cotton. The schools also helped Mai recover. "Because of the girls, the students, there are colours and light in my life," she says proudly.

China

Green light for joint venture varsities

The retreat of the bicycle in China’s major cities has produced a horrendous gridlock to rival anything in the world. But if you are able to look through the tinted glass of your car window, you might find a surprising number of cars are carrying representatives of British universities desperate to seal their latest joint venture in the most exciting market in international higher education.

There is a gold rush in Chinese higher education. "You can knock on 15 doors and get 15 polite refusals in many countries, but in China you knock on 15 doors and get 15 real expressions of interest. People want to do business," says Dominic Houlihan professor of biology at Aberdeen University and vice-principal for research and commercialisation.

Chinese higher education has expanded hugely in recent years. The total enrollment at public colleges and universities almost doubled from 6.43 million in 1998 to 12.14 million in 2001. That year, the Chinese ministry of education abolished rules that stopped candidates who were older than 25 and married from taking the national college entrance examination, opening up opportunities for hundreds of millions of older adults to seek higher or further education that can sometimes double or triple their salaries.

Chinese varsity students: doubled enrollment

A key shift in the Chinese government’s approach came last September, when regulations were unveiled allowing Chinese and foreign universities to establish joint-venture initiatives in the country. Nigel Ralph, director of external relations at Queen Mary, University of London, says this was in part necessitated by the conditions of China’s entry to the World Trade Organi-sation, but it also appears to be seen at high levels in the Chinese regime as a way of quickly building extra capacity. "The obvious conclusion from their point of view is that this is the solution they are going to move to. They can educate more people more cost-effectively if they bring our expertise to China," says Ralph.

British universities have responded to the opportunity in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most aggressive approach has been taken by Nottingham University. It has set up a stand-alone campus at Ningbo, south east of Shanghai, that it hopes will have 4,000 students in five years. Its long-term plan is to double that number. Instead of tying up with an existing Chinese university — the model favoured by most British institutions — Nottingham is following the model developed on its campus in Kuala Lumpur — setting up a new institution.

Other British institutions have stopped slightly short of Nottingham’s ambition. Queen Mary is working with Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications to develop two tightly focused joint honours courses — telecommunications with business management and e-commerce with management and law. The university has also set up a joint research laboratory with the Beijing institution, a move that helps to give it access to a potentially huge research market.

Maozu Lu, director of the Centre for Contemporary China and a senior lecturer in economics at Southampton, is an enthusiast for joint projects in China, but he sounds a cautionary note. "Do you know when the biggest business delegation to China from Britain was? It was about 200 years ago. There was a delegation of 700 people going to try to establish links. There were a lot of China dreams then, too. After that they had the Opium Wars and then look what happened,"says Lu.

OECD

Growing shortage of quality teachers

Half of developed countries are worried about attracting and keeping high-quality graduates in teaching, particularly high achievers, men and maths and science graduates, according to a report for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The findings were presented at an OECD conference ‘Teachers Matter’ held in Amsterdam last November.

Teacher quality has become a new focus of international attention. The OECD’s 2002 Pisa study, which compared literacy and numeracy levels of pupils in more than 40 countries showed that in Germany, Greece, the UK and the Nordic countries two out of three 15-year-olds are in schools where headteachers believe learning is hampered by teacher shortage or inadequacy.

Students of the top 20 percent of teachers have learning gains four times greater than those of the lowest 20 percent, a 10-year study of American 12 to 16-year-olds found. Similarly, "having a succession of effective teachers can substantially narrow the average achievement gap between students from low-income and high-income families", says the soon-to-be published study Teachers matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers.

While students’ ability, attitude and background has the largest impact on performance, teacher quality has emerged as the single most important factor affecting pupil achievement. Quality is defined by more than teacher qualifications, academic ability and experience. Key factors include enthusiasm, creativity, and the ability to convey ideas.

At the same time teachers’ jobs have changed. Society now expects schools to deal with children from diverse backgrounds, to be sensitive to culture and gender, to promote tolerance, to respond well to students who are disadvantaged or have learning or behavioural difficulties, to use new technologies and prepare students for lifelong learning. Teachers also need social and managerial skills. Leadership and organisation is required to build up partnerships between schools and for international co-operation. They must be able to use data and adjust their teaching accordingly. "In the past there was very little exposure to assessment for teachers," says Phillip McKenzie, the report’s co-ordinator.