More than 850 million students worldwide not at school because of COVID-19 pandemic: UNESCO

PARIS - More than 850 million young people, or about half the world's student population, are barred from their school and university grounds because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, UNESCO said Wednesday.

Calling it an "unprecedented challenge," UNESCO said schools had been closed in 102 countries, with partial closures in 11 more -- with more closures to come.

"Over 850 million children and youth -- roughly half of the world's student population -- had to stay away from schools and universities," the UN educational organization said in a statement.

"This represents more than a doubling in four days in the number of learners prohibited from going to educational institutions," it added, citing figures from late Tuesday.

"The scale and speed of the school and university closures represents an unprecedented challenge for the education sector," it said.

UNESCO said countries worldwide were rushing to fill the void by offering real-time video classes and other high-tech solutions.

Some countries were offering classes over television or radio.

The organization said it was holding regular virtual meetings with education ministers around the world to find the best solutions and determine priorities.

"The current situation imposes immense challenges for countries to be able to provide uninterrupted learning for all children and youth in an equitable manner," it said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Masked children steal grade book

Police in Serbia have arrested two schoolboys they accuse of having stormed a Belgrade classroom masked and armed with a plastic pistol and making off with their teacher's grade book.

Police said in a statement on Wednesday they had apprehended two unidentified Grade 7 pupils and seized a replica handgun, a knife, a balaclava cap and pair of sunglasses after the incident on Tuesday during school hours in the Belgrade suburb of Kotez.

School crime and violence have soared in Serbia since the war years of the 1990s when societies across old socialist Yugoslavia frayed under the pressure of gangsterism, corruption and nationalism.

Authorities in Serbia have responded by installing video surveillance and deploying constables at some schools.

"It appears that a third boy agreed with two friends that they would grab the grade book because of his poor grades," a police officer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

The pair were charged with violent behavior, jeopardizing public safety and destruction and damage of property, police said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

French preschoolers post messages to Twitter

French preschoolers near Bordeaux are posting daily updates to the micro-blogging website Twitter, despite not yet knowing how to read or write.

Since the start of the school year, the 29 schoolchildren have posted short messages of 140 characters or less about a daily activity to their joint Twitter feed, which has 89 followers, most of them parents.

“We gathered snow to see how it turns into water,” reads one tweet from the five-year-old students of the Albert-Camus kindergarten in Talence, a commune in southwestern France.

Another tweet references the cake they baked — the “galette des rois,” or king’s cake, which is traditionally made around the January Epiphany holiday in France.

The children’s teacher came up with the idea as a way to teach them to recognize the alphabet in different formats — cursive, keyboard, screen — and to learn to move from the oral to written word.

Each day the process is the same: the children propose topics, discuss them under the teacher’s guidance and vote on a winner.

All pupils then try their hand at writing a tweet, before the teacher combines them into a final post that two students type into the computer.

“We love writing on the computer like grown-ups,” said five-year-old Emma.

The teacher said that the goal was not just to teach the children but to educate the parents as well.

Around 80 percent of the parents have agreed to follow the class Twitter account, where at the start of the year only one had subscribed to the service and only a handful had Facebook profiles.

source: interaksyon.com