World Teachers Day

All countries celeberated World Teachers Day on 5 October. This day is dedicated to teachers whose role cannot be replaced in child development.

School holidays

According to a News Report, Tamilnadu Government's Department of School Education has declared 26 September to 4 October as holidays for students. This comes immediately after the 1st term exams. The Department has given clear instruction to all Heads of Schools and Education Officers that no classes should be held during these holidays. 

It is a very welcome move as it will ensure that children enjoy their holidays without being put under pressure to attend 'special classes' and needless events convened by schools to exploit parents and collect fees for such events.

International Literacy Day

All countries celeberated yesterday as International Literacy Day. Let me share an interesting article on the importance basic literary skills here.

In 2000, World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa (from 26 to 28 April 2000) adopted the historic 'Education For All' campaign that was closely associated with Guidelines from UNESCO and several International Organisations. Many countries implemented  the recommendations listed in the Education For All document. 

Many countries including India drafted policies toward 'Child Friendly Schools'. As Technical Advisor in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, I  remember Cambodian Government's initiatives in realising EFA all over the country with special emphasis in remote areas. 

It was a very vibrant period of school education reforms in all UN Member countries. EFA also led to landmark reforms such as Right to Education Act in India. 

However many countries including India didn't achieve EFA Goals. Although these Governments do seem to work toward EFA Goals, they need to strive harder to reach the EFA aims as early as possible such that it benefits the most important stakeholder: Children.

As a K-12 Education Management Professional, I have had memorable experiences of serving in six countries. I have shared my experiences in my book with the hope that it will be of immense use to Secondary School Education Policy Makers and Professionals towards EFA.

My book on Schools and children

I have written a book entiled 'Creative Classrooms and Child Friendly Schools' in Amazon Kindle Publishing. This book will be useful to teachers, teacher trainers and Policy Makers in School Education. If you are interested, you can buy the book. Thanks.

Science is fun

This morning I came across a very interesting letter to the Editor of a very well known Physics Journal. As a former high school physics teacher and teacher trainer,  the letter reflected my own point of view.

During my early years of teaching, I had taught both math and physics. At the primary school level Area and Volume concepts are usually included. At the middle school level, Displacement of liquids, buoyancy and Archimedes Principle are brought in.

In math classrooms math formulas such as length × width = area and length × width × height = volume are taught.

In my math lessons, I used to explain using 3D animations how the above mentioned formulae developed. 

Once the students grasped the concept, I liked them to appreciate it and prove that these are reliable, by enabling students  do a simple activity in which a solid cuboidal object is immeresed in a water kettle full of water. They are asked to collect the water that is overflown in a measuring jar and measure the vollume of water that is overflown.

My students used to be surprised that the calculated and measured volume of water were nearly equal. 

I remember having used a story from Pancha Thanthraa to teach liquid displacement and Archimedes Principle in a remote Junior High School in Bhutan where I worked as a Science teacher from 1978 to 1981.

I have had the pleasure of seeing my students not only appreciate the inter-connection of math and science but also know that they can prove many science concepts by doing simple activities and that learning science concepts is fun. 

There are very effective science teaching resources like this one.

Happy children

Welcome to my blog. I have named the blog as 'School Education Matters' because this blog is about school education and because school education matter enormously in the development of children and communities at large.

Children enjoying their freetime in a school in Bengaluru. I served as Principal of the school and derived joy when seeing children being happy, and caught their display of happiness in my camera.