̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Global challenges

Teachers leading global drive to improve girls’ education became frontline workers during COVID-19 closures

tdk25 — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 10:04:49 +0000

Their experiences are captured in a Government-commissioned report assessing UK-funded programmes for marginalised girls in some of the poorest parts of the world. It shows that when COVID-19 forced schools to close, the roles of educators working for these projects expanded dramatically.

Around 85% of those interviewed by researchers said they had provided some form of physical or mental health assistance on top of their educational duties. Many appear to have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide critical healthcare, safeguarding and pastoral care to girls who were at extreme risk of dropping out of education, amid efforts to keep them learning.

̽��ֱ��independent report for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office assesses the Government-backed ‘Girls’ Education Challenge’ (GEC), which is providing literacy, numeracy and life skills education to a million of the world’s most marginalised girls.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and one of the authors, said: “When schools closed, the GEC projects underwent a transformation, operating not just as educational initiatives, but assuming a humanitarian role. Without this, the pandemic’s impact on girls’ learning might have been even more severe.”

̽��ֱ��research team analysed 10 GEC projects, all of which use networks of teachers, volunteers and ‘para-educators’ (such as mentors) to meet the complex challenge of supporting girls in communities that are under-resourced, remote and often in recent or current war zones.

They focused in particular detail on two projects in Afghanistan, and one each in Ghana and Sierra Leone. Their analysis involved interviews with staff, pupils, government officials and other stakeholders; as well as classroom observations and a wider impact assessment. ̽��ֱ��work was undertaken before the international withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

̽��ֱ��report highlights how the pandemic unleashed new difficulties which further impeded educational opportunities for girls in countries where their enrolment and attainment is already low. Once schools closed, their families often expected them to perform domestic or income-generating labour, or get married, rather than learn. Closures also cut off their access to teachers, who for some were trusted confidantes. This contributed to a surge in health problems, stress and anxiety.

At the same time, national-level remote learning programmes often failed to reach these girls, who often lacked not just computers, televisions and radios, but sometimes a reliable electricity supply. In Ghana, for example, 80% of the pupils interviewed were aware that TV lessons were being broadcast in their country, but only 34% had been able to watch them.

Under these circumstances, the report finds, educators on the GEC projects took on a pivotal ‘bridging’ role – especially female, community-based teachers, who were able to establish vital face-to-face contact with students. For safeguarding reasons, male staff were unable to do the same.

To keep students learning, teachers provided numerous other forms of support. Some helped refer pupils who were struggling to community or social services, while many disseminated COVID-19 safety information and dropped off PPE supplies. ̽��ֱ��report records cases of teachers helping girls who were pregnant, or in one case providing ad hoc support to a pupil with epilepsy.

Project managers also arranged for TVs and decoders to be distributed to households so that students could tune in to lessons, and for teachers to be given mobile phones so that they could stay in touch with students. This proved critically important for pupils who largely struggled with self-directed learning. One Afghan girl, for example, recalled: “ ̽��ֱ��lack of guidance prevented us from studying so we could not read our lessons well. When I called the teacher, our mobile card ran out.”

Project managers organised extra training for staff in areas such as psychological first aid, stress management, wellbeing support, and COVID-19 mitigation. Teachers also received child protection and gender equality training, partly in response to evidence of a rise in gender-related violence.

̽��ֱ��Sierra Leonean project, which gathered specific data on this issue, found that 19% of girls and 20% of female mentors reported increased violence towards women and girls during the pandemic, rising to 38% in one district. In recognition of the extent of gender-based violence, projects put in place several measures to address it and ensure teachers were equipped to do the same. Many teachers interviewed for the report particularly welcome this guidance.

In general, teachers felt that the additional training they have received during the pandemic improved their ability to do their job by attending to the welfare of their students. Little attention appears to have been paid to their own wellbeing, however. “ ̽��ֱ��additional work they were shouldering affected their own mental health, led to work-related burnout, and put extra pressure on their home life,” Rose said. This was especially the case for female teachers.

Among multiple recommendations, the report calls for:

̽��ֱ��recruitment of more community-based, female teachers, who played a critical role in keeping girls’ learning going during closures.
Closer integration between the GEC projects and health, social care, and other services, given teachers’ widened responsibilities.
More provision for two-way contact between teachers and students in future lockdowns, to ensure that pupils receive appropriate guidance and feedback when learning remotely.
More wellbeing support for teachers, as well as their students.

Rose added: “As we start to build back from COVID-19, we need to examine what these additional expectations and pressures mean for teachers and education systems. We should look particularly hard at the implications for burnout, recruitment, retention and training.”

̽��ֱ��full report is available on the Girls’ Education Challenge website.

Interviews with teachers at the forefront of international efforts to improve girls’ education reveal that many have taken on humanitarian roles, as well as working as educators, during the COVID-19 crisis.

As we start to build back from COVID-19, we need to examine what these additional expectations and pressures mean for teachers and education systems

Pauline Rose

Pixabay

Girls in a classroom in Afghanistan

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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World's poorest children missing out on pre-primary education

tdk25 — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 11:07:54 +0000

Spending on pre-primary education accounts for less than 1% of the international community’s aid to education – equivalent to just 34 cents per child, per year – according to analysis by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� academics for Theirworld, the global children’s charity.

Research shows that pre-primary education is crucial to a child's development and that children who miss out fall behind even before they start primary school. Children enrolled in at least one year of pre-primary education are more likely to develop critical skills and are less likely to drop out of school.

Yet spending on pre-primary education remains consistently low, with donors on average committing 37 times more to post-secondary education, the analysis shows.

Of the world’s top 30 donors to education, eight do not spend a single cent on pre-primary education, including the Netherlands, Qatar, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.

̽��ֱ��USA, France, Denmark and Germany are among the 16 countries that commit less than 0.5% of their education aid budget to pre-primary education. ̽��ֱ��UK devotes 1.1%, closely behind Italy (1.8%), Belgium (1.9%), the Czech Republic and South Korea (2.2%).

Of all donor countries, only UNICEF and the Global Partnership for Education, one of the major funds for education in lower-income countries, meet Theirworld’s recommended target of investing at least 10% of education aid budgets in pre-primary education. They are followed by Education Cannot Wait, a dedicated fund for crisis situations (8.6%), and New Zealand (6.7%). ̽��ֱ��World Bank is next, but some way behind (3.8%).

̽��ֱ��report - A Better Start? - A Progress Check on Donor Funding for Pre-primary Education and Early Childhood Development - analyses data submitted by international donors to the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee Creditor Reporting System. ̽��ֱ��most up to date figures are from 2019 so reflect investment before the COVID-19 pandemic.

̽��ֱ��analysis shows that the proportion of aid spent on pre-primary education has been increasing - but from a very low base, increasing between 2015 and 2019 from just 0.8% to 0.9%, the highest level since records began.

̽��ֱ��report concludes that 6.4 million more children a year in low-income countries would benefit from pre-primary education if donors stepped up and met Theirworld’s recommended 10% target.

Investing in pre-primary education pays off. According to one estimate, for every dollar put into early childhood care and education, world leaders can expect a dividend of $17 in return.

Professor Pauline Rose, director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and one of the report’s authors, said international donors need to wake up.

“ ̽��ֱ��first five years of a child’s life are among the most critical for their long-term development and the benefits of investing in pre-primary education are found to be the greatest for the most disadvantaged,” she said.

“It is nothing short of a tragedy that world leaders are failing to prioritise spending in this area. ̽��ֱ��international community must wake up and step up. Without urgent action, the risk is that some of the world’s poorest and most marginalised will continue to fall behind.”

Sarah Brown, Chair of Theirworld, said: “COVID-19 has exacerbated the global education crisis and pushed the world’s poorest children further to the margins. We cannot let this continue.

“Over the next 12 months, world leaders have a series of opportunities at high level meetings, where global stimulus plans will be developed, to show their commitment to the provision of quality pre-primary education.”

Justin van Fleet, President of Theirworld, said: "We know that funding pre-primary education is the most important and impactful thing world leaders can do to give children around the world the best start in life and to put economies back on track following the pandemic.

“Thanks in part to our campaigning, progress has been made - but it’s not enough. It’s time for world leaders to walk the walk and invest 10% of their education aid budgets to the early years. Anything less is a failure for the world's children.”

Eight in 10 of the world’s poorest children – almost 50 million boys and girls – are missing out on vital education in the first few years of their life because of a chronic lack of funding in pre-primary education, according to a new report published today.

It is nothing short of a tragedy that world leaders are failing to prioritise spending in this area

Pauline Rose

Bright Kwabena Kyere

Children in school uniform

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Phone-based HIV support system repurposed for COVID-19 monitoring in Uganda

lw355 — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 07:50:39 +0000

People entering Uganda have been required to quarantine for 14 days as part of the country’s lockdown measures, during which time they are monitored by the Ugandan Ministry of Health for development of COVID-19 symptoms.

Cambridge researcher Dr Rosalind Parkes-Ratanshi and her team have been helping the Ministry monitor and support quarantined individuals using a voice and SMS messaging system, Call for Life Uganda (C4LU). ̽��ֱ��tool was rapidly adapted for COVID-19 by Parkes-Ratanshi, who is based jointly at Cambridge’s Institute of Public Health and leads the Academy for Health Innovation at Infectious Diseases Institute, Makerere ̽��ֱ��, Uganda.

̽��ֱ��C4LU system regularly phones quarantined individuals to request they report any symptoms. ̽��ֱ��automated system then generates symptom reports and anything of potential concern is flagged to healthcare professionals for triaging. This eases the burden on healthcare workers of widespread check-ups in person or by phone.

Parkes-Ratanshi and colleagues at the Infectious Diseases Institute have been using the tool for the past four years to monitor HIV patients, in collaboration with Janssen: Pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson. When the coronavirus pandemic reached Uganda, the team rapidly repurposed the system they had developed, re-scripting for COVID-19 and recording the messages in 11 of the languages spoken in Uganda.

“ ̽��ֱ��total number of COVID-19 cases in Uganda has been low so far, with just over 1,000 cases across the whole country,” says Parkes-Ratanshi, who is currently based in Uganda. “Almost all cases seem to be linked to returning travellers and so the quarantine system and lockdown have been vital to slow the spread of the pandemic.”

Currently, the team are monitoring around 250 people using C4LU, with a total of 599 having participated so far. “Only a very small number of people have then needed to be tested for COVID-19, which shows the benefits of having a tool that can take pressure off the health system by reducing unnecessary visits,” she says.

Although Uganda has been fortunate in not suffering the scale of cases seen in some countries, Parkes-Ratanshi is mindful that there could be a future surge in infection. “We could see a time when regular monitoring on a wider scale would be beneficial. A system like this could reduce the number of individual calls coming in to the Ministry of Health – it could take some of the burden.”

So far, the team has focused on implementation – getting the system up and running, and triaging for possible COVID-19 cases that require confirmatory tests. They are now adding a research component, so that they can learn more about the impact of the technology, with funding from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Global Challenges Research Fund QR.

̽��ֱ��team has been asked by the Ugandan Ministry of Health to add a layer of mental health support to the tool, adds Parkes-Ratanshi. “Once you’ve gone through your symptom reporting, you might then be asked a couple of screening questions about anxiety or mental health issues. Depending on the answer, we could then offer mental health support for those people who may not need active care or active testing, but have got anxiety or mental health issues related to COVID. We think that this will also be exceedingly important to help in a situation where the health care system is very stretched.”

Crucially, the technology is appropriate to the context, says Parkes-Ratanshi: “Around 75% of people have phones in Uganda, so phone-based technology seems to be a very good way of doing this kind of public health monitoring. But it would be no good taking say a smartphone app developed in the UK and thinking it would work for Africa. Even those people who’ve got smartphones may not have access to the internet on the day they need it. So our technology is developed to work on low-cost mobile and analogue phones.”

C4LU itself is based on an open source digital system developed originally for tuberculosis patients by Janssen. “Time and resources are limited in sub-Saharan Africa. We don’t really want to be experimenting with new stuff in a pandemic, which is why we’re glad to apply our experience using this tool for HIV to COVID-19.”

Rosalind Parkes-Ratanshi is supported by several of Cambridge’s interdisciplinary networks and initiatives – Public Health, Cambridge-Africa, Infectious Diseases and Global Challenges.

How you can support Cambridge’s COVID-19 research

A cost-effective phone-based system developed by a Cambridge researcher and her Ugandan colleagues to support HIV patients has been rapidly adapted by the team to help the Ugandan Ministry of Health monitor those in quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic.

We could see a time when regular monitoring on a wider scale would be beneficial. A system like this could reduce the number of individual calls coming in to the Ministry of Health – it could take some of the burden

Rosalind Parkes-Ratanshi

Infectious Diseases Institute

Call For Life

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Children of the city: tackling violence in the 21st century

fpjl2 — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 09:48:29 +0000

READ THE STORY HERE.

Read more about our research on the topic of children in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

Up to one billion children worldwide are estimated to be victims of violence. Now, an intended study of 12,000 children in eight cities worldwide wants to discover what it really means to be a child of the city today – the adversities, the vulnerabilities, the resilience.

@AndyAitchison.uk

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Cambridge celebrates 10 years of ERC funding

ag236 — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 10:00:37 +0000

̽��ֱ��ERC was created in 2007 to support innovative, high-impact research in all areas of knowledge by offering 5-year grants to outstanding scientists and scholars. Since its foundation, it has awarded €12 billion to close to 7,000 grant recipients.

̽��ֱ��United Kingdom has been very successful at attracting ERC funding. It is the largest recipient of ERC awards, with 1,524 projects by academics based at UK institutions supported over the past 10 years.

Researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have won 218 of those grants, in fields ranging from Art History to Zoology. Cambridge is the greatest beneficiary of ERC grants under the current European funding programme, known as Horizon2020.

Prof. Bourguignon’s first port of call in Cambridge was the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, which hosted a conference to celebrate ten years of ERC-funded projects in Anthropology, Archaeology and Classics.

At the Department of Chemistry he met with researchers in the Physical Sciences who have been awarded ERC grants.

Later, at the ̽��ֱ��’s Old Schools, he attended a roundtable with Cambridge ERC-grantees in the Life Sciences and Medicine.

Commenting on his meetings, Prof. Bourguignon remarked: “For the past ten years, the European Research Council has supported high-quality research projects proposed by ambitious scientists. ̽��ֱ��five-year duration of these ERC-supported projects changes the dynamics of the research process, and allows truly ground-breaking results.”

He added: “What has been most interesting about today’s meetings is the diversity of scientific domains represented by Cambridge’s research community.”

In the evening, Prof. Bourguignon was given a tour of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s ERC-funded exhibition, “Madonnas and Miracles: ̽��ֱ��Holy Home in Renaissance Italy”. ̽��ֱ��tour was led by the exhibition’s curators, Dr Vicky Avery, Dr Mary Laven, Dr Abigail Brundin and Prof. Deborah Howard.

Following the visit, he attended a reception at the Museum in honour of the ̽��ֱ��’s ERC grantees.

Speaking at the reception, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, hailed the ERC as “one of the greatest success stories in the funding of innovative scholarship and science.”

̽��ֱ��ERC’s commitment to scientific excellence, he said, has been uncompromising. “ ̽��ֱ��impact of this commitment, over the past ten years, has been transformative.”

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor added: “Consistently, we hear from our academics that an ERC grant allows them the freedom to innovate and take risks with their research. ̽��ֱ��generous time-frame allows them to tackle big questions that they might not be able to under other circumstances.”

ERC grantees, he said, “are free to pursue their ideas wherever they may lead them, and to reformulate the question they ask, regardless of whether those ideas and those questions were part of the original plan.”

Events have been held across Europe all week to mark the ERC’s anniversary.

Bringing the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s celebrations to a close, the Vice-Chancellor said:

“Tonight we thank the ERC for the support it has provided to so many of our extraordinary researchers. And tonight we thank you, our ERC grantees, who through your excellent research have turned into a reality the ERC’s aspiration of making Europe a world-leader in science and scholarship.”

Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, the President of the European Research Council, was in Cambridge on Thursday, 16 March to celebrate the ERC’s 10th anniversary.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Prof Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President of ERC, meets researchers in biological and health sciences

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Without autonomy universities risk losing the public’s trust, says Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

ag236 — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 22:00:01 +0000

“We are given license to operate, and the space to educate and generate knowledge, because we deliver excellence. And the public trust placed in us is directly linked to an understanding that our pursuit of excellence in education, learning and research is for the benefit of society. We gain public trust by reaffirming that society’s goals are also our own.”

He argued that universities –and research intensive universities in particular—are perhaps the only modern institutions with the means and the legitimacy to bridge the gaps between different sectors of society, which gives them a convening power unlike anyone else’s.

“ ̽��ֱ��public trust universities, because we are not subjected to the short-term goals of policymakers… or the even shorter-term goals of industries.”

This public trust, however, can be easily lost. “One of the biggest risks to our legitimacy as honest brokers is the public feeling that universities’ goals and our societies’ goals are no longer shared.”

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor expressed concern about the increasingly negative rhetoric surrounding evidence-based arguments, famously summarised in the phrase “Britain has had enough of experts”.

"If that is really so, then we need to make a better case for our role as institutions that contribute to the public good. If society does not believe that we have its interests at heart, we need to do a better job at engaging with it and communicating the impact of our work.”

Institutional autonomy, he added, is also essential for universities to effectively discharge their duties. “Not only does it help to protect our ability to deliver the excellence we should always aspire to, but it safeguards the most fundamental tenet of higher education: academic freedom of enquiry.”

“As head of a world-leading global university I would be concerned by attempts to direct, or determine by committee, what and how universities should be doing. There is an academic argument for this: We must fiercely defend the right to carve out a space for intellectual enquiry that will not be obviously or immediately impactful –because we know that the benefit to society may come many years down the line.”

But there is another argument, he said: “the public trust that allows us to do what we do is intrinsically linked to public perceptions that we are able to function with autonomy. If our institutional autonomy is eroded, so is public trust in what we do. Society loses trust in institutions that are dictated to.”

Laying down a challenge to the leadership of global universities represented at the Summit, he asked whether universities should be prepared to relinquish some of that autonomy to work with partners, particularly in the developing world.

“If we are not prepared to give up some of that autonomy, do we not risk failing the public good? Yes, autonomy is a prerequisite for excellence, but autonomy does not mean isolation. At a time of ever more complex problems, we can only deliver excellence in partnerships with others –with other universities, with donors, with governments, with industry, with NGOs.”

He cited the Cambridge-Africa Programme and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s recent agreement on crop science with Indian industrial partners as examples of international collaborations that contribute to the public good.

“Far from forcing us to relinquish our autonomy,” ̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor said, “these collaborations help us to underscore it, because they reiterate that our purpose is to contribute to society. Global collaboration is the embodiment of our commitment to the public good.”

Full transcript of the speech.

“There is an unwritten but widely accepted contract between society and higher education institutions,” said the Vice-Chancellor in his keynote address on the opening day of the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, at the ̽��ֱ�� of California, Berkeley.

Far from forcing us to relinquish our autonomy, global collaborations help us to underscore it, because they reiterate that our purpose is to contribute to society.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

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Cambridge in Davos

jfp40 — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 16:09:10 +0000

Professor Lord Martin Rees (Institute of Astronomy), Professor Julian Dowdeswell (Scott Polar Research Institute) and Professor Jon Hutton (UNEP-WCMC and Hughes Hall) will deliver an IdeasLab presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 24 January. Together, they will explore the technological and policy innovations that will help us adapt to a climate-changed world.

IdeasLabs are quick-fire visual presentations followed by workgroup discussion, and have proved a successful format for engaging various communities in academic thinking.

As a collaborator in research at Imperial College London, Professor Barbara Sahakian of the Cambridge Department of Psychiatry will also give a presentation, on cognitive stimulation and the ethical implications of drugs to enhance brain function.

̽��ֱ��World Economic Forum is an independent international organisation engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas; this year’s theme is ̽��ֱ��Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business.

̽��ֱ��Forum will provide an opportunity for the Cambridge researchers to engage with decision-makers in business, NGOs and in public policy, and to highlight new ideas from Cambridge in responding to global challenges. Apart from the Annual Meeting, several Cambridge academics contribute to the World Economic Forum year-round, as members of Global Agenda Councils.

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor said “Cambridge academics are working in partnership with many organisations to help global society address some of the thorniest questions. I look forward to a productive engagement with Annual Meeting participants from every sector.”

/research

A delegation of Cambridge academics, led by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, is attending the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week.

Cambridge academics are working in partnership with many organisations to help global society address some of the thorniest questions.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

World Economic Forum

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