Education BLog

With the annual Teacher's Day falling on Thursday and students in big cities visiting their teachers to express their thanks, those who worked on their special posts should be remembered as well.

ONE MAN'S PERSISTENCE

In the Yingxin Village of Changfeng County in the agricultural Anhui Province, a school has survived for 13 years, with the number of its students changing from 12 to 60. The headmaster, teacher and staff were just one single person -- the 56-year-old Tang Quanyou.

"Since I took this job, I must do it well," said the man with a smile, wrinkles showing on his sun-tanned face.

Tang became a teacher in 1975 after graduation from a local middle school. At that time, he was assigned to the Shangdu Primary School, which has two thatched cottages and three teachers.

The other two teachers left after two years, while Tang taught all the subjects alone.

In 1979, the school was merged into the Bazhang Primary School, when Tang finally ended his solo stint.

However, this change meant that many children had to make a round trip of 10 kilometers on a rugged path.

In 1998, at the suggestion of villagers, another teaching site for students in low grades was set up, and Tang became the headmaster.

He teaches all the subjects in the school--Chinese, mathematics, geography, art and physical education.

To teach his students the broadcast gymnastics which nearly all schools had to do, Tang went to the schools in the county seat several times.

Now every morning, villagers can see an interesting scene: a gray-haired man jumping in front of a group of kids to the sound of music.

"Students in the low grades were like a piece of white paper; you can write anything on it," he said, noting that it was why he considered the job important.

"For those kids, he even slept in the school and our land became run-down," said Tang's wife Gao Guozhen. But in 2006, Tang managed to drag her into the school as well. Since then, Gao became the chef, cooking for the kids.

Tang's efforts paid off. His fellow villagers frequently dropped in, giving him some vegetable or eggs. Nobody burned wasted crop straws near the schools, for fear of affecting Tang's classes.

Sixteen kids entered the school this Sept. 1, five of whom were just five years old.

"They are too young," Tang smiled, adding that he even had to feed them with water and take them to toilet during classes.

The teacher didn't know that his students prepared a special gift for him for the Teacher's Day.

Outside the school, wild flowers were blooming. "We will give our teacher a most beautiful bouquet," a boy whispered to a Xinhua reporter.

The first scholarships under the China-Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Scholarship Scheme have been awarded to nine students from four Pacific island countries, the Suva-based PIF Secretariat said on Thursday.

The scholarship scheme between the China and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat is in addition to any bilateral scholarships between China and individual countries in the region. It is open to all Pacific Islands Forum members excluding Australia and New Zealand.

Of the first nine scholarships awarded under the Scheme, five are from Samoa, two from Fiji, one from Solomon Islands and one from Papua New Guinea. The scholarships cover fees and a living allowance as well as expenses for travel to China and within China.

The students will be studying a range of subjects in various universities and institutes in different parts of China, including international politics, urban planning, law, computer science and technology, international economics and trade, tourism management, information management, information system, accounting and bioengineering

They will be studying the Chinese language for the first year before they study in their specific areas of interest.

"These scholarships provide an excellent opportunity for young people from our region to gain first class qualifications in a range of disciplines as well as learning the language and culture of China, which will stand them in good stead on their return, said Tuiloma Neroni Slade, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.

The Forum Secretariat will be accepting applications early 2010 for the next lot of scholarships.

The National Stadium, or the Bird's Nest, will open to teachers free of charge on Teacher's Day which falls on Sept. 10.

All teachers will be taken on a free tour of the stadium upon providing ID certification at the gate, said an officer with the stadium's ticket office Wednesday.

The move aims to pay tribute to the teachers and provide a practical example of the traditional Chinese virtue of respect for teachers and education.

Located in the southern section of the Olympic Green in Beijing, the Bird's Nest was the main stadium for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Occupying 21 hectares, it has a floor space of 258,000 square meters and seating for 91,000 spectators.

It has grown into an iconic building and one of China's major tourist attractions since the Games.

China's demand for teachers in its nine-year compulsory education is expected to drop by 1 million or 12 percent from the figure in 2008, according to a report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Tuesday.

The report listed a sharp drop in the number of students receiving compulsory education in primary and junior high schools at that time as a major reason for the prediction.

By 2020, the number of students receiving compulsory education in primary and junior high schools could decrease by more than 18 million, or about 11 percent from the figure in 2008, the report said.

Junior high students is expected to number 41.57 million in 2020, a 15 percent drop from 2008, while primary students could number 93.5 million.

China's nine-year compulsory education covers primary and junior high school, according to the Law on Compulsory Education.

China's family planning policy, which was formulated in the early 1970s, encourages late marriages and late childbearing, and limits most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children.

In the first half of the 21st century, China will witness a peak in its total population, working-age population, and elderly population, according to the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

One third of China's total population, about 437 million people, will be citizens over 60 years old in 2050, while its population of 16 to 60-year-olds will hit the peak of 990 million in 2016, government figures showed.

China's demand for teachers in its nine-year compulsory education is expected to drop by 1 million or 12 percent from the figure in 2008, according to a report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Tuesday.

The report listed a sharp drop in the number of students receiving compulsory education in primary and junior high schools at that time as a major reason for the prediction.

By 2020, the number of students receiving compulsory education in primary and junior high schools could decrease by more than 18 million, or about 11 percent from the figure in 2008, the report said.

Junior high students is expected to number 41.57 million in 2020, a 15 percent drop from 2008, while primary students could number 93.5 million.

China's nine-year compulsory education covers primary and junior high school, according to the Law on Compulsory Education.

China's family planning policy, which was formulated in the early 1970s, encourages late marriages and late childbearing, and limits most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two children.

In the first half of the 21st century, China will witness a peak in its total population, working-age population, and elderly population, according to the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

One third of China's total population, about 437 million people, will be citizens over 60 years old in 2050, while its population of 16 to 60-year-olds will hit the peak of 990 million in 2016, government figures showed.

The results of an international English test released Tuesday revealed that more than 80 percent of the city's graduating college students have effective command of the language.

The University Grants Committee of Hong Kong (UGC) Tuesday announced the results of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) taken by final year students of UGC-funded undergraduate degree programs under the 2008/09 Common English Proficiency Assessment Scheme (CEPAS).

Almost 11,800 final year students, or about 71 percent of all full-time and part-time undergraduate final year students, participated in CEPAS in 2008/09.

The average overall score was 6.69 on a nine-point scale. About87 percent of the students obtained a score in the 6.0 to 7.5 range, which means they are "competent" or "good" users.

Among the four modules of the system, students, on average, did better in "reading" and "listening", scoring overall 7.34 and 7.15respectively. The average scores in "speaking" and "writing" were 6.04 and 5.97 respectively.

The CEPAS results provide useful reference for the eight UGC- funded institutions in formulating their English language enhancement strategies and programs. It also provides a common framework for assessing and documenting graduating students' English proficiency.

IELTS has been adopted by UGC as the Common English Proficiency Assessment since 2002/03.

China's top juice maker, Beijing Huiyuan Beverage & Food Group Co. Ltd., has signed a strategic agreement with the One Foundation, a charity project operating under the Red Cross Society of China, for a long-term philanthropic partnership, China Daily reported Monday.

According to the agreement, Huiyuan donated 1 million yuan (142,857 U.S. dollars) in one lump sum to the One Foundation.

Since the agreement became effective this month, Huiyuan also will donate 1 yuan to the charity fund for every bottle of its C-She-V-He juice purchased by consumers. All donations will be earmarked for children's and educational programs carried out by the non-government organization.

After acquiring a small cannery in 1992, Huiyuan Group has grown into the largest fruit juice producer in China.

The beverage and food giant has since donated 300 million yuan in cash and in-kind services to charitable causes. It has supported poverty relief, education and youth development efforts, as well as sports and cultural causes.

In addition, the Hong Kong-listed company has been keeping its commitment to "bringing nutrition to consumers while benefiting rural areas and farmers", according to the newspaper.

The One Foundation has established cooperation with a group of enterprises. In addition to Huiyuan, partners include China Merchants Bank, Alibaba, Hengan, Microsoft, Versace, Tetra Pak, San Migual Corp. and Tomson Group.

Shigeru Aoyagi, the Country Director of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Monday urged all stakeholders in Afghanistan to take serious action toward improving access to quality, relevant literacy programming in the country.

UNESCO, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Human Settlements Program (UN Habitat) once again urged all relevant stakeholders to take serious action toward improving access to literacy programming in the country, especially for those areas most underserved, most vulnerable to exclusion and with high numbers of persons living in extreme poverty, Aoyagi told a joint news briefing with the representative of UNICEF and UN Habitat here.

"UNICEF provides support to the ministry of education to implement women's literacy course which benefit to average of 80,000 women each year. And 386,000 women have been benefited from this assistance since 2006," said Catherine Mbengue, the representative of UNICEF.

Mbengue also said that their organization has faced many challenges. The main challenge is that many people in Afghanistan believe that education of girls are not so important.

Afghanistan remains one of the least literacy countries in the world, where only 34 percent of the population can read and write,the majority of whom live in urban areas.

Michael Slingsby, representative of UN Habitat, noted that the rural areas are more alarming, 74 percent of Afghans (90 percent of women and 63 percent of men) lack of literacy skills.

The Chinese Language and Culture Education Foundation of China (CLCEF) received Monday a 20 million yuan (2.9 million U.S. dollars) donation to encourage overseas Chinese youths to study the country's language and culture.

The donation was made by Agile Property, a real estate company from Hong Kong. In January 2008, the foundation received its largest yet donation of 30 million yuan from the same company.

A spokesman with the foundation said the overall 50 million yuan would be used to train Chinese language teachers and support overseas Chinese youths to study Chinese.

According to the foundation, most overseas Chinese have the tradition to study and inherit Chinese culture. However, limited by local sources, overseas Chinese schools have encountered various problems, including shortage of money and teachers and outdated teaching materials.

Li Haifeng, director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, said, "Chinese culture is the bridge linking overseas Chinese friends with their native country, and it's of great importance to carry out Chinese culture education as a key part of our overseas Chinese affairs."

The non-profit foundation was established in September 2004 under the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, aiming to support the overseas education of Chinese language and culture.

Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has said that at least 50 million Pakistanis out of around160 millions total population cannot read or write, according to local media reports on Monday.

"This state of affairs demands a review of our development priorities and re-examination of our strategies," the president said in his message on the International Literacy Day to be observed on Sept. 8.

"Pakistan is lagging behind the most of the countries of the region in the areas of literacy and primary education," Zardari said.

According to the Human Development Index (HDI), Pakistan is ranked 136 out of 179 countries of the world.

"We have, so far, been able to make little progress in changingthe situation," the president admitted.

He strongly recommended legislation by the Parliament to recognize and declare "free primary education" a fundamental human right in the Constitution of Pakistan.

Zardari proposed the formation of a high level National Literacy Council to ensure that a well coordinated and effective literacy drive is launched throughout the country.

Zardari urged the educational planners to adopt a multi-pronged strategy for eradication of illiteracy and provision of basic education to all: children, youth and adults.

Meanwhile, MirHazar Khan Bijarani, Pakistan's Federal Minister for Education, has renewed commitment of the government to achieve literacy rate of 86 percent by 2015, the official news agency APP reported.

The National Library of China is bracing for a series of activities to celebrate its 100th anniversary which falls on Wednesday, the library said on its website Sunday.

The library started an exhibition of its special and rare collections on Tuesday. The exhibits include nine treasure pieces of oracle bone inscriptions valuable for research on the later Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC).

Another exhibition featuring the library's history over the last 100 years will go on display on the coming Tuesday. The two events will last till Oct. 7.

Starting Monday, the library will host a four-day symposium on the collection development and service on Chinese studies.

On the following day, a conference on the international progress of libraries will be held there. The event, which will last till Sept. 12, is jointly sponsored by the library and the national libraries section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.

The national library originated on Sept. 9, 1909, when the government of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) authorized preparations for constructing the Capital Library.

The library is recognized as the third largest library in the world.

When the class began, Math teacher Xu Junjun announced that Premier Wen Jiabao was with them, the students turned round simultaneously and craned their necks and found Grandpa Wen, who greeted the marveling faces with a gentle smile.

During the morning class that started 8:10, Wen was seen taking notes carefully. After the lesson, he sat with several students sharing his notes with them.

He spent a total of four hours and five minutes till the music class ended with Class 5 of the 8th graders at Beijing No. 35 Middle School on Friday.

"It's a memorable experience and I felt as if I had traveled back to my childhood," he said, "I love you all."

Some 2,500 years after his time, Confucius has come to the southern U.S. metropolis of Houston to spread his wisdom of life to the local residents.

Major Bill White and 14 Council members of Houston on Wednesday unanimously adopted an ordinance, accepting a cast bronze statue of Confucius into the City collection.

The statue, under the ordinance, will be placed in the International Sculpture Garden in Hermann Park, located in one of the most picturesque areas of downtown Houston.

It is presented as a gift by the local Chinese community and the Chinese consulate-general in Houston on the occasion of the 2,560th nativity anniversary of Confucius, the most famous and prominent ancient Chinese educator, thinker and philosopher, as well as the 30th anniversary of the establishment of Sino-U.S. diplomatic relations.

A dedication ceremony of the Confucius statue will be held on Sept. 26, jointly sponsored by Friends of Confucius Sculpture for Hermann Park -- a non-profit local Chinese NGO, the Chinese consulate and the city of Houston.

"The statue is a truly wonderful gift to the city of Houston from the people of China, and we are grateful for this expression of friendship," former U.S. president George Bush told the Houstonians in a written statement.

He also agreed to serve as the honorary chairman of the dedication ceremony of the Confucius statue. "China-U.S. relations are vitally important, and the more we know about the history of China, the better it is for my country," he said.

Confucianism is a complex system of moral, social, political, philosophical and quasi-religious thought that has tremendous influence on the culture and history of China and other East Asian countries.

On the foundation of the life-size statue, three teachings of Confucius will be carved both in Chinese and English, advocating good education as an essential prerequisite for a harmonious relationship within society, families and individuals.

Since Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity, the Houstonians and visitors from other parts of the county to the park will have a chance to read Confucius teachings for an ideal society of peace, prosperity, orderliness and mutual love, said Charles Forster, chairman of Asia Society, Texas Center.

On Aug. 14, an article published by the Christian Science Monitor said that the "middle way" advocated by Confucius could lead the United States and China to a balanced relationship and realistic expectations from the rest of the world.

"The guiding principle of this middle way is to always solve problems in a peaceful, mutually respectful, and pragmatic manner," the article said, pointing to the fact that mutual interests are bonding both countries and the world.

The International Sculpture Garden was established in 1979 in Herman Park under an ordinance adopted by the City Council. Since then it has accepted 18 busts and life-size statues representing other heroes of independence and democracy, including the Great Liberator of South America -- Simon Bolivar, and Dr. Mahatma Gandhi of India.

"Given the importance of education today within so many communities, it is significant that an educator was selected rather than a historic governmental official," Forster, also co-chairman of Friends of Confucius Sculpture for Hermann Park, explained to the Council members before their voting.

"Confucius was perhaps the most important scholar and teacher in Asian culture," he pointed out, adding that the profound, long-lasting and largely positive Confucian legacy is still highly valued in modern societies of East Asian countries.

The Great Confucius Statue is the work of renowned sculptor Willy Wang, an immigrant from China whose works include the sculpture of George R. Brown in Discovery Green, Bill Hobby in the State Capitol, Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Georgetown University and Jesus -- the Great Physician in Methodist Hospital, Houston.

Wang is also an American Emmy Awards recipient, a member of the American National Sculpture Society and the Chinese Artists Society. He has been working on the statue over a year and doing a remarkable interpretation of the historic figure of Confucius – a seven feet bronze sculpture.

Sources in Herman Park told Xinhua that they warmly welcome the dedication of the Great Confucius Statue by Chinese people, because Confucius could extend another 2,000 years to the cultural history of the city of Houston.

A Chinese education official said Thursday authorities would "seriously consider public will" in deciding on the revision of 44 Chinese characters after the move triggered widespread controversy.

Li Yuming, director of the Language and Words Information Administration Department of the Education Ministry, said authorities would "handle gingerly" and "would not work against the will of the people" in deciding whether to adjust the writing of the Chinese characters.

During the second half of August, after eight years of effort, the ministry unveiled a list of 8,300 standardized Chinese characters in common usage to solicit public opinion

The revision aims to regulate ways of writing characters.

Ministry officials and language experts said the controversial revisions concerned 44 characters in the Song type face used for print in publications, which were used in computers and printers.

The plan to change these characters sparked widespread debate as the public found they looked different from what they had been.

Many citizens, including language teachers, voiced objections to the ministry's decision on the grounds the changes would cause confusion.

The public also thinks the cost involved in the revisions would be huge as it could lead to numerous amendments to, among other print examples, books, dictionaries, signs, company names and ID cards.

By Aug. 31, people in all walks of life from both home and abroad, including teachers, university students, retired soldiers and government leaders had sent nearly 3,000 suggestions via e-mail, letters and faxes to the Education Ministry.

The majority of the correspondents objected to altering the Chinese characters, fearing that it causes inconvenience in writing habits, affect students' learning, and increase financial costs.

"We will respect suggestions from all social sectors and seriously study them and take advice from the public. We will try to formulate a table of Chinese characters that both reflects public opinion and meets social demands," the ministry said.

Li, who is also the deputy director of the State Language Work Committee, said the authorities would carefully study every suggestion.

As an ideographic language, the Chinese written history is 3,400 years old -- one of the oldest in the world.

Today, there are two ways of writing Chinese characters: traditional Chinese characters usually containing many strokes are still in use in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan; and simplified Chinese characters that have been used on the Chinese mainland since the People's Republic of China was founded.

A prepaid college tuition plan in the U.S. state of Texas is rescinding a long-standing policy that pays parents big refunds as the plan faces a projected 2.1 billion-U.S.-dollar deficit, reports said Thursday.

The Dallas Morning News reported that the Texas Guaranteed Tuition Plan has decided to cancel its policy that pays sometimes as much as 200 percent in refunds when parents who invested in their children's futures through the plan cancel their tuition contracts.

The managing board for the Texas Guaranteed Tuition Plan has adopted a new policy that will restrict future refunds to the actual amount paid by parents or others who purchased college slots, minus administrative fees. The new policy takes effect on Nov.1.

Right now, refunds include the initial amount paid and the difference between the original contract price and a current value based on average tuition rates for state colleges and universities.

For example, a parent who paid about 11,000 U.S. dollars for a tuition contract a decade ago would now be entitled to nearly three times that amount. That's because tuition fees in Texas have soared since the state legislature deregulated tuition in 2003 during a fiscal crunch.

"The board believes that the new refund policy is in the best interests of the plan in order to maximize the financial resources of the plan," the board for the plan said in a letter to parents this month. The new move is expected to save at least 60 million dollars in refund payments.

About 158,000 young Texans were enrolled in the program between1996 and 2003, when it was closed to newcomers after the tuition deregulation, the reports said.

Lessons on culture and traditions of the minority Tamil community are to be part of the curriculum on the rehabilitation process of the ex-Tamil Tigers.

"We will make them understand the rich cultural traditions of the Tamil community during our rehabilitation program", Maj Gen Daya Ratnayake, the Commissioner General of Rehabilitation, said Saturday.

"Tamils are a community with a rich cultural practice but the LTTE (rebels) systematically destroyed it so the younger generation of Tamils are not aware of them", Ratnayake added.

Ratnayake overlooks the operation to provide vocational training to the former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels ad re-integration of them to the society.

The government has identified over 10,000 of former rebels for rehabilitation.

This is in addition to another batch of nearly 20,000 rebel suspects among the near 300,000 internally displaced from the rebel held areas now living in welfare camps.

More Chinese graduates prefer to work for a State-owned company than for a foreign-owned enterprise, according to a new survey.

The findings were based on surveys of 21,000 graduating college students across China by the human resources company www.chinahr.com.

It is the first time in seven years that Chinese companies came out on top.

Foreign companies received a historically low vote of 23 percent, compared with 34.1 percent for State-owned businesses in the poll.

"Advantages such as more stable employment and better employee benefits at State-owned companies proved to be more attractive to college students, especially given the global economic slowdown," said Ouyang Hui, a human resources (HR) research supervisor at www.chinahr.com.

Foreign companies, joint ventures and private enterprises cut back staff or scaled down recruiting plans last year, while State-owned businesses endeavored to create job opportunities for graduates in accordance with official policy," Ouyang said.

Chen Jiang, a master's degree graduate of Peking University, the most prestigious in China, moved to a State-owned integrated circuit company this summer after originally being hired by a foreign company in the same line of business.

To his surprise, Chen said, a lot of his classmates who worked for well-known foreign companies asked him to keep an eye out for any opportunities for them.

US-based Procter & Gamble and Google are the only two foreign companies in the top 10, according to the poll.

China Mobile ranked first for the second time, while past favorites Microsoft and IBM ranked 11th and 12th, respectively.

Ouyang said the State-owned companies started to attract more recruits in 2007.

According to researchers, students were attracted most by fair human resources policies and opportunities for development and advancement when choosing a job.

To learn more about graduates' needs and preferences during campus recruitment periods, Morgan Stanley conducted its own survey in the first half of 2009 among students at Tsinghua, Peking, Fudan and Shanghai Jiaotong universities.

"We broadened our recruitment outreach based on the results, such as expanding our information channels through campus bulletin boards and other popular online forums posting job-hunting information, so that graduates would have a clear picture of what we can offer them," Wang said.

"To further contribute to the community and also enhance communications between graduates and Morgan Stanley, we have been sponsoring the Morgan Stanley Scholarship Program at leading universities in China since 2006," he added.

Salary and benefits were the top factors in 2008. This year benefits ranked fourth, and salary ranked ninth.

"It is a good phenomenon if the investigations were conducted scientifically," said Mike Wang, HR manager of Morgan Stanley China.

"It means students could have more choices when selecting a job. But to us, it's less relevant," Wang said.

"As a leading foreign company in the field, we always pay attention to college students and try to provide them with the best career path. And we respect individual choices according to their own situations," he said.

Yi Siting, 25, a master's graduate from Renmin University of China, chose Bank of China as her career starting point this spring, but denied the economic situation was her main consideration while job hunting.

"At State companies such as Bank of China, a lot of relaxation activities will be organized, which makes employees feel like part of a family. Large companies give me a sense of belonging and security," she said

Yi's close friend Tang Fang, from Peking University, said she prefers foreign companies to any other kind, saying they had more management expertise and a freer atmosphere.

But Yi disagreed.

"Actually, most State companies such as Bank of China always hire a lot of people from abroad, and it has a very open and modern management style," Yi said.

"Nowadays, the gap between State-owned companies and foreign ones in this respect has become narrower and narrower," she said.

As HR commissioner at a State-owned telecommunication company, Wu Yao was pleased with the poll results.

But he added that he didn't expect State-owned companies to prevail in the long term.

"As the distance between Chinese companies and foreign counterparts narrows, students will choose employers according to their own background, personal working style and interests, regardless of whether it is foreign or State-owned," Wu said.

"All companies have realized the importance of human resources," Wu added.

The Australian Federal Government will provide 3.2 million Australian dollars (2.7 million U.S. dollars) to operate the first of six specialist centers for children with autism spectrum disorders, Australian Associated Press reported on Monday.

The center has just opened in Adelaide, South Australia as part of the government's commitment to deliver up to 260 early learning and care centers nationally.

Autism specific centers will also be established in Sydney, Brisbane, northwest Tasmania, Melbourne and Perth.

Six specialist staff, including a childhood education teacher, psychologist, speech pathologist and occupational therapist, will work together with five trained childcare workers at the Adelaide center.

Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said one of the challenges many parents of children with autism spectrum disorders faced was the feeling of being unsupported.

"This creates unnecessary stress for parents and their children who are already coping with the challenges of the disorder," Macklin said.

"This center will operate as a crucial support and service hub for Adelaide families."

"It will offer a welcoming and encouraging environment where children can learn and interact with others, and parents can receive much-needed support," she added.

A report released here Thursday revealed the serious drop-out crisis in the Latino community in the U.S. with 41 percent of Latino girl students failing to graduate on time with a standard high school diploma.

The report said while 98 percent of high school seniors in the U. S. want to graduate from high school, and 80 percent aspire to higher education, Latino students continue to face numerous challenges in reaching these goals.

The report was released by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) entitled "Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation", a new report that takes a close look at the drop-out crisis in the Latino community.

According to the report, Latinos have high aspirations, but too many doubt their ability to reach their goals. Many of the Latina girls surveyed and interviewed for this project had very high aspirations for the future. Substantial numbers of them want to have professional careers as doctors, lawyers, nurses, and scientists and understand that they cannot reach those goals without education.

The Latino community faces many challenges that help to explain the discrepancy between Latino's dreams and actual expectations. Latino students' academic achievement and dropout rates can be profoundly affected by the challenges that many of their communities face, the report said.

According to the report, poverty impacts students' preparation for school. Too few Latinos attend early childhood education programs, for a variety of reasons; many of the schools Latinos attend receive limited resources which can restrict learning opportunities; those whose families move to find work are forced to change schools frequently; and having inadequate community supports, such as parks and after-school programs, can affect Latino students' ability to succeed in school.

Immigration status creates instability for many Latino students. Students who are undocumented or who have family members who are undocumented experience anxiety and uncertainty about their futures, and face added financial barriers to higher education opportunities, the report said.

Limited English proficiency can make students more likely to fall behind and increase the risk of dropout.

According to the report, parental involvement, which has been correlated with better engagement in school and can increase the chances of graduation, is limited for many Latino parents due to a number of factors, including their own low levels of formal education, lack of familiarity with the American school system, and feeling unwelcome at their children's schools.

In addition, Latinos face some similar challenges at school, such as concerns about school safety, attendance problems, disciplinary issues, and poor academic performance, all of which tend to limit student engagement in school and increase the risk of dropout, the report said.

Latinos face particular challenges related to the intersection of their ethnicity and gender.

According to the report, many Latinos are influenced by family and societal expectations, often based on stereotypes of Latinos as submissive underachievers and caretakers. When these stereotypes are internalized, they may cause Latinos to doubt their chances for academic and career success and hurt their self-esteem, which can hinder their motivation and engagement in school.

Also, many Latinos lack educational and career role models among their family members and peers to help them set goals and envision themselves reaching those goals.

The report also cited discrimination as one factor. Some Latinos still find that their teachers and classmates treat them differently in both subtle and blatant ways or have different expectations for them because they are Latina . This treatment makes them feel unwelcome at school and can affect their academic performance and graduation rates.

Some feel unwelcome at school as non-native English speakers, some experience sexual harassment, and some do not get equal access to or encouragement in career and technical education programs for fields that are traditionally male but that tend to offer higher wages and better benefits than do traditionally female fields, according to the report.

Pregnancy and parenting responsibilities are dropout risk factors for almost half of the girls who drop out of high school, according to the report.

Latinos have the highest teen pregnancy rates and teen birth rates of any racial or ethnic group, almost twice the national average in the U.S. Many do not discuss pregnancy prevention or contraception with their parents, and many attend schools in states that limit sex education to abstinence-only curricula, the report said.

Once they have children, all girls face enormous challenges to staying in school, graduating, and pursuing post-secondary options. Some of those challenges are financial and logistical, such as finding affordable, quality child care and safe transportation to school. Others are less tangible, such as discrimination and stigmatization by teachers and school administrators or policies, according to the report.

Over 556,000 people are expected to join in the year's national examination for certified public accountant (CPA) certification, according to the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA).

Since 2009 is a transition year for the reform of the examination, 66,000 people will attend the examination based on the old system on August 28-28, while over 490,000 will participate in tests under a new system on September 19-20, said an official with the CICPA in an interview with Xinhua Thursday.

The examinees can use either Chinese or English languages in the examination, the official said.

The CICPA, the examiner, was founded in 1988.

According to the official figures published by the CICPA, as of May 31, 2006, it had over 5,600 institutional members (accounting firms) and over 140,000 individual members, among whom about 69,700 were practicing members and over 70,000 were non-practicing ones.

In January 2009, the CICPA launched a reform for the national examinzation, with a goal to follow the international practice in organizing the examination, in attempt to make the Chinese CPA certification internationally recognized.

Under the new system, the examination will be divided into two stages. Examinees have to pass the first stage before entering the second phase, according to the official website of the CICPA.

The results of the first-stage examination will remain effective within five years, while the applicants must acquire second-stage certification within the period. A CPA could not obtain a fully-qualified certification before he or she passes the second-stage examination.

In the first-stage test, there are six courses, namely accounting, auditing, cost control, corporate strategy and risk control, economic law, and taxation law. In the second stage, examinees will encounter merely one course, a comprehensive test on various subjects.

Australia has provided young Hong Kong migrant Sampson Wong with the right environment for him to work to his maximum ability.

Sampson, 16, has recently become one of only a handful of Australians who have won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).

The year-11 student of James Ruse Agricultural High School in Sydney attributed his success to the freestyle education system in Australia that encouraged him to learn Mathematics as a subject of interest.

"It's not an easy task but I did not feel pressure at the IMO competition," he told Xinhua News Agency.

"And the support from my family, teachers and friends means a lot."

When Sampson was three, the Wong family migrated to Australia. Sampson's father, Jimmy Wong believes a good education system should be tailored more for individual talents, rather than sheer academic results.

"I think Australian education is better for my son as it is focused on students' talents and personal interest," Wong said.

"We are all born with natural abilities and talents. I don't want to put pressure on my son. Just let him know to be himself and enjoy learning new things abroad."

To Wong, happiness and health are the most important of all.

"I like to see Sampson happy and do things that he likes. Staying healthy is crucial in life and enables him to move forward," Wong said.

When asked about his future plan, Sampson said he aims for another gold medal in the IMO next year.

"I hope to win a second gold medal in the 2010 IMO and I'll endeavor to achieve this goal."

The IMO is the World Championship Mathematics Competition for High School students and is held annually in different countries. The first IMO was held in 1959 in Romania, with seven countries participating. It has gradually expanded to over 100 countries from five continents.

The six-member Australian student team won two gold medals at the 50th Olympiad in Bremen, Germany, last month and was placed 23rd out of 104 countries, with China in first position and Japan second.

The national assistance system for poor college students is getting more effective as proved by fewer phone calls to the hotline of the National Center for Student Assistance Administration.

"Poor college students and their parents are getting more satisfied with the national assistance system," said Ma Wenhua, deputy director of the administration, on Saturday.

The Ministry of Education launched the hotline in 2005 from every Aug. 15 to Sept. 15 ahead of the autumn semester. The hotline aims to offer help to students who want to go to university but can not afford the tuition.

Over the past three years, the hotline received 8,488 calls. Statistics show 62 percent of the calls were made to consult about the funding policy, while 38 percent (3,200 calls) complained local colleges had failed to abide by the rules to support the students.

Ma said, as for those complaints, the hotline team would report the problems to student assistance centers at the provincial level every five working days. Each complaint must be dealt with within one week.

Complaints were seen a year-on-year decrease from 2006 to 2008, as the proportion of such calls out of the total number accounted for 55 percent, 33 percent and 28 percent respective in the three years.

Ma said some poor families might still overlook what they should do to get support for their child. "Most of these students only found out they could not be accepted when arriving at universities. They could not hold up for long in a strange place with what they had at hand."

To ensure education equality, the government has introduced an array of favorable policies to help poor students, such as scholarships, grants, student loans, tuition waivers and the work-study programs under which poor students are helped out in libraries, teachers' offices or service departments to earn money.

Statistics show the government spent 29.3 billion yuan (about 4.2 billion U.S. dollars) last year to aid college students, up 7.6 percent from the previous year. Around 40 million persons of college students received the national aid.

The ministry pledged the government would ensure that no students drop out of colleges or universities because of poverty.

Among the 20 million students in the country's public and private universities and colleges last year, about 20 percent came from poor backgrounds, official figures show.

Asian American students achieved best scores in the 2009 U.S. SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) college entrance exam in mathematics and writing, according to a report by the U.S. College Board.

In math, Asian American students scored an average of 587, 72 points, better than the general population of 515, said the report available to Xinhua on Wednesday.

In writing, they scored an average of 520, 27 points, higher than the general population of 493.

White students scored best in critical reading with 528, 27 points, better than the general population of 501. Asian American students ranked the second with 516.

According to the College Board officials, Asian American students appeared to do better at all income levels. They explained that was because they tend to take more Advanced Placement and other rigorous courses, and their families place a strong value on success in education.

A record 1.53 million students took the exam in 2009 in the United States, the report said.

The average combined scores are the lowest this decade and reflect stalled performance over the past three years. The reading scores are the worst since 1994, according to the report.

Hispanic students represent the largest and fastest-growing minority group taking the test, rising from 7.8 percent to 13.5 percent of all test-takers over the past 10 years, the board said.

The board released national and statewide data but did not release scores for individual counties, districts or schools.

It acknowledged lower scores for some minority groups and said the achievement gaps relate to how many honors or Advanced Placement courses students took before the test.

Macao's Labor Affairs Bureau Tuesday announced an internship program under which some 1,000 local college graduates of the 2008/2009 academic year will have the opportunity to work as trainees in major enterprises on the Chinese mainland.

The internship program will last for six to 12 months, which only college graduates with local residency are eligible to apply, according to the Bureau. Those mainland enterprises, where the Macao graduates will be trained, include banks, travel agencies and hotels.

Under the program, local authorities will grant a monthly accommodation and living allowance of 4,500 patacas (570 U.S. dollars) to each intern, and their traffic and insurance expenses will also be paid by the government. The program was estimated to cost the government a total of 50 million patacas (6.3 million dollars) for a year.

The Bureau also said that the program will be opened for application next month and the first group of trainees was scheduled to start working in various mainland enterprises in October.

In the second quarter of 2009, Macao's unemployed population was 12,000, with 90.6 percent searching for a new job, while 9.4 percent were fresh labor force entrants searching for their first job, according to the results of an employment survey released by the city's Statistics and Census Service.

About 260,000 students from China's ethnic minority areas have received education in inland provinces and municipalities since 1949 when the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded, education minister Zhou Ji said here Thursday.

Zhou said at a meeting on improving classes for students of ethnic minorities that all 55 ethnic minorities now have people who have completed college. Most of them have their own masters and PhDs.

He said that more than 70,000 Tibetan students had been admitted to inland middle schools and colleges. Inland senior high schools have enrolled 29,600 students from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Since 1985, classes specially for Tibetan students have been offered in developed inland provinces and municipalities. Xinjiang Uygur minority students have been able to attend exclusive senior high school classes since 2000.

The Tibetan and Uygur are two of China's major ethnic minorities.

Tibet should enhance, extend and improve the existing nine-year compulsory education system and build standard boarding schools, Liu said.

It should also expand free secondary vocational education and improve the qualities of teachers, especially those at "grass-roots levels", Liu said.

She also said that more assistance should be provided to education in Tibet, such as sending more teachers and offering distance education.

Industries with local characteristics should be incubated to "actually" utilize science and technology in advancing development in the plateau region and bringing bright lives to local people, Liu said.

During her tour, Liu visited colleges, schools, cultural relics, and research institutes on new energy, agriculture and husbandry.

Tibet should enhance, extend and improve the existing nine-year compulsory education system and build standard boarding schools, Liu said.

It should also expand free secondary vocational education and improve the qualities of teachers, especially those at "grass-roots levels", Liu said.

She also said that more assistance should be provided to education in Tibet, such as sending more teachers and offering distance education.

Industries with local characteristics should be incubated to "actually" utilize science and technology in advancing development in the plateau region and bringing bright lives to local people, Liu said.

During her tour, Liu visited colleges, schools, cultural relics, and research institutes on new energy, agriculture and husbandry.

Youth gambling problem is underrated by the majority of parents, and it is important to target parents as a method of helping to prevent youth gambling, a child psychologist said here on Monday.

The current efforts to prevent the initiation of youth gambling are possibly being undermined by parents as the majority of parents reported having gambled with their children and do not view gambling as a serious youth issue, according to Jeffrey Derevensky, a child psychologist and professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Speaking at the Singapore Problem Gambling Conference 2009, he said that a recent survey which involves 2,710 parents in Canada showed that gambling was found to be the least commonly discussed issue of the 13 risky behaviors examined.

Only 40 percent of parents consider gambling as a serious youth issue, which is far less than drug use (87 percent), alcohol use(82percent), drink driving(81 percent), unsafe sexual activities(81 percent) and violence in schools and bullying (75 percent).

He said the survey also find that parents are sometimes involved in gambling activities with their children. The most commonly participated in gambling activities with their child included purchasing lottery scratch tickets (40 percent), raffle tickets for fund raising (36 percent), lottery draw tickets (12 percent) and bingo (9 percent).

The survey also showed that 21 percent of parents reported having purchased lottery tickets as a gift for their child, with 55 percent having purchased tickets when their child was less than14 years old.

"Given that parental behaviors and attitudes have a significant impact upon their children, the results highlight the importance of targeting parents as a method of helping to prevent youth gambling." Derenvensky said.

Echoing Derevensky's view, problem gambling epidemiologist Rachel Volberg said that efforts are needed to increase understanding of associations between youth gambling and other risky behaviors.

"Parents who gamble need to be educated about the increased risk of gambling problems for their children," she said.

The two-day Singapore Problem Gambling Conference 2009 brought together local and international experts to discuss issues on understanding and addressing youth gambling. The meeting aims to raise awareness of problem gambling among youth to carrying prevention work

Singapore's Education Ministry has introduced a new private education bill in parliament, local media reported on Tuesday.

The bill proposed a new voluntary quality assurance scheme for private education institutions, local radio 938Live reported.

The EduTrust certification scheme will complement a more stringent mandatory registration framework planned for the sector under the new Bill.

Results of public consultation on the bill showed that respondents were generally supportive of the move towards tighter regulation of the private education institutions. They also welcomed EduTrust as a framework to boost industry standards.

At the same time, special education schools here will soon also have a new Quality Assurance Framework.

The instrument will be rolled out by 2010, to special education schools funded by the Ministry of Education and the National Council for Social Services, Singapore's lead agency for voluntary or social services.

By the end of this year, special education school principals will be trained on the use of the draft quality assurance instrument.

A proposal of the Education Ministry to readjust the font of 44 Chinese characters has triggered controversy in the country on whether the traditional way of writing should be altered.

After eight years of efforts, the Education Ministry unveiled a list of 8,300 standardized Chinese characters in common usage to solicit public opinion 10 days ago in hopes to regulate the way of characters writing.

Ministry officials and some experts said the revisions would only target 44 characters printed in the Song typeface on publications, in other words, the revised characters would only be used by computers and printing machines.

But they soon gave rise to disputes and as the public suddenly found the characters look different from what they used to be, which means they have to change their former way of identifying them.

An online survey conducted by major Internet portal Sina.com showed 90.2 percent of more than 340,000 respondents opposed the revisions as of Saturday, while only 5.1 percent voted for them.

"The characters printed in our textbooks adopt the Kai typeface, and we don't need any change. But students would be easily confused by the revised characters on other publications," said Wang Jiayu, a Chinese language teacher at a primary school in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Many of the 44 characters are used frequently, which would undoubtedly pose challenges to people's habits of reading and writing, she said.

"The change is only a slight change of one stroke for a character, but if a pupil asks me which one of the same character is correctly written, I don't know how to reply," she said. "There will be much confusion if different ways of writing the same character exists, especially for children."

To Tang Yunlai, chairman of the Tianjin Municipal Calligraphers' Association, it is needless to make such revisions.

"The way of writing characters should better remain in a stable state within a long period of time," he said.

Objections also emerged as the costs of the revisions would be huge.

"The revisions of the 44 characters would lead to amendments on books, dictionaries, signboards, company names, ID cards and others," said Prof. Wang Laihua, of the Tianjin Municipal Academy of Social Sciences. "That will cost lots of money and time."

As a syllabic and ideographic writing, the Chinese written history is 3,400 years old -- one of the oldest languages in the world.

Today, there is two ways of writing Chinese characters: traditional Chinese characters that usually contain many strokes are still in use in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan; and simplified Chinese characters that are used on the Chinese mainland since the People's Republic of China was founded.

"The readjustment is made against the backdrop of the information age and for the sake of facilitating information storage, management and exchange," said Li Yuming, deputy director of the State Language Work Committee.

"Slight amendments will not affect the lives of ordinary people, and it will do good to the standardization of the printing," he said.

Experts revised the characters while taking into consideration the calligraphy of traditional Chinese, such as those still in use in Taiwan, said Prof. Wang Ning, of the Beijing Normal University.

"Minute changes would not affect people's habits of reading. The 44 characters account for no more than six per thousand of the total in the list, so it would not force the public to learn all the Chinese characters again," said Wang, also one of the experts who attended the revision work.

"Whether to make a readjustment for a character does not depend on the votes, but on whether it is reasonable to do so," she said.

"Of course, we are not against the public. We are listening to the public sincerely," she added.

The solicitation of opinions will end on Aug. 31.

Come graduation time, students are not just reluctant to give up campus life, but also all those great student discounts. And grads still looking to cash in on the half-price student train tickets, park entrance tickets and discount movie tickets they’ve grown used to have been the driving force for Beijing’s booming fake ID market.

Located near Zhongguancun with its large student population and constant flow of foot traffic, the east gate of Renmin University of China makes for an ideal marketplace for fake IDs, many vendors not hesitating to walk up to passersby and openly solicit their line of “products”.

Li, a student, told the Global Times he spent 30 yuan ($4.39) on a custom made fake ID from China University of Political Science and Law, the whole process taking only several minutes.

“I brought my photo to the vendor. She asked me to stand to the side and minutes later, she came over with my ID. I just had to fill in the blanks with my info,” said Li.

“Most sellers are women who are either pregnant or holding a baby, who if they’re caught by police have a better chance of getting off the hook,” he added.

Li, a student at Wuhan University, told the Global Times that he got an internship in Beijing this year. In Beijing’s Haidian District, he found the fake ID market near Renmin University and bought one.

“Since I’m from Xinjiang, I can only buy half-priced student tickets between Wuhan and Xinjiang. But if I have a Beijing university ID, I can save over 70 yuan on tickets to Wuhan from Beijing. As long as it’s valid, I can use it as often as I need to. It’s totally worth it.”

However, these bargain hunters are taking a big risk, something Li is quite aware of.

“Once when I went to buy a ticket at Beijing West Station, a student in front of me got caught using a fake student ID. I immediately got out of line and went to a train ticket outlet instead.”

Wang, a clerk at the Summer Palace ticket office, told the Global Times that ever since summer vacation began, nearly half of student IDs used have been found to be fakes. Usually after being confronted, most of these counterfeit carriers awkwardly cough up the rest of the money for a full-price ticket.

“It’s common to see fake ID makers on the street as if they’re a legitimate business. It’s totally wrong. I will never try and save money by cheating others,” Ning Xin, 21, a student at Beijing Normal University, told the Global Times.

“I think it’s Ok for a student to buy a fake ID, because some train tickets are not so cheap. But still it’s not right for graduates to buy fakes. Besides, they’ve already got money,” Zhao Wenqian, 19 and a student at Wuhan University, told the Global Times

High school graduates who enroll in China's top two universities of Tsinghua and Peking will be awarded 100,000 yuan each (14,638 U.S. dollars), according to an enrollment notice of a senior high school in west China's Shaanxi Province.

"We know it is rare to offer such high award to elite students. But no students from our county has ever been admitted to the two top universities in the last 30 years. We think it is a shame, as the county has been better off and has invested heavily in boosting education," said Yang Yun, principal of the Wuqi Senior High School, the only high school in the county of 120,000 people.

He said the school has taken steps to attract excellent students, including cash awards for students achieving high scores in the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), scholarships for various talents and financial subsidies for students from low-income households.

"The school issued grants worth 3.4 million yuan to students last year. Each scholarship ranges from 2,000 to 50,000 yuan," he said.

"In addition to scholarships for high scores, we have also set up scholarships for innovation, sports, artistic excellence and many others, through which we encourage our students to be well-rounded," he said.

Liu Yanliang, who was enrolled by the City University of Hong Kong last year as the top student from Wuqi received 65,000 yuan in cash award.

"Good scores mean good cash awards," said the principal Yang.

"Education in Wuqi used to be very poor, and talented students went to the big cites of Yan'an or Xi'an" in Shanxi to pursue high school studies" said Yang Shiyuan, an education official in Wuqi.

He said the county's economy has been growing fast. The county government can afford high educational expenditures to improve the basic education standard.

Wuqi has been verified to have a deposit of 150 million tons of petroleum and natural gas. The county has become better-off through developing the petrochemical industry. Its financial revenue surpassed 2 billion yuan in 2006, when it became the richest county in Shaanxi.

The county government invested 140 million yuan to help upgrade the Wuqi Senior High School in 2005. In 2007, the county carried out 12-year free compulsory education for local students, as compared to the country's previous nine-year free compulsory education.

Since the policy took effect in 2007, 95 percent of school-aged pupils in Wuqi went to the high school, which increased from 60 percent before 2007.

"Under the policy, each student in the Wuqi high school is exempt from school fees of up to 10,000 yuan for the three years of schooling," said parent Wang Feng. "The school frees us from the burden of school fees, and if the kids can study well, he or she can earn scholarships and save money for advanced study."

Despite the positive outcome, parents still worry that the score-oriented stimulus goes against the country's call for quality-oriented education.

However, the educational official Yang said: "Under the current education system, scores in college entrance exams are still the most important factor in evaluating schools' teaching quality."

Since 2008, the school began to recruit good teachers nationwide with yearly salaries as high as 150,000 yuan -- which is about the standard of white-collar salary in big cities. It also set up a 10 million-yuan grant for special teaching and research projects.

The principal Yang said good teachers can help more students reach their dream of going to the top universities of Tsinghua and Peking.

Shanghai opened its first sex-education camp for children between the ages of eight and 13 on Wednesday. Unfortunately the response was poor, with just six boy students and the girls' camp deferred.

The three-day camps have proved popular in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, but have received a decided cold shoulder in Shanghai, according to Thursday's Shanghai Daily.

The opening of the Shanghai camp by Nanjing-based Partner Company was scheduled for the start of the summer vacation.

It had taken all this time to attract the six boys and the girls' class was postponed because there were only five applicants, said the company's marketing director, Yang Peng.

Many parents have balked as the camp costs 2,880 yuan (421 U.S. dollars) for the three days of education.

"We are going to have a really private talk which cannot be shared with girls or strangers," Gao Weiwei, a young teacher and the director of the Shanghai branch of the company, said to the six boys aged between nine and 13 in her opening remarks. But the boys seemed uninterested.

The camp aims to answer the key question from children: "Where Did I Come From?" Many Chinese parents find it difficult to answer.

"It's an information-explosion age and there is much misleading information on the Internet," said Tina Miao, mother of a boy aged 10 in the camp.

"It's better for kids to be instructed by professionals. "Miao, a lawyer, plans to send her son to Britain for schooling soon and is afraid overseas students are more "mature" than Chinese students.

Most families who sent their boys to the Shanghai camp are well off. "It's better for kids to learn sex knowledge naturally rather than being bluntly exposed to the information," said Wu Zunmin, an educational expert of East China Normal University, "I doubt the content of a course copied from other countries."

"It conflicts with Chinese people's cultural traditions," Wu said.

Singapore launched on Friday the Science.09, the annual national science month to celebrate the positive impact of science.

Launched by Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Education S Iswaran, the event aims to spark a passion for learning among Singaporeans by encouraging young people to be inquisitive.

He said that science, technology and biomedicine continue to bekey engines of growth for Singapore as it strives towards a knowledge-based economy built on intellectual capabilities and high value research and development.

"The way forward is multi-disciplinary research, integrating research from diverse scientific disciplines to create scientific, biomedical and technological breakthroughs and applications that will enhance our lives and build future industries," he said.

This year, over 140 educational, interactive and fun-filled events such as workshops, talks and competitions will be held is landwide.

Science.09 marks the eighth year of collaboration between the Agency for Science, Technology and Research and the Science Center Singapore.

U.S. digital course materials supplier CourseSmart announced on Tuesday that it is making its more than 7,000 college "e Textbooks" available on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

With a free application on Apple's online App Store, students in the United States and Canada can buy their textbooks in electronic form at about half the price of print versions. They can also use iPhone or iPod Touch to quickly reference their e-textbooks in the classroom and even browse their notes, the company said.

"We've seen significant demand from student customers for the ability to get required textbook content in electronic form on an iPhone or iPod Touch," Frank Lyman, executive vice president of CourseSmart, said in a statement.

"We see incredible potential for iPhone and iPod Touch applications in education," he added.

With the new free application, students can benefit from the advantages of mobile learning, "leaving their backpack and laptop behind," CourseSmart said in an introduction to its program.

Founded in 2007 and located in San Mateo, California, CourseSmart is the largest digital course materials supplier in the United States and has partnered closely with major U.S. higher-education publishers.

According to CourseSmart, college students on nearly 6,000 campuses in the United States and Canada are using its electronic textbooks.

A senior Chinese official has called on colleges to embrace reform in teaching so as to better adjust education to the needs of the society.

Li Yuanchao, head of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), made the remarks during a meeting with university presidents in east Jiangxi Province Saturday.

Li, also a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, also urged intensified efforts to find and cultivate more top-notch talents to serve the country's modernization drive.

He also urged Party secretaries and presidents at universities to set high standards for themselves and win respect from the faculty and students with exalted moral quality, profound knowledge and corruption-free images.

During summer holidays, prestigious universities like Peking and Tsinghua Universities become a favorite tourist spot for parents who hope a visit may motivate their kids to study hard, the Beijing Evening News reported Friday.

Statistics show that Tsinghua University gets more than 30,000 visitors a day at peak times and an average day might bring as many as 20,000 visitors to the university.

However, a one- or two-hour visit is far from enough to give children a good understanding of the profound cultural atmosphere that permeates these campuses, the Beijing Evening News' report said.

Summer camp or tourist group organizers focus only on scenic spots, making youngsters feel as if they're touring any other attraction, such as the Great Wall.

And booming tourism has brought some negative impacts to universities along with the huge profits.

For example, tacky tourist behavior, like sitting on the sculpture of famous 20th century Chinese essayist Zhu Ziqing to take photos, tarnishes venerable statues.

Meanwhile, large numbers of tourists can cause traffic jams and disturb the normal order on campus.

Many illegal cab drivers, seizing the opportunity to make money, sit outside the gate of Tsinghua University waiting for business. They can usually make good money taking tourists around campus, according to one cab owner.

Tsinghua University authorities have taken some emergency measures to cope with this situation, such as adding more sight-seeing cars and setting up volunteer guide stands to introduce scenic spots to tourists.

Cambodia's literacy rate among people aged 15-24 has reached 84.7 percent after years of efforts by the government, khmer newspaper reported on Thursday.

"If we consider 15 years old upwards, it has 73.6 percent of literate people. However, among this figure, there are still 26.4 percent of illiterate population, " the Kampuchea Thmei quoted Phon Hon Sin, director of informal education system of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, as saying.

And among the illiterate people, 60 percent of them are women. "Each year we helped 55,000 people to eliminate illiteracy," he said.

"The most of illiterate women have abandoned their education since the beginning of primary. Their dropout rate from primary and secondary schools is about 10 percent across the country and at the higher education, the women enrollment rate is so low and it has about 30 percent only," he said, adding that poverty is mainly the reason why they abandon education.

"Education sectors of the government opened 1,000 literacy classes and another 1,000 literacy classes were set up by organizations with supports from partners," he said.

Chinese kindergartens and nurseries for children aged 6 and younger will no longer be allowed to deny entry to students simply because they have hepatitis B (HB), according to a proposed new regulation from the Ministry of Health.

The public can offer feedback on the draft rule until Aug 15. It will likely replace the current regulation, which took effect in December 1994 and did not require the institutions to accept children with chronic hepatitis B, a source with the ministry said.

The draft regulation requires the facilities to report to medical authorities and enforce strict sterilization measures if infected children are enrolled.

Under the rule, children will need to present health records issued by authorized medical institutions and their guardians must take them for treatment should they display infectious disease symptoms.

Currently, many young HB virus carriers are rejected by kindergartens, even though it is unusual for them to spread the illness to classmates, said Wang Zhao, vice-president of the China Foundation for Hepatitis Prevention and Control.

"I very much welcome the long-awaited regulation which would help remove HB discrimination against innocent young children," she told China Daily over the phone on Friday.

Around 2 percent of children under six in China have the illness. China now has nearly 100 million HB carriers.

Since 2002, the government has vaccinated nearly all newborns for free, which has substantially reduced the prevalence among children.

Some, who were born at home instead of hospitals, may have been left out of the vaccination program and face greater risks of HB, Wang said.

"Given the immunity screen established by wide inoculation among children and special transmission channels, kindergartens have no reason to reject HB-positive children," she said.

Hepatitis B is transmitted through exposure to infected blood and is not transmitted casually, according to the World Health Organization.

However, the awareness level among the public is low.

Liu Mengyu, 31, an office clerk in Beijing, said she would transfer her 4-year-old son to another kindergarten if children with HB were detected at the one he attends.

Kindergarten leaders tend to reject HB-positive children because of pressure from parents, Wang said.

"It's unfair for these children who fall victims to people's ignorance," she said.

Last November, 101 mothers solicited help in an open letter after their HB-positive children were rejected by kindergartens.

Among then, a mom surnamed Chen expressed her deep concern.

"Kindergartens might reject our children citing other reasons," Chen told the Beijing Times. "The change won't come easy and takes time."

The regulation does not stipulate specific punishments for kindergartens that ignore the rule.

Representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to Angola Kkoenraad Vanormelingen has handed over here a cheque valued at 5.1 million Euros to the Angolan Ministry of Education for the improvement of school projects.

At the delivery ceremony on Thursday, the UNICEF official said the money would be used to improve school projects in seven provinces under the Program of Assistance to Primary Education in Angola, benefiting at least 70,000 pupils.

The official said the improvement of the school projects include 100 schools under the School of Educational Projects and the Micro-Projects. They are 14 in Benguela province, 14 in Namibe, 14 in Kwanza Sul, 14 in Bie, 14 in Cunene, 14 in Huila and 16 in Huambo.

There are also 300 schools selected to implement micro projects to meliorate teaching of Portuguese language and Maths (MPLPMs), including 43 schools in Kwanza Sul, 43 in Benguela, 43 in Bie, 42 in Huambo, 43 in Cunene, 43 in Huila and 43 in Namibe.

According to the UNICEF official, all these projects will be carried out by the Angolan Ministry of Education with the assistance of UNICEF and the European Union with a view to strengthening capacity building of students.

Representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to Angola Kkoenraad Vanormelingen has handed over here a cheque valued at 5.1 million Euros to the Angolan Ministry of Education for the improvement of school projects.

At the delivery ceremony on Thursday, the UNICEF official said the money would be used to improve school projects in seven provinces under the Program of Assistance to Primary Education in Angola, benefiting at least 70,000 pupils.

The official said the improvement of the school projects include 100 schools under the School of Educational Projects and the Micro-Projects. They are 14 in Benguela province, 14 in Namibe, 14 in Kwanza Sul, 14 in Bie, 14 in Cunene, 14 in Huila and 16 in Huambo.

There are also 300 schools selected to implement micro projects to meliorate teaching of Portuguese language and Maths (MPLPMs), including 43 schools in Kwanza Sul, 43 in Benguela, 43 in Bie, 42 in Huambo, 43 in Cunene, 43 in Huila and 43 in Namibe.

According to the UNICEF official, all these projects will be carried out by the Angolan Ministry of Education with the assistance of UNICEF and the European Union with a view to strengthening capacity building of students.

Nearly 90 percent of museum employees in China had not received a university education, and still fewer have majored in museum studies, experts said at the ongoing 16th congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences.

The conference, in Kunming, winds up Friday.

Museum employees needed high standards of conservation, management and research, but only 10.6 percent of museum employees in China had bachelors' degrees or higher. Some had graduated only from primary schools, said Pan Shouyong, deputy head of the anthropology institute of the Central University for Nationalities.

He quoted a survey conducted between 2003 and 2005 by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage among leaders, staff members and readers at more than 2,300 museums across China.

In Shanghai, 29 percent of employees held bachelors' degrees, the highest percentage in China, compared with 9.4 percent in Beijing.

As most employees did not major in museum studies, precious historical relics showed long-term signs of damage because of lack of professional maintenance, Pan said. "Many registered collections are missing and some are not even registered because of the poor management system."

The number of museums in China has increased greatly since 1994, an average of 100 opening yearly. In 2008 more than 2,700 public museums had been registered. The number of private museums founded by professional institutions and associations has also increased rapidly.

In America and Europe, most museum managers hold a PhD. There are less than 20 PhD holders among China's museum heads, Pan said.

Sixteen universities have set up departments of museum studies, from which hundreds of students graduate every year - but no more than 50 work in museums, Pan said.

Pan encouraged young people to cultivate a strong interest and desire to research despite its solitary nature.

"It needs at least 10 years for museum researchers to achieve accomplishment," he said. "Only by that time can we enjoy and introduce China's rich culture professionally."

International education, Australia's third largest export, is operating uninsured, owing to no one willing to underwrite the government set-up fund to protect the sector, Fairfax reported on Friday.

The Educational Services for Overseas Students Assurance Fund, established in 2001, which guarantees student fees held just over 3 million Australian dollars (2.48 million U.S. dollars). The fund achieved a surplus of only 421,200 Australian dollars (349,441 U.S. dollars) in an industry worth 15.5 billion Australian dollars (12.8 billion U.S. dollars) during the latest reporting period.

Tim Smith, the former chief executive of the industry body that tries to place students in alternative courses said the fund is "uninsured" and "uninsurable".

"The consumer protection mechanism is an unholy mess. If you've got a fund that's broke and an industry that can't place the students, how can it work?" he told Fairfax.

The fund has failed to find an insurer since AIG decided not to renew its contract last November.

The funds manager, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), would not reveal details of payouts since Global College of Sydney went into administration in February last year, leaving more than 1,000 international students displaced.

Fairfax reported the federal government would be forced to pay out claims if the fund was overdrawn.

The United States should do more in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and providing financial and technological support to developing countries, said a World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) official on Thursday.

U.S. President Barack Obama has vowed to cut U.S. emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

"That target is too small and it needs to be increased," said Kim Carstensen, director of WWF's Global Climate Initiative, in an interview with Xinhua.

He said Obama still needed to convince other countries that he was able to deliver what he had promised although his decision must be approved by the U.S. Senate in the first place. "We do not want empty promises," said Carstensen.

Empty promises have been seen when the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol and then never ratified it. "We cannot have these empty promises again," he said. "We need to be sure that the U.S. promise delivers."

Carstensen said he hoped Obama could make sure that climate change would be the next top priority issue in the U.S. legislature so that it would not get postponed or sidelined.

The United States is facing mounting international pressure to do more on the climate change issue. "We have a better chance than ever. If we miss this chance, we're never going to get a better one," said Carstensen.

He said other developed countries should also raise their emission reduction targets and offer more financial and technological support to developing countries.

Carstensen also said China's target of reducing the intensity of carbon emissions per unit of its GDP in 2020 by 40 to 45 percent against 2005 levels is encouraging and that he was confident that China can reach the goal.

With 110 heads of state or government coming to the UN Climate Change Conference, Carstensen was confident that a framework on climate change could be inked.

"The framework needs to have clear definitions, numbers on emission reductions, numbers for early start funding and further long-term funding," he said.

"We need to continue the Kyoto Protocol and at the same time we need another framework which takes in the United States and its commitments," he said.

The framework also needs to take in a number of issues, including deforestation, adaptation to climate change, technological transfer, financing and concrete actions of both developed and developing countries, Carstensen said.

A Turkish minister said Friday that all the 19 workers trapped in a collapsed coal mine in northwestern Turkey were killed.

"Unfortunately, all of the miners were dead. The ground support there totally collapsed on the impact of the explosion," Labor and Social Security Minister Omer Dincer was quoted as saying by the semi-official Anatolia news agency.

The incident occurred on Thursday evening in Mustafakemalpasa town in the province of Bursa. The explosion took place at a depth of around 250-350 meters, causing the mine to cave in and a fire to break out.

Local NTV channel had previously reported a death toll of six workers. The cause of the explosion is still unknown.