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The Singapore government said on Friday that it plans to spend 560 million Singapore dollars (396.6 million U.S. dollars) to enhance primary school infrastructure.

The country’s Ministry of Education will be building 11 new primary schools and upgrading another 28 existing schools from November 2009.

This is the first phase of the ministry’s plans to enhance primary school infrastructure to facilitate the transition of primary schools to a single session.

The government plans to build a total of 18 new schools and enhance up to 80 existing ones in phases.

The ministry said that with a single session, schools will be able to provide greater flexibility in time and space for teachers to deliver a more holistic education to their pupils. Pupils will be able to benefit from a wider range of academic and non-academic activities that will nurture life skills and develop their character.

The ministry targets to facilitate the transition of all government primary schools to single session by 2016.

(Source: xinhuanet.com)

Australian Education Minister Julia Gillard on Monday announced a new multi-million dollar federal government program to improve indigenous education.

The government will provide 16.4 million Australian dollars (14 million U.S. dollars) to the Stronger Smarter Learning Communities project, which helps school leaders improve educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

Gillard, who was in Brisbane to announce the funding injection at the Stronger Smarter Summit, said it was time for indigenous students to move to the front of the classroom.

“For too long the nation has succumbed to a sense that there’s something inevitable about indigenous kids ending up at the back of the class,” she told reporters.

“We want to break away from those negative mindsets.”

Schools identified as under performing through the government’s National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests will be forced to improve.

Gillard said they would be required to develop strategies and take action in the areas of attendance, quality of teaching and school leadership, literacy and numeracy, and parental and community engagement.

However, if indigenous families do not send their children to school they could be hit with welfare sanctions in a new trial that is about to roll out.

“There will be some places in this country where there is persistent non-attendance at school – the ultimate sanction is income management,” she said

(Source: xinhuanet.com)

Brazil’s Education Minister Fernando Haddad announced on Thursday the postponement of the national university admission exams (Enem), after a local daily reported fraud in the tests.

The exams were to take place this weekend, but on Wednesday evening, the Ministry was informed that two people had tried to sell printed copies of the Enem paper to reporters from the O Estado de Sao Paulo daily.

The copies were found to be genuine, forcing the authorities to call off the tests on the weekend.

According to Haddad, the Brazilian Federal Police is investigating the case. It is not known how the test papers were stolen, but representatives of the company which printed the exam papers were called to make statement.

The Education Ministry said that a new version of the exam paper is ready, and students will sit the exam in 30 to 45 days.

Reprinting the exam papers will cost the Brazilian government about 35 million reais (19.66 million U.S. dollars). Additionally, the postponement complicates the admission exams calendar, since many universities hold additional exams which depend on the Enem results.

The Enem is used by many public and private universities as part of the entrance requirements. Over four million students from all over Brazil are to sit the exams this year.

(Source: xinhuanet.com)