China scores low in English test

Beijing: Chinese have "poor" English skills despite huge efforts by the government in language training, according to a study.

China was ranked 29th in the English Proficiency Index, behind other Asian countries like Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, the Shanghai Daily reported.

Test-oriented, memorized learning habits did not give Chinese students the real language skills, education experts said.

The report was based on a free online English test, where two million adults from 44 countries where English is not the native language took part.

source:http://indiaedunews.net/International/China_scores_low_in_English_test_13786/

Playing the Blame Game

Matthew Lynch - With skyrocketing costs, budget crises, inconsistent curricula, poor standardized testing scores, and poor morale among teachers, administrators, and students, the need for sustainable and pervasive educational change is greater now than ever before.

The numbers of questions related to the quality of the U.S. educational system from multiple sectors of society is at an all-time high. Many American parents have seen reports that American schools rank well below schools in countries such as China and Japan, or have heard President Obama declare a “dropout crisis” in the USA. An abundance of news reports and discouraging case studies has created panic among education stakeholders, who want to know why American school systems are failing. However, many insist on playing the “blame game,” which in most cases is counterproductive.

Many Americans believe that only a small percentage of leaders understand the complexities of the school system, and that individuals who do understand the intricacies of the system use their knowledge to justify the mediocre performance of our teachers and students. The American school system is the best-financed system in the world, but is one of the lowest performing. The American school system as a whole has an appalling performance record. For children living in urban environments, the story is even more alarming. Students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are often educated in dilapidated schools where the too many educators lack the credentials and skills necessary to perform their duties adequately. High student-to-teacher ratios are found in most urban schools, and these schools often lack the resources to deal with the diverse challenges they face, including unruly student behavior. Education has been called the great equalizer, but for students living in poverty-stricken urban areas it is little more than a babysitting service and a place to get a hot meal.

Many question whether the No Child Left Behind Act has contributed to achieving academic success. Although NCLB was well intentioned, it has not lived up to the hopes of government or schools. In the eyes of some, NCLB has actually contributed to subpar academics becoming even worse. If American educators and school personnel do not make a concerted effort to develop effective measures to hold schools accountable for the education of all of our children, then the education crisis will continue.

There is an exception to every rule: some urban school systems are providing a quality education. Unfortunately, however, only a small number of school systems meet the state and federal government student performance requirements. For underperforming urban school systems, the problem usually lies with the inability to sustain existing reform efforts and initiatives. Mayors and school superintendents in these areas often concoct grandiose reform plans that are merely political devices meant to beguile voters into believing they genuinely care about educational reform. The idea that politicians create school reform to gain popularity and votes is sad and sobering. It is discouraging to realize that our children’s futures might be used as a political device to win elections.

Politicians are not the only people at fault for the shoddy education American children are receiving, but no one will take responsibility for subpar educational environments. If administrators were asked who was at fault, they might point to a lack of parental involvement and too few quality teachers. If teachers were asked who was at fault they might also cite a lack of parental involvement and ineffective administration. If parents were asked who was at fault they might blame teachers and school administrators. Society in general seems to conclude that the lack of quality teachers, effective administration, and parental involvement are all factors contributing to educational failure.

Whatever the reason, Americans have become the laughing stock of the free world when it comes to K-12 education. The solution, of course, is for the country to unite and work together to carry the responsibility of enriching and continuing America’s future via educational excellence without playing the “blame game.”

source:http://www.educationnews.org/commentaries/152844.html

Number of dead, missing nears 21,000

KAMAISHI: The toll of dead or missing from Japan's worst natural disaster in nearly a century has neared 21,000.

With 8,199 people confirmed killed, the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11 is Japan's deadliest natural disaster since the Great Kanto quake levelled much of Tokyo in 1923.

Another 12,722 are missing, feared swept out to sea by the 10-metre tsunami or buried in the wreckage of buildings.

In Miyagi prefecture on the northeast coast, where the tsunami reduced entire towns to splintered matchwood, the official death toll stood at 4,882.

Miyagi police chief Naoto Takeuchi, however, told a task force meeting that his prefecture alone “will need to secure facilities to keep the bodies of more than 15,000 people”, Jiji Press reported.

Nuclear plant

At the damages Fukushima nuclear power plant, crews were striving to restore electricity after extending a high-voltage cable into the site from the national grid.

A spokesman for Japan's nuclear safety agency said electricity had apparently reached the power distributor at the No. 2 reactor, which in turn would feed power to the No. 1 reactor. Plant operator TEPCO confirmed an electricity supply had been restored to the distributor but said power at the reactor unit was not back on yet. Engineers were checking the cooling and other systems at the reactor, aiming to restore power soon, TEPCO said.

Children affected

According to the charity Save the Children, around 100,000 children were displaced by the quake and tsunami, and signs of trauma are evident among young survivors as the nuclear crisis and countless aftershocks fuel their terror. “We found children in desperate conditions, huddling around kerosene lamps and wrapped in blankets,” Save the Children spokesman Ian Woolverton said after visiting a number of evacuation centres.

source:http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/21/stories/2011032163371600.htm

Testing time for global supply-chain

Tony Prophet, a Senior Vice-President for operations at Hewlett-Packard (HP), was awakened at 3:30 a.m. in California and was told that an earthquake and tsunami had struck Japan. Soon after, Prophet had set up a virtual ‘situation room,' so managers in Japan, Taiwan and America could instantly share information.

Prophet oversees all hardware purchasing for HP's $65-billion-a-year global supply-chain, which feeds its huge manufacturing engine. The company's factories churn out two personal computers a second, two printers a second and one data-centre computer every 15 seconds.

While other HP staff members checked on the company's workers in Japan none of whom were injured in the disaster Prophet and his team scrambled to define the impact on the company's suppliers in Japan and, if necessary, to draft backup plans.

“It's too early to tell, and we're not going to pretend to predict the outcome,” Prophet said in an interview last week. “It's like being in an emergency room, doing triage.”

The emergency-room image speaks volumes. Modern global supply chains, experts say, mirror complex biological systems like the human body in many ways. They can be remarkably resilient and self-healing, yet at times quite vulnerable to some specific, seemingly small weakness as if a tiny tear in a crucial artery were to cause someone to suffer heart failure.

Day in and day out, the global flow of goods routinely adapts to all kinds of glitches and setbacks. A supply breakdown in one factory in one country, for example, is quickly replaced by added shipments from suppliers elsewhere in the network. Sometimes, the problems span whole regions and require emergency action for days or weeks. When a volcano erupted in Iceland last spring, spewing ash across northern Europe and grounding air travel, supply-chain wizards were put to a test, juggling production and shipments worldwide to keep supplies flowing.

But the disaster in Japan, experts say, presents a first-of-its-kind challenge, even if much remains uncertain.

Japan is the world's third-largest economy, and a vital supplier of parts and equipment for major industries like computers, electronics and automobiles. The worst of the damage was northeast of Tokyo, near the quake's epicentre, though Japan's manufacturing heartland is farther south. But greater problems will emerge if rolling electrical blackouts and transportation disruptions across the country continue for long.

Throughout Japan, many plants are closed at least for days, with restart dates uncertain. Already, there are some ripple effects worldwide: for example, a General Motors truck plant in Louisiana announced last week that it was shutting down temporarily for lack of Japanese-made parts. More made-in-Japan supply-chain travails are expected. “This is going to be a huge test of global supply chains, but I don't think it will be a mortal blow,” says Kevin O'Marah, an analyst at Gartner-AMR Research. The good news for the world's manufacturing economy is that the sectors where Japan plays a vital role are fairly mature, global industries.

Japan's importance in the semiconductor industry as a whole has receded in recent years, as more production has shifted to South Korea, Taiwan and even China. Japan accounts for less than 21 per cent of total semiconductor production, down from 28 per cent in 2001, according to IHS iSuppli, a research firm.

Still, Japan produces a far higher share of certain important chips like the lightweight flash memory used in smart phones and tablet computers. Japan makes about 35 per cent of those memory chips, IHS iSuppli estimates, and Toshiba is the major Japanese producer. But South Korean companies, led by Samsung, are also large producers of flash memory.

Apple, like all major companies these days, treats its supply-chain operations as a trade secret. But industry analysts estimate that Apple buys perhaps a third of its flash memory from Toshiba, with the rest coming mainly from South Korea. The lead time between chip orders and delivery is two months or more. A leading customer like Apple will be first in line for supplies, and it has inventories for several weeks, analysts say. So there will be little immediate impact on Apple or its customers, but even Apple will likely be hit with supply shortages of crucial components in the second quarter, predicts Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray.

That geographic and technological evolution, in theory, should make adapting to the disaster in Japan easier for corporate supply chains.

Most anything can be tracked, but it takes smart technology, investment and effort to do so. And as procurement networks become more complex and supply lines grow longer ‘thin strands,' as the experts call the phenomenon the difficulty and expense of seeing deeper into the supply chain increases.

Indeed, supplies of larger, more costly electronic components, like flash memory and liquid crystal displays, tend to grab the most attention.

But, says Tony Fadell, a former senior Apple executive who led the iPod and iPhone design teams, “there are all kinds of little specialised parts without second sources, like connectors, speakers, microphones, batteries and sensors that don't get the love they deserve. Many are from Japan.”

Lacking some part, even if it costs just dimes or a few dollars, can mean shutting down a factory, Fadell adds.

A recent analysis by IHS iSuppli, taking apart a new Apple iPad2, identified five parts coming from Japanese suppliers: flash memory from Toshiba, random-access memory for temporary storage from Elpida Memory, an electronic compass from AKM Semiconductor, touch-screen glass from Asahi Glass, and a battery from Apple Japan.

Further down the supply chain lie raw materials. Trouble for a supplier to a company's parts supplier can cascade across an industry. For example, reports that a Mitsubishi Gas Chemical factory in Fukushima was damaged by the tsunami have fanned fears of a coming shortage of a resin bismaleimide triazine, or BT used in the packaging for small computer chips in cell phones and other products.

Two Japanese companies are the leading producers of silicon wafers, the raw material used to make computer chips, accounting for more than 60 per cent of the world's supply. The largest is the Shin-Etsu Chemical Corp. Its main wafer plant in Shirakawa was damaged by the earthquake, and the factory is down.

“The continuing violent aftershocks are complicating the inspection work,” said Hideki Aihara, a Shin-Etsu spokesman in Japan, on Friday. “Right now we can't say how badly it was damaged or how long it might take to get started.”

Shin-Etsu does have factories outside Japan. “But the most advanced manufacturing and silicon-growing processes are done in Japan,” says Klaus Rinnen, a semiconductor analyst at Gartner. And growing silicon ingots, which are then sliced into wafers, is a lengthy, delicate process that will be hampered by power failures or other disruptions, he says.

Big chip makers like Intel, Samsung and Toshiba typically hold inventories of silicon wafers for four to six weeks of production.

“But after that, it will get tougher,” Rinnen says.

The Japan quake, some experts say, will prompt companies to re-evaluate risk in their supply chains. Perhaps, they say, there will be a shift from focusing on reducing inventories and costs the just-in-time model, pioneered in Japan to one that places greater emphasis on buffering risk a just-in-case mentality.

Adding inventories and backup suppliers reduces risk by increasing the redundancy in a supply system. It is one way to enhance resilience, experts say, but there are others.

For global operations managers like Prophet of HP, the Japanese disaster will be a severe test of their supply networks and systems. Once the triage stage is passed, though, it will be a learning experience as well. “We'll do a retrospective on what worked best and what didn't, and how to change things to make our supply chain more resilient,” he says.

source:http://www.hindu.com/biz/2011/03/21/stories/2011032150071500.htm

Japan races to avert nuclear meltdowns

Facing an unprecedented nuclear crisis, Japan on Sunday struggled hard to avert multiple meltdowns at two of its reactors damaged by the devastating earthquake and tsunami as it braced itself for a fresh explosion at the Fukushima plant amid fears that the toll may exceed 10,000 in the ravaged northeastern coast.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said excessive levels of radiation at the Onagawa nuclear power plant led authorities to report a state of emergency there.

“Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that the first or lowest state of emergency at the plant has been reported by the Tohoku Electric Power Company,” the agency said.

It insisted, however, that, according to the authorities, the three reactor units at the plant “are under control.”

At the Tokai No 2 nuclear power plant, 120 km from Tokyo, a cooling pump failed but an additional pump was working and cooling the reactor, a plant spokesman said late in the night.

In southwestern Japan, the 1,421-metre Shinmoedake volcano erupted ringing alarm bells as ash and rocks shot up into the sky but it was not immediately clear if it was a fallout of the massive earthquake.

In a televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Japan was experiencing its biggest crisis since World War II as it tackled the aftermath of the massive earthquake, the ferocious tsunami and the worrying nuclear crisis.

Meanwhile, thousands of military personnel and civilians joined hands in a massive search and rescue operation.

The Kyodo news agency said 1.80 lakh people were evacuated from a 20-km radius of the Fukushima nuclear plant. Already over 3.5 lakh people have already moved out of the region.

More than 2.15 lakh people are said to be living in 1,350 temporary shelters in five prefectures in quake-hit areas.

International disaster relief teams are being sent to Japan, with the U.N. helping to coordinate the operation.

The Japan government said it expected a “considerable” economic impact from the disaster.

Economists say it is still too early to assess the full cost of the destruction.

Leading risk analysis firm AIR Worldwide said the quake alone would exact an economic toll estimated at between $14.5 billion and $34.6 billion, without taking into account the effects of the tsunami.

The Bank of Japan plans to pump “massive” funds into markets on Monday in a bid to help them stabilise following the linked disasters, Dow Jones Newswires said.

Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei index is expected to tumble, with the index possibly breaking the psychologically important 10,000 level.

The quake and the tsunami have damaged or closed down key ports, although airports such as Tokyo's Narita have since reopened. Rail lines and roads have been crippled along parts of the northeast.

Many top Japanese firms have said they are suspending operations.

Millions are already without electricity, and Mr. Naoto said he had authorised a nationwide programme of planned power cuts to prevent any sudden major supply disruption. He appealed for public understanding.

source:http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/14/stories/2011031458920100.htm

Japan quake causes day to get a bit shorter

WASHINGTON: You won't notice it, but the day just got a tiny bit shorter because of giant earthquake off the coast of Japan. 

NASA geophysicist Richard Gross calculated that Earth's rotation sped up by 1.6 microseconds. That is because of the shift in Earth's mass caused by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake yesterday. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second. 

That change in rotation speed is slightly more than the one caused by last year's larger Chile earthquake. But 2004's bigger Sumatra earthquake caused a 6.8-microsecond shortening of the day. 

The Japan quake is the fifth strongest since 1900.

source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/japan-quake-causes-day-to-get-a-bit-shorter/articleshow/7685317.cms

Japan launches primary push to teach English

Compulsory foreign language lessons start next month for all 10- to 12-year-olds, raising hopes among educators and industry leaders of ending a decades-long 'English deficit'

Tuning in to language ... from next month children will receive compulsory lessons

With just weeks to go before English becomes a compulsory subject at Japan's primary schools, doubts surround the boldest attempt in decades to improve the country's language skills, and its ability to compete overseas with rival Asian economies.

The new curriculum is to be introduced after intense lobbying from the business community, amid fears that Japan's competitive edge could be blunted unless it takes English communication as seriously as China and South Korea.

The new classes, which start in April, will be aimed at fifth- and sixth-grade pupils, aged 10-12, at all of Japan's public primary schools. The lessons will be held only once a week – or 35 times a year – with each lasting 45 minutes.

By the time they leave primary school, children should know 285 English words and 50 expressions, although the education ministry is reluctant to talk of targets.

Hiroshi Noguchi, of the ministry's international education section, said the main purpose was to ease the transition from primary to junior high school, where English has long been compulsory, and to expose young children to other cultures.

"We don't have any specific targets," he said. "The schools have been given the choice of how to structure their lessons and set their own targets. We believe children will leave knowing the basic expressions that will help them on their way with English learning."

The long-term aim is to improve Japan's lowly position in the international English proficiency standings: despite studying English for six years from the age of 12, Japanese students have among the lowest scores in Asia in the international Toefl test of English.

But many of Japan's 400,000 primary school teachers say they are ill-equipped for their new role as language instructors. In a recent survey, 77% said they needed to improve their language skills, while a similar percentage said they required more training.

"I've visited lots of schools and met teachers who are worried and lacking in confidence," says Yuri Kuno, a visiting professor at Chubu Gakuin University, who has been lobbying education authorities to introduce English tuition at an early age since the 1970s.

"The trainers are themselves not trained and most of them have no experience of teaching at primary schools."

Primary school children have been given occasional foreign-language instruction since 2002, but South Korea made English compulsory at that level in 1997, and China in 2005. Japanese sixth-graders have, until now, received an average of 13.5 hours of English tuition a year, far fewer than their Chinese and South Korean counterparts.

Ideally, Japanese teachers will work alongside assistant language teachers from English-speaking countries.

Sarah Doherty, an ALT in Sendai, northern Japan, who has taught primary school pupils as young as seven, says she has had a positive response from the children and their parents. But she is concerned that the optional use of a new ministry textbook, Eigo Nooto [English Notebook], could take the enjoyment out of learning, particularly when Japanese teachers are left alone.

"There's a risk that English will end up being taught like any other subject," she said. "So I worry that the fun part will disappear. And a lot of Japanese teachers haven't been trained properly and are shy about using English in front of the class. I worry that the kids will be shy, too."

But the change has been welcomed by the Japan Business Federation, which says more companies complain of a dearth of English-speaking graduates. Many cannot afford to teach them in-house, hindering their ability to expand overseas as the domestic market shrinks.

The federation's chairman, Hiromasa Yonekura, said: "It is extremely important to foster global human resources, as it is technology and international trade that have supported Japan, which has limited natural resources."

The experience among older pupils does not bode well for the primary school scheme. In a recent report, only 20% of English teachers at public high schools taught oral communication in the target language, even though the education ministry has set a goal of 100% English usage by 2013.

"My major concerns are about the instructors who teach children," says Kumiko Torikai a professor at the graduate school of intercultural communication at Rikkyo University. "They are elementary school teachers who teach different subjects, but they are not professionals in English language teaching."

She accused education authorities of "wishful thinking" for believing that the new lessons would result in a marked improvement in practical language skills. "Singing English songs and repeating simple words in English for an hour once a week will not be enough to equip students with proficiency in English," she said.

There are concerns, too, about the quality of assistant language teachers, more of whom will be needed to teach alongside Japanese colleagues.

"The trend nowadays, after the era of JET [the government sponsored exchange programme for teaching assistants], is for school boards to hire native speakers from private agencies, which charge lower prices," said Torikai. "If you are not ready to devote a budget to teachers, you cannot expect to have qualified and committed instructors."

The programme also faces criticism from traditionalists who claim that primary school children are too young to acquire a second language before they have mastered their own.

Noguchi disagrees. "As part of the overhaul, Japanese lesson hours will also be increased, and we believe children are quite capable of studying both languages," he said. "That is our message: that Japanese is important, too."

The fact that debate is taking place at all is proof of Japan's inward-looking nature, Kuno said. "The idea that their proficiency in their mother tongue will suffer is something you hear only in Japan. Can you imagine people saying that in the US or Britain? The problem is that we have no experience of exposure to foreign languages. We take it for granted that everyone else speaks Japanese."

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/08/japan-launches-primary-english-push

Mobile phone exam cheat shocks Japanese meritocracy

If found guilty, student who used phone in university entrance exams will be first in Japan to earn criminal record for cheating.

The 19-year-old student is driven away from a police station in Sendai, where he was arrested on suspicion of cheating on an entrance exam at Kyoto University by posting test questions online with his mobile phone. 

For a few brief days he was the most wanted person in Japan.

Police launched a manhunt, while newspaper editorials decried an age of lost innocence. Warnings were issued that the perpetrator might not have acted alone.

The crime: using mobile technology to cheat during entrance examinations to some of Japan's most prestigious seats of learning.

On Thursday night police arrested a 19-year-old preparatory school student after tracing the mobile phone he used to its subscriber, his mother. The student, whose name is being withheld because he is a minor, has admitted soliciting help online during entrance exams for four universities.

Using the name "aicezuki", he posted mathematics and English questions on Yahoo! Japan's chiebukuro (pearls of wisdom) bulletin board during exams at Kyoto and three other universities last month, reports said.

Answers appeared within minutes from more than 20 of the estimated 27 million people who use the site in Japan every month. Police found several answers on the site that closely matched those written on the student's exam papers.

Given the speed with which he posted a complex maths problem, investigators believe he photographed the questions using a model of mobile phone that enables users to disable the shutter sound.

Yahoo! Japan, an affiliate of the US internet company, said it would co-operate fully with the police investigation.

Police closed in on the suspect days after tracing the user to Sendai in northern Japan. He was arrested near the city's main railway station after his parents told police he had failed to return home the previous evening.

As well as being disqualified from the exam process, he now faces charges of fraudulent obstruction of business, a crime punishable by up to three years in prison or a maximum fine of 500,000 yen (£3,700).

If found guilty the teenager would be the first person in Japan to earn a criminal record for cheating.

Japanese media quoted him as saying he had acted alone. "I just wanted to pass the exam," he said.

While some said the case highlighted the pressures of the "exam hell" Japanese students must endure to enter higher education, the student, for all his resourcefulness and reported contrition, is unlikely to gain much sympathy.

The education minister, Yoshiaki Takaki, said his behaviour was unforgivable. "This deed has greatly damaged the credibility of university entrance exams, which should be fair and just. It is truly regrettable," he said.

The episode has dominated TV news since the allegations came to light last weekend. Newspaper editorials bristled at the thought that the meritocratic values – whether real or imagined – on which Japan's top universities pride themselves had been compromised.

"This is a heinous act that undermines the fairness that should be the basis of the university entrance exam system," the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

With another round of university entrance exams later this month, education authorities are considering a ban on mobile phones at exam sites, a measure South Korea introduced in 2004 in response to widespread cheating.

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/04/japan-mobile-phone-exam-cheat

Humanoids run world’s first robot marathon race

OSAKA, Japan: Robovie-PC, a toy-sized humanoid, won the world’s first full-length marathon for two-legged robots by a whisker Saturday, beating its closest rival by a single second after more than two days of racing.

Five bipedal machines began the non-stop 42.2-kilometre contest on a 100-metre indoor track in the western Japanese city of Osaka Thursday morning after doing knee bends or raising their hands to greet spectators.

One of the competitors retired after finishing only the first lap, but the others continued running day and night, getting up by themselves every time they fell to the floor or got into collisions with rivals.

Robovie-PC, 40 centimetres tall and weighing 2.4 kilograms stormed into first place with only a few laps to go after Robovie-PC Lite, which had established a comfortable lead and appeared to have secured an easy victory, suddenly locked up.

Robovie-PC Lite managed to return to the track and fiercely chased the leader, but after 422 laps Robovie-PC crossed the line in 54 hours 57 minutes 50 seconds, organisers said, one second ahead of its rival.

Their average speed was 0.77 kilometres per hour.

After the dramatic finish the two robots — both made by Vstone Co., a robot technology firm based in the industrial city which also organised the “Robo Mara Full” race – waved their arms and bowed, to wild applause from the crowd.

According to the event’s regulations, competitors were allowed to change batteries and the servomotors which control the robots’ speed and other functions.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/02/27/humanoids-run-world%E2%80%99s-first-robot-marathon-race.html

OECD: Pre-school pupils are still better readers aged 15

Children who have been in pre-school education are likely to be much better readers when they are aged 15, reveals a study of international test results.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published an analysis of tests taken by pupils in developed countries - looking at the long-term impact of pre-school education. This showed that 15-year-olds who had attended pre-school were on average a year ahead of those who had not. This advantage was particularly strong for pupils in the UK.

The study is based on international tests taken by pupils in industrialised countries known as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The most recent results were published in December, based on tests taken in 2009 by 15-year-old pupils in 65 school systems.

The latest study looks at the links between achievement in these tests and pupils' first experiences of education. It found that in almost all countries taking part in the tests, pupils who had attended pre-school, such as nursery or children's centres from the age of three, outperformed those who had not. This gap remained after different social backgrounds had been taken into account.

Since pre-school education is more likely among better-off families, this can create an early social divide between pupils.

The research also suggests that disadvantaged and immigrant families can gain above-average benefits from early education.

There are considerable differences between countries in how much children are advantaged by pre-school education.

Denmark along with countries such as France, Israel, Italy, Switzerland and the UK, is where there is the most marked advantage in having attended pre-school.

At the other end of the scale, there are a group of countries in which there is relatively little connection between attending pre-school and later performance – including Estonia, Finland, Ireland and South Korea.

The study shows there are substantial differences in the numbers of pupils in pre-school education.

In France, Japan and Belgium it is described as near-universal, while in Canada, Ireland and Poland less than 50 per cent of children attend pre-school.

source:http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=1511&theme=educationforall&country=global