Education | WPN World People News

Global leaders from governments, international organizations and civil society today endorsed an urgent Call to Action to ensure the world’s most vulnerable children and youth receive a good quality education by protecting schools from attacks, significantly increasing humanitarian aid for education, and planning and budgeting for emergencies before they occur.

What are the obstacles to progress in literacy? How can we quicken the pace and address challenges? What partnerships are possible to make more people literate? These and other questions framed a two-day discussion at UNESCO Headquarters on the occasion of International Literacy Day.

Governments should increase investment in early childhood programmes and maintain reasonable costs for higher education in order to reduce inequality, boost social mobility and improve people’s employment prospects, according to a new OECD report.

As we approach 2015, there is an urgent need to review progress towards the Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and discuss new options on how they can be achieved. United Nations Development Group (UNDG) is leading efforts to catalyse a “global conversation” on post-2015 through 50 national consultations and nine global thematic consultations by March 2013.

As part of the Energy Department's SunShot Initiative, which aims to drive solar energy to be cost-competitive with other energy sources by 2020, Secretary Steven Chu announced today new investments totaling $10 million over five years for two university-led projects to advance innovative concentrating solar power (CSP) system technologies. CSP technologies use mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto receivers that collect solar energy and convert it to heat that can be used to produce electricity. Heat transfer fluids are a key component of CSP systems that transfer heat from a receiver to the point where the heat is needed to drive a turbine. The investments announced today will dramatically improve heat transfer fluids, helping to increase the efficiencies and lower costs for CSP systems.

The study will begin with an assessment of curricula from 195 countries, showing where and to what extent the Holocaust is established in the official school syllabus. The result will take the form of a global mapping, illustrating where the Holocaust is actually being taught.