On 5th December, the United Nations marked 2026 as the International Volunteer Year – a celebration recognising the vital role volunteers play in achieving sustainable development. For many of us who volunteer, or whose lives have been touched by volunteers, we know that volunteer action is present everywhere and in…
When a child plants a tree, something transformative occurs, not merely in the physical landscape, but within the child themself. Through planting and caring for a tree, children participate in a meaningful ecological activity that fosters pride in their contribution to environmental health, deepens their connection to the natural world,…
With the increasing use of mobile phones and the growing amount of time spent on scrolling through social media posts, most of us remain unaware of its consequences for our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Educators are experiencing a novel anxiety among students, first reported in UK in 2008 known…
Access to rich and engaging literature at home is a severe gap for Global South populations, with studies suggesting that access to children’s literature in India is limited to 1 book available for 5 children in urban areas, and 1 book available for every 11 children in rural areas. In…
A recent OECD survey of some 280,000 lower secondary teachers in 17,000 schools across 55 education systems, indicated that three in four of them feel that they lack the knowledge or skills to teach using Artificial Intelligence (AI); this proportion is likely to be far higher at primary and pre-primary…
The UKFIET 2025 conference was my first international conference, and the opportunity to gather with a global education community that deeply cares about the state of the world and education today was extremely humbling and rewarding.
Colonialism did not simply introduce schools to South Asia; it re-engineered knowledge systems, reorganised access to education and embedded epistemic hierarchies that continue to shape modern schooling across India, Pakistan and Singapore.
When I first stepped into the classroom that morning, the noise caught me by surprise. Dozens of children were talking at once — not in chaos, but in conversation. Groups of three huddled over shared notebooks, whispering, debating, laughing, and scribbling answers on the blackboard.