Nations failing ed test

Thirty-two countries are at grave risk of failing to enrol all children in primary schools by 2015. In 15 of these countries, fewer than half of children are attending school.

So says a UNESCO monitoring report released last week by Education For All (EFA), a global compact that commits countries to achieve universal primary school enrolment, establish full gender equality in primary and secondary enrolment, and cut adult illiteracy levels in half, all by 2015.

One out of every five school-age child in developing countries does not attend school. In sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia and the Arab states, nearly 100 million children, more than 60 percent of them girls, are not in school.

The report finds that one in five adults world-wide - some 875 million in all - are illiterate.

Dyslexia mum speaks out

An English mother whose dyslexic son committed suicide has said schools should not ignore the condition and should do everything in their power to help child sufferers realise their potential. Eileen Varley's son Nicholas was 29 when he hanged himself last November in the Royal Forge at Windsor Castle, where he was a blacksmith.

She said "marital problems" had spurred him to take his own life but insisted that they were the final straw in a lifetime of rejection, exacerbated by teachers' alleged failure to take his dyslexia seriously. She said she was speaking out to raise the condition's profile among parents as the start of November was Dyslexia Awareness Week.