International News

More than 12,000 youngsters were found skipping school in England last month after a series of truancy sweeps by police and education authorities. More than half the truants were found with a parent, the Guardian reported.

The crackdown was launched by the education secretary, Estelle Morris, amid concern that 50,000 youngsters were not attending school every day.

The government said it would be keeping up the pressure by ordering further patrols in September. A campaign will also be held at the end of August to warn parents not to take their children on holiday in term time.

Germany's school system a 'failure'

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has admitted that Germany's liberal education system - in which schools close at midday and children do not learn to read until they are six - has been a disastrous failure that has left its pupils near the bottom of international tables for reading, mathematics and science.

Saying that Germany's short school hours were an 'embarrassment', the chancellor called for a policy revolution to ensure that pupils spent a far longer time in class and started essential subjects at a much younger age, the Telegraph reported.

Singapore pupils learn housework

Singaporean children are being taught how to do simple household chores in an effort to make them less dependent on their maids.

Pupils at the Teck Ghee Primary School are now given lessons such as how to make the bed and prepare toast, the Straits Times reported.

The teacher in charge of the school's "Little Housekeeper" programme said the lessons were created after it became apparent that many pupils did nothing to help with housework.

Pupils to help each other stop smoking

Pupils will be encouraging their friends to give up smoking under a new scheme which tells them about the damage the habit does to the body and to the planet

The programme - devised by Cancer Research UK, Quit and the think tank Topic of Cancer - will teach children how best to offer support, advice and confidentiality to any of their friends who take up smoking.

The material for use in schools also gives factual information about tobacco and cigarette smoking and can be used as part of personal, social and health education or science lessons.

Laptops for students in Michigan

Henrico County public schools in the US state of Michigan last year issued every high school student a laptop with a state-of-the-art connection to the internet. Their early results are so encouraging that Michigan politicians and educators want to give it a try.

Michigan already has a programme that provides a free computer to each of the state's 88,000 teachers. Now, support is being sought for an effort to equip every K-12 student statewide with a laptop by 2004.

"This does exactly what education is meant to do, equipping students to think and act and grow in practical knowledge-acquiring skills," said one of the scheme's proponents.

Europeans lack common knowledge

Poles have come out top of a test of Europe's general knowledge, ahead of the Danes and Italians, despite not yet being members of the European Union, the BBC reported.

Britain and Portugal do worst, only getting around half of the 20 questions on the EU, European history, geography and culture correct.

People from 19 European countries were questioned in the survey, carried out by Reader's Digest to gauge the level of common European knowledge.

But some basics about the European Union stumped many of the 3,800 people questioned. Overall, only 52 per cent knew that Romano Prodi was President of the European Commission.