this is bbc news. i‘m lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: this is bbc news — the headlines: mass demonstrations continue in sudan. protesters call for the military to help them overthrow the president. incident, thousands have taken part theresa may continues in one of the biggest rallies to call for a brexit deal, against the country ‘s president saying the alternative since protest began in december. for would be no brexit at all. the first time they converged on the national army headquarters in libyan government forces try to hold khartoum. they called on the the advance of rebel troops military tojoin them khartoum. they called on the as they continue their military to join them in their campaign against brescia. the march on tripoli. and out with the old, in with the new — north korean british prime minister theresa may television undergoes has insisted she had to reach out to labour in order to deliver brexit or to risk letting it slip through their fingers. something of a facelift. to risk letting it slip through theirfingers. this is may said there choice between leaving the eu with a deal or not leaving at all to dig there are reports of new fighting on there are reports of new fighting on the outskirts of tripoli where rebel forces are advancing on the capital. they are reported to be within 25 kilometres of the centre of the city full of love and forces are trying

to hold the advance of rebel troops loyal to khalifa haftar. now on bbc news — the next generation of workers will need skills quite unlike those of their parents and grandparents. but how will they get them? tanya beckett has been to dubai to find out for talking business. hello and welcome to a special edition of talking business, with me, tanya beckett, here in dubai. i'm at the global education and skills forum, where leaders from the education sector are gathered. some quarter of a billion children worldwide this year will not attend school. we are here to find out what it would take to prepare young people in africa and the middle east for the workplace. but first, let's get

some views from students in the region. what are your main concerns in terms of the challenges you might face when you enter into the workforce? if i ever had any future aspirations to live in iran, i wouldn't be able to because i would then have to complete national service, so it really limits what i could do for my origin country, which i'm very passionate about. i'd really like to enter the politics of iran, because there is a lot that needs fixing. i think that in sudan there are certain ideals about the kind of career path everyone should follow, so for example, people who do well at school are expected to all go into medicine and engineering, which creates problems for everyone because some people aren't that good at certain areas. they are not good at sciences.

at the same time, it creates unemployment because there are more people who have majored in these things than the demand. middle eastern women, even in the middle east, like, we've onlyjust begun to progress as a gender, so we haven't had much of a choice, only the last 20 years or so, to open up our own businesses, auto follow a demanding career path. tasneem, you are from sudan, so clearly, you have a reference point as to what sort of things might disrupt education. right now, there is chaos because people are protesting against the government. it disrupts the education system. some universities, especially the public universities, went out and theyjust stop studying. and i think it caused a lot of problems for people, especially those who are graduating soon. what sort of skills do you think you might need? definitely a broad mind. in finance, it's going to be a very high stress, very long work hoursjob. i guess, commitment is very important. if you are going into finance, you definitely need to have that commitment to yourjob.

otherwise, you definitely won't make it. tasneem, do you worry that there aren't women in the senior roles, and that might be quite often when you look at businesses, there are not many women in senior roles, and that might limit your opportunity? yes, of course i worry, because in certain countries they will make it possible for women to do some things. so in certain countries, a lot of arabic countries in the middle east, women aren't allowed to start up their own business and become ceos, or they do all the work but under their husbands name, or under the name of someone else. well, let's now introduce my panel of guests. there is with me, vikas pota, the chairman of the varkey foundation, which is a global education charity. elizabeth bintliff, who is the ceo ofjunior achievement africa, which helps children get the skills they need in order to enter the workplace, and doctor amy ogun, who is a professor at carnegie mellon university.

i want to start with you and ask, could you put a scale on the problem for us? today, there's half a billion children in failing schools around the world. this is not and in my africa problem, or asia problem, it's as much a euro problem and a north america problem, and so, bearing that in mind, the scale of the challenge is significant, and we have to think about how we address this. and elizabeth, even when they do get to school, as you've highlighted, vikas, they may not find things that will prepare them for the workplace. that's correct. there's a big gap between what kids are learning in school and what they need to be doing to prepare for the workplace, and it's important that we fill that gap. soft skills are very important. those are typically not taught within the context of the school curriculum. digital skills we know are going to be very important in the future as well, so all of these things we need to take into account when we look at the context of what the need is.

there is a big gap, and we are not really equipping teachers and students to be prepared to enter the workplace, and that's critical. and also, in the case of many countries, but i'm thinking in the context of africa in particular, we have a very large young growing population that is about to enter the workforce, but there are no jobs. that's true. we graduate about 11 million young people out of schools in africa each year, and we are only creating about 3 million jobs. the question and the solution can't just be about the traditional ecosystem that exists, it really has to be about creating and graduating young people who are not just job—seekers but reallyjob creators. amy, it seems a big ask for schools already struggling with funding to expect them perhaps to have technology in schools to help teach children. how do you get round that problem? absolutely, and we don't recommend that technology is a solution in every case. absolutely there are cases where the introduction of technology can disrupt classrooms in a negative way, but with the right technologies and the right design for our software, it can absolutely be a support, and so often that can mean working

with technologies that are already present in the communities and not trying to introduce something that's expensive and difficult to work with. elizabeth, engagement is also a problem, isn't it? you can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. it is, and to add to your point, it's very important that we also talk about the stigma of children being in class when they are at an age that is different from what the rest of the class is, and that can be a big problem as well, because it's not a comfortable situation, and stigma can be from society, from classmates, and also even from teachers. would you go as far as to say that sometimes schools should really overhaul their curricula? 0h, absolutely. we are still very much, in africa, teaching curriculum for a future that we know has changed, for a job market that is...

you know, it's no longer fit for purpose. so, we really need to look at the curricula. we need curricula that are more actions oriented, that include more experiential—type learning. we need to teach curricula that match up to the jobs of the future. we don't know exactly what those jobs are going to look like, what do we do have a sense of what they are going to take. we know, for example, that soft skills are going to be very big in the future. what do you mean by soft skills? the ability to work within a certain context, so skills that allow you to interact in the workplace, like communication or presentation skills. those are some of the skills that kids need. i see in my office — for example, we have taken a lot of young interns, and they come in with amazing academic credentials, but they can't present themselves to get the job. and once they get the job, if they are lucky to, they don't know how to function within a workplace. those skills are very critical. but digital skills are also critical. absolutely, and one of the things that adds to this problem is that despite the fact that we know so much now about how to design such curricula and how

to introduce a new pedagogy that teaches it, we don't have teachers that are trained in these new pedagogies and curricula in ways that make it easy for them to convey these new materials to our learners, so once again, our methods of training teachers have to change in addition to what is actually happening in schools for young learners. vikas, would you say that the problem is that we are trying to create a workforce and yet there is a lack of understanding in schools as to how to create that workforce, even with the lack of the resources to do it? the thing is that teachers and educators do not live in silos from society, they do see what is happening in the world. they are engaged in an ever—increasing consumer world, and so they see the disruption that is happening. the question that i think we have to answer — yes, i agree that curriculums have to change, and agree that technology is part of the solution, but as amy rightly says,

how we actually bring teachers on board with regard to these changes that we seek to make, which are fundamental to their jobs, is i think where we need to concentrate and emphasise. this in a way, it's surprising, isn't it, that we are not seeing students do better, because we have seen a technology revolution? are you saying that that hasn't delivered in the classroom? middle class parents around the world have been fed this story about how ipads are going to revolutionise learning outcomes. now, i'm not picking on apple per se, but if you look at the ocd report in 2015 that talks about the adoption of tech in schools, whether it is microsoft or cisco and apple, to be honest, there is no evidence that they or any of these tech giants have led to significant improvements in learning outcomes in our schools, and i think that is a fundamental problem. we overestimate the impact that technologies have played already, whereas what i am proposing is that we are at a very nascent

stage when it comes to the adoption of these technologies in classrooms, and nascent simply because teachers haven't been brought on board early enough in the design of these products and services, in the deployment of them, and that is what i think we need to be focused on. part of the issue is that even when we put technology in the classroom, it's not the device itself that magically transforms the way that children learn. it is people's engagement with it. engagement with it, the engagement with the teacher and the student, and in our studies, we find that it can take two or three years before a teacher understands how to deliver a new pedagogy that involves this new technology, that really transforms learning, and often they are not given that chance. if three years go by and we don't see this transformational effect, it's removed from the classroom, or they are not given the opportunity to go and do more professional development in order to understand how to better improve their classroom with this.

elizabeth, there is sometimes, even when there are educational resources available in schools, girls can't go to them — why not? girls are so disproportionately disadvantaged in education, and there are all kinds of reasons why this is happening. there are reasons as basic as not having access to menstrual hygiene products, which is a big contributor to girls missing class and school time. there are security issues, especially around conflict areas. there are traditional issues, especially to do with girls needing to do more housework in order to be eligible to go to school, or support the family, before they go to school. there are all kinds of challenges keeping girls out of classrooms, and this is unfortunately because we have all the research and data that suggest that girls‘ education can be pivotal to changing the future of entire families. and of course, conflict plays a large role as well, even when the infrastructure is there, the outbreak of conflict can change everything.

yes, and so this is one of those places where security becomes an even larger concern. keeping girls safe while attending school in a conflict zone is very difficult, and so this is one of the major problems that we need to work to solve, how we can keep girls secure, how we can enable their educational opportunities, and whether it is in a refugee camp, whether they are displaced, economically, or whether they are displaced physically. the world over, we have huge issues with regard to how children behave, as a result of the circumstances they find themselves in, and i think that is an area that is often neglected and underinvested in that we should think about addressing. thank you to our guests for the moment. we are going to come back to them very shortly and ask about solutions, but first, what do teachers think? i went to talk to the winner of this

year's global teacher prize. peter tabichi, a franciscan monk, is the winner of this year's million dollar global teacher prize. he teaches science in a remote village in kenya's rift valley. many people tell me that iam humble, and of course, i also know that i am humble, so humility, i'm very sure that is what has really made me do many things. when you are humble, you can instantly interact with people, you can instantly interact with the students, and then the students will be able to listen to you, and therefore i think humility is a kind of a value that is in me, and that's what enabled me to get this award. describe to me what your classroom is like.

lots of the classrooms are overcrowded. students range between 50—80. at times you find it's very difficult moving. as a teacher, you have to move, you have to monitor what they are doing, so it's so hectic, but we manage. what about the difficulties that the children might have? yes, most of them come from very poor backgrounds, so most of the students, the only meal is provided at school. the school provides porridge, because at home, they cannot get meals. therefore, it is very challenging, especially in the morning. their level of concentration is so low because they are so hungry. what would you like your classroom to look like in five or ten years‘ time? it might not necessarily be just having more teachers, but we have to look for more efficient ways, like integrating technology.

i'm very sure technology, we are going to achieve a lot. we will have to improve things like artificial intelligence. but the bottom line is that technology may not replace a teacher. still, we need a teacher, and in this case, the teacher is going to act as a facilitator, and then everything else is going to run smoothly, and i'm very sure learning is going to be effective. it's going to be small. that was the winner of this year's global teacher prize, and congratulations once again. our panel is still with us. we have vikas pota, the chairman of the varkey foundation. elizabeth bintliff, who is the ceo of junior achievement african. and doctor amy ogan, who is a professor at carnegie mellon university. vikas, i want to come first to you. we've talked about the myriad of problems in terms of getting children an education. where might you start with the solutions?

actually, you need to start at both ends of the spectrum. one of the most important elements in terms of how you bring change, and what we are hearing at this year's conference, which is asking the simple question, who is changing the world? it is about becoming better at telling stories about success. in that regard, when we think about one end of the spectrum, we have the abject failure of political leadership. in that, we need to celebrate those that are doing things fantastically well. elizabeth, how do you see where we should start with solutions? the obvious answer is funding, isn't it, countries simply are not providing state education in some cases. funding is important, resourcing is important. we've talked about schools that are significantly underresourced, but we also need to look at making sure we have the right ideas and the right approaches, and that they are taken to scale. one of the problems that we see as nonprofit organisations is that there is such an emphasis on innovation sometimes in terms of funding

coming into these programmes that programmes and projects that have been successful at pilot phase never get the opportunity to see scale. so that is also important. but the other solution i think we need to pay attention to, as i talked about earlier, addressing the curriculum, is really focusing on experiential education, education where students are doing things and feeling things rather thanjust hearing about concepts. that is very important, especially in africa, where we've established that the job creation rate is slower than the youth graduation rate. we need to be graduating people who are thinking about being job creators rather than just job seekers. would you say, amy, that there is a lack of ideas at the centre of this, notjust a funding problem? no, we have so many ideas about how to help, but one of the problems by thinking of it as simply an issue of funding is that oftentimes this leads to providing resources like ipads or tablets without thinking through exactly how they're going to be used in the classroom, what children and teachers

will do with them, what software is provided, so for example, in the cote d'ivoire right now, we are deploying a product in which learners can engage with literacy topics and have fun with them, playing games, trying out rhyming, but it is all happening through feature phones, so no screen, everything is happening by voice entirely, so the children are listening and engaging with these on the phone, and there's software and artificial intelligence in the background that's processing the responses and giving them the right next activities. and they can continue to do this at home? this is an interface that the children could use? they can use it at school, at home, and this is one of the ways in which we can help solve some of these problems where not everyone has equitable access to the physical location of school. well, i was going to say, vikas, the simple

problem is access to electricity, and we know that because kids can't study late in the evening. how might you solve the problem of access to information or electricity? so, it's really interesting. i first want to build on what amy said. you know, the power of education technology is immense, and we are yet to harness any of it, which we covered earlier on. some simple examples — if you take a teacher's job on a daily basis, apart from being in the classroom, a number of their hours in a day go into lesson planning. you just think, all those teachers around the world that exist, why do they all, who are, for example, teaching history... plan the same thing. so you have many lesson planning applications now that can actually curate all the best content, the best lesson plans together, that gives them an advantage. if you take another example, if you take large class sizes, especially in sub—saharan africa, the opportunity that we have to personalise learning for every single child who can learn at their own pace

is transformational. elizabeth, the problem of girls not getting to school for cultural reasons presumably is exacerbated when you are trying to teach them business skills too. how do you get around that problem? i think we need to do a lot of sensitisation with families. we need to train families to think about girls' education differently. and a big part of the solution, i think, is about talking to fathers, who are very much a big influencer of the decisions that are made about their daughters and their daughters' education and future job choices or career choices. i think that that's where we need to put a lot of focus. the girls, we know, want to go to school. it is not for lack of interest or intention. it really is about getting societies to change the way they look at girls, and i think that starts at the most granular level, which is the family level. one of the ways we have seen this play out with technologies is there have been interesting studies that showed that when we provided technological solutions to families and then came back months later to look at what happened with them,

the boys were still learning on their phones, everything was going really well. the girls‘ phones had exploded. so, looking into what happened in this situation, the girls were working in the kitchens and kept the phones safe by putting them under the stove. so, this became an issue with their ability to continue learning, because they had to sometimes hide the technology or keep it away from their brothers. and so i think this perfectly speaks to the idea of educating families, parents and communities about the value of girls learning as well. we know how to do it, we just need to allow them the safe space to do it in. ithink, though, vikas, there is a recognition now that this is an international problem. there is no interest in having children in other parts of the world who are not learning. at some point it becomes

everybody‘s problem. absolutely, and even in the most conservative societies, there is an acknowledgement that the education of girls is fundamental to the progress of the economy and society. i think it a question of culture. there are organisations that don't want this advancement to continue. we have to challenge that, and i think that is a role all of us have to play, whether we live in the west, the south, the east of the north, we have to make sure all girls are in school and learning well. elizabeth, private or state funding? oh, i don't think it is one of the other. i think we need to have both sectors to come together. public and private partnerships have been very successful because they bring a good combination of ideas and resources, and of political will, so i think it's not a choice that we need to make. we need to look for ways of including both in the dialogue and in the change making. i think what we have,

it is a great question you ask, ideology plays a huge part in the delivery of education in the world, whether it is private or public, whether it is on curriculum reform or the use of technology. we have so many voices, strong voices that are trying to guide this discussion. if you take where we are in the uae, i think they have found a great balance between public and private. to them, it doesn't matter as long as a child is learning. i think more countries should actually think about it that way. what is best for the child? therefore, the discussion of private or public is a moot point. we should be more mature as to how we approach how kids are educated. today, you talked about the tragic statistics out there. no government can be proud of those or say that this is only something that government can solve, because they don't have a track record in doing so. but, yes, we do believe that this is a public good, and so we should all be contributing towards the advancement

of education for all. one of the ways this can work very successfully is for governments to fund scientific research into what works, so that we have evidence for providing the right solutions into our classrooms. now, when we work with that public funding, we can transition the things we develop off to private hands in order to get them produced at scale and delivered to the children appropriately. then it needs to come back around to the public space so that governments and administrations are allowing these new tools and new solutions to be enacted in the classroom. amy, elizabeth, vikas, thank you all forjoining us for this special edition of talking business from dubai. and thank you for watching. goodbye.

good evening. saturday bought us a mixed day in terms of weather. there are some showers around especially in the east. dry weather towards the west in general. it is a mild, murky start. a lot of cloud around from the word going. one or two showers that should clear away. sunshine developing for south—west england, wales and northern ireland as well. some brightness for the northern isles and some heavy showers across parts of eastern england. it will be reasonably mild so england. it will be reasonably mild so temperatures around 17 degrees. cooler further north but we have got the chance of some of those heavy showers potentially interrupting the boat races in london. they are taking place in the afternoon and there is a small chance that showers

could bring the odd rumble of thunder around. showers with us as we move through sunday evening, drifting west across england and wales. cloudy conditions moving into the early hours of monday morning with some outbreaks of rain towards the south. another frost free start to the working week but monday could dawn on a murky note for most of us. a slow—moving band of cloud and rain across south—eastern england into wales as well. to the north of that, more sunshine on monday across northern england, northern ireland and the bulk of scotland as well. around ten to 13 degrees or so. 1a celsius towards the south. we have cloud and outbreaks of rain courtesy of this slow—moving front so that sticks around on monday night into tuesday. an area of low pressure sits towards the south—west of the uk, drawing in an easterly breeze through thursday. potentially a bit cloudy on the east coast. loudoun outbreaks of rain across southern england and south wales on tuesday,

some uncertainty about how far north the rain will get. it looks driver northern england, northern ireland and the bulk of scotland as well. the mild air gets slowly squeezed away towards the south, the blue means things are going to be called into the middle of the week. goodbye. —— colder.