US President Barack Obama mentioned kids in India while stressing reforms in the US school system in order to ensure American children remained globally competitive. He made the reference while giving a detailed answer to a question on education from a schoolteacher about to be laid off,in the course of a town hall open-house in Costa Mesa,California,where he addressed a meeting Wednesday night to boost public support for his budget. Class size is something that weve got to deal with. You cant have a 5th grade class with 40 kids, Obama said. .Whats also true,though,is weve got to provide better teacher training. Now,it cant just be a single high-stakes standardised test but we do need to have strong,powerful measures of performance. We cant afford our kids to be mediocre at a time when theyre competing against kids in China and kids in India who are actually in school about a month longer than our kids. So theres a whole bunch of reforms that were going to have to do. The need to raise the standards of education is something Obama stressed right through the presidential campaign.
