Ei-iE

To mark World Teachers' Day 2011, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) has released updated projections on the global supply and demand for primary teachers until 2015. School enrolment is on the rise in the developing world, but in many countries the supply of primary teachers is not keeping pace.

According to the latest UIS projections, 2 million new teaching positions will need to be created in order to meet the goal of Universal Primary Education by 2015. These projections are based on data from 112 countries where growth in enrolment is placing enormous pressure on already overburdened education systems as they try to achieve goals set out in the Millennium Development Goals and Education for All declarations.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where enrolment has soared in the past decade, teachers are in particularly short supply. Approximately 1 million new teaching positions need to be created in the region. Factoring in attrition, sub-Saharan Africa will need to recruit 350,000 new primary-level teachers per year up to 2015 to ensure that every child has access to quality education.

In the drive to hire more teachers, ensuring gender balance among staff is critical. Countries with a higher proportion of female primary teachers are more likely to have higher enrolment rates for girls at the secondary education level. UIS data indicates that the proportion of women in the teaching profession has grown globally, from 56% to 62% since 1990. Most women were recruited in South and West Asia, and East Asia and the Pacific. In sub-Saharan Africa, the change was marginal – from 40% to 42%.

The updated Information Sheet on The Global Demand for Primary Teachers (2011) is available here: http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/IS6-2011-Teachers-EN3.pdf

The Global Education Digest 2010 can be consulted here: http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/GED_2010_EN.pdf