Ei-iE

EI welcomes UNESCO’s new initiative, #TeacherTuesday. Over the next 10 Tuesdays, starting on 25 February, 10 teachers from 10 countries will share their stories with a global blogging network. UNESCO will release the stories of teachers who have taught through fighting in Syria, grappled with multilingual classrooms in Ecuador, fought to overcome gender barriers in Afghanistan, and taught in the largest urban slum in Africa, as well as many more.

Giving teachers a voice

Teachers need more support to meet such daily challenges, as UNESCO showed in its 2013/14 EFA Global Monitoring Report (GMR), Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all. But policies can only be effective if those responsible for implementing them are involved in shaping them. Policy makers who aim to improve education quality rarely consult teachers or their unions, however. To this effect, TeacherTuesday is designed to give teachers a voice, and allow them to describe the difficulties of their everyday work. It is the start of an ongoing consultation the UNESCO EFA GMR team will carry out with teachers, with the aim of publishing a teachers’ resource based on the latest GMR later this year.

EI: Teacher unions, key partners for governments

“We welcome the fact that UNESCO considers that, given their reach, teacher unions are key partners for governments,” said EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen. “I hope that as many EI affiliates and members of teachers’ unions as possible will open up about their challenges and their need for support – and that everyone joining EI’s call to Unite for quality education will also join the UNESCO’s TeacherTuesday.”