Ei-iE

Education International was present at the UNESCO headquarters for the World Teachers’ Day celebrations and reiterated the need to see teachers respected and empowered if the global sustainable goal about education is to be achieved by 2030.

“Today we meet once again to celebrate and honour teachers,”stressed Education International (EI) General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen in his opening remarks at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, on the occasion of World Teachers’Day (WTD), October 5th.

This year’s celebration is in a way unique –it marks the beginning of a new era following the adoption of new the sustainable development goals in New York last week, he noted.

Van Leeuwen said that as we commemorate this historic occasion, we should not lose sight of the fact that teacher shortages continue to deny millions of children the right to quality education. The most recent data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) shows that 74 countries face an acute shortage of teachers and that to achieve universal primary education by 2030, countries will need to recruit a total of 25.8 million primary teachers.

Teachers matter, he highlighted, adding that they are not merely a means of implementation, but actors in the education process, and change agents with tremendous impact on the lives of children, young people and adults.

They contribute, not only to the achievement of the education goal, but to all the sustainable development goals and targets, van Leeuwen said.

While the international community agrees  that teachers matter, he said, he still deplored that evidence from EI’s survey on the status of teachers and the teaching profession, published this year, shows that the general perception of the teachers’occupational status is far from ideal. Teacher respondents from 55 countries reported a decline in teacher status over the last ten years, and lower teacher status was reported more often in early childhood education, vocational education and training and among education support personnel.

“How then can we empower teachers to build sustainable societies amid all these challenges –when teachers are not fully equipped with the knowledge, skills and competences they need to teach effectively; when they are not allowed to exercise their professional judgment concerning the curriculum and pedagogy; and when they work under disempowering conditions without adequate remuneration, tools and support?”van Leeuwen asked.

The Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) continues to infect education systems and to disempower teachers around the world, he also condemned. Symptoms of the GERM include control, competition, choice and the promotion of student and teacher assessment as the main means to improve educational quality.

“Yet the best education systems do exactly the opposite,”van Leeuwen explained, underlining that Finland, for example, has improved its education by investing in teachers. “That is why we insist that governments should invest in teachers.”

To raise the bar, teachers and their organisations need to work with governments to develop, strengthen and implement national professional teaching standards and teacher competences, he stated, proposing that, at global level, EI and its affiliates work together with UNESCO, the International Task Force on Teachers for EFA, the International Labour Organisation and other partners to develop international guidelines on professional teaching standards and teacher competences.

He went on saying that EI reiterates that teachers and educators should be empowered, adequately recruited, well-trained, professionally-qualified, motivated and supported within well-resourced, efficient and effectively governed education systems.

He also gave detail on ways of empowering teachers, insisting that it means respecting their human and trade union rights, and giving them adequate compensation.

“As we mark the beginning of the 15-year journey leading to 2030,”he said, “we should avoid repeating the mistakes of the past –broken promises and failures; failure to invest in education and teachers.”

He was also adamant that all governments and the international community must demonstrate clear political will and commitment through concrete policy, legislative, financing and other measures to ensure successful implementation of the teacher target and the education goal in its entirety.

“The teachers of the world, united under the banner of Education International, are ready to continue to work with you, both locally and globally, in your efforts to ensure that all children and young people realise their dreams through education of the highest quality,”van Leeuwen concluded.

The Status of teachers and the teaching profession – A study of education unions’perspectives by Vasileios Symeonidis, commissioned by EI and mentioned by EI General Secretary in the plenary, was also broadly distributed at UNESCO. It is available here

Educators are also invited to sign up for the EI/UNESCO/Global Monitoring Report advocacy toolkit, which is available here.