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Representatives of EI, the BTC-Belgian Development Agency, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education for All (EFA), UNESCO and the European Commission held a joint event on 11 October in Brussels, Belgium. They celebrated this year’s World Teachers’ Day (WTD), under the theme “Take a stand for teachers.”

Around 50 people, Belgian government and diplomatic representatives, education and teacher stakeholders, participated in this event.

Need for improvement on teachers’ status

BTC Director, Carl Michiels, welcomed the participants to the event.

“Teachers’ rights in institutional dialogue have been increasingly respected in many developing countries in relation to access to education, he noted. “We witnessed also an impressive increase of the enrolment rate, about eight per cent in developing countries. Much still needs to be done on the status of teachers, their salaries, or in terms of social security.”

“But there are huge differences within regions,” he deplored. “There’s still a long way to go to achieve quality education in developing countries.”

He stressed that access to free primary education is crucial for children to develop competences to become active citizens. Classrooms and libraries are also necessary to achieve quality education.

“Teachers coach, instruct, mentor, and advise students,” Michiels said. “They try to enrich them through knowledge delivered to students, by developing their cooperative skills, for example.”

He informed the audience that Belgium is very much involved in supporting education in Uganda, at secondary level, and in Burundi, for primary education.

Fighting the teacher gap for EFA

The representative of the Secretariat of the International Task Force on Teachers for EFA, Aminatou Diagne, delivered the WTD official message.

She stated that her organisation coordinates advocacy actions to close the teacher gap for EFA.

“No education system can be better than its teachers,” Diagne added. “They transmit their knowledge and skills. They help students become citizens and develop competences. They do not always enjoy the proper level of acknowledgement they certainly deserve.”

She went on to say that in times of crisis, there are obstacles to education, and teachers and students alike pay the price for the crisis. But they should not feel or be fall victims of any financial pressure.

Diagne indicated that it is necessary to recruit and train more teachers around the world. Two million teachers are needed if we are to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015.

“Teachers must be well prepared and qualified for their job, otherwise there is no quality education,” she said. “In-service training, appropriate remuneration and career perspectives are crucial. Teachers are solidarity and tolerance models for the poorest ones in society.”

She further welcomed the fact that this year was the first year that the United Nations Secretary General addressed a message on World Teachers’ Day, so it heartens teachers.

“Together, let’s take a stand for teacher!” Diagne concluded.

Stand for teachers

EI Senior Coordinator Dennis Sinyolo also underlined the need to stand for teachers:

“Teachers are important: they help and inspire children and young people to achieve their full potential, their personal development.”

He also mentioned four challenges in education worldwide: the teacher gap challenge, the quality challenge, the professional challenge, and the financial challenge.

“Two million teachers are still needed to achieve universal primary quality education for all by 2015, 55% of them in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Sinyolo reiterated. He mentioned that 49 countries had a modest teacher gap (0.25/2.9%), while 34 countries had a severe teacher gap (3-20%).

He then presented the number of primary teachers needed to achieve universal primary education by region, with Sub-Saharan Africa needing the most (over 2 million).

Sinyolo emphasised that “in terms of quality challenges, quality education requires quality teachers!”

He therefore deplored the recruitment of unqualified, under-qualified or contract teachers to meet the teacher shortage and reduce costs, most of the time as terms of lending by international financial organisations, in countries such as India, Indonesia, Mali, Nepal, or Niger.

Concerning the professional challenge, Sinyolo tackled the issues of deprofessionalisation and casualisation of the teaching profession, evidenced by the employment of unqualified teachers, short-term contracts, and the trend to reducing teaching to preparing students for pencil and paper tests. “Education is much broader than reading, and arithmetic,” he said. “Good citizenship, artistic skills, vocational and sport skills are also important.”

He later talked about the financing challenge, regretting that too little money is spent on education around the globe. Many states invest less than six per cent of their countries’ GDP in education. The global average in developing countries, Sinyolo said, is 3.8 per cent of the gross domestic product being spent on education.

The total external annual financing gap for basic education in poor countries stands at 16 billion. And less than three per cent of official development assistance was spent on education by the 23 major donors belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)Development Assistance Committee.

Increased investment needed to achieve EFA by 2015

Governments must invest in initial teacher training, recruit and deploy female and male teachers in such a way that every child is taught by a qualified teacher. There is also need to institute induction programmes for newly-qualified teachers and school leaders.

“We must promote social dialogue and the involvement of teachers and their organisations in policy development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation,” Sinyolo reasserted. “We need to improve conditions for effective teaching and learning, and promote and support the establishment of teachers’ professional council.”

He said that governments must invest at least six per cent of their countries’ gross domestic product in education, and development partners must invest at least ten per cent of their official development assistance to basic education.

Sinyolo introduced participants to the latest EI/Global Campaign for Education campaign on teachers, and the study “Every Child Needs a Teacher: Closing the Trained Teacher Gap.” This report advocates for providing all children with trained teachers and closing the trained teacher gap by encouraging governments and development partners to invest in teachers.

“Money put into education is not an expense, but an investment,” Sinyolo said. “It’s an investment in our children, young people and the future of our nations.”

European Commission’s support to education and teachers

The European Commission’s representative Steve Passingham took the floor and explained: “Often Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have a useful role in highlighting educational needs. But too often, it is too narrow a focus.”

On equality, he said: “Despite successes in education, like in enrolment in primary education, there is an increase in gender parity. Nevertheless, more emphasis should be put on quality. There’s parity of enrolment, but no broader focus on gender equality.”

Passingham also advocated for a broader recognition of the importance of the quality of education, the improvement of access to better quality education, and the importance of the teacher role.

He went on to explain the role of the European Commission in supporting education across the world.

“Firstly, the European Commission is a strong supporter of the International Task Force on Teachers for EFA since its beginning, three years ago. We provide funding for the Secretariat of the Task Force, and are Co-Chair of its Steering Committee.

“Secondly, the European Commission provides support to the global Partnership for Education. There, it provides support to countries where it does not have national programmes to support education. It advocates for the provision of quality education to all pupils.”

Passingham also welcomed the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s Education First Initiative, launched one month ago.

Thirdly, he referred to bilateral European Commission/country programmes: “We work in 48 countries in total, providing financing to supplement governments financing. We help governments with l initial training for teachers.”

The role of teachers in securing improved education is acknowledged, he said.

He spoke about the increasing number of standardised assessments done, especially in languages and mathematics. He said there is a strong focus on testing and some inappropriate systems, like paying teachers by results. This system was abandoned in the United Kingdom, but keeps coming back around the world, he said.

Passingham further tackled the following question: What could be the role of development partners?

He noted the need to promote much more practice-oriented research, get much stronger evidence on the positive impact of funding on schools and share that evidence.

The Database on international interventions on teachers

Consultant Alexandra Draxler presented to the audience the Database on international interventions on teachers. It is one of the International Task Force on Teachers’ major contributions towards the coordination of international efforts to bridge the teacher gaps.

Draxler agreed that more evidence on policy, especially on teachers was necessary.

“Basic and comparable data on spending, as well as on the nature of programmes and their impact, need to be developed on specific actions targeting teachers. A few key donors have the potential for expanding evidence-based actions and their impact.”

The event finished with a panel discussion on the role of teachers in the achievement of EFA and the MDGs.

Dennis Sinyolo’s presentation at this event is available here

Alexandra Draxler’s presentation at this event can be downloaded here

EI WTD website can be found here