Ei-iE

Thank you very much for that kind introduction.

General Secretary Wasserman, distinguished presenters, guests and colleagues: I am very pleased to be here with you at a pivotal time in the global discussion and decision-making about education and the future.

Less than a month ago, the latest Education for All Global Monitoring report was released. This is the annual work by UNESCO to monitor progress towards the Education for All goals. As you know, the global deadline for achieving these goals – including universal primary education – is 2015.

This year’s report painted a picture that was, quite frankly, very bleak.

I’m sure you have seen the headlines: Governments are losing $129 billion per year because children are not learning. This includes 37 countries losing at least half the amount they spend on primary education because millions of children around the world not learning the basics.

Some 175 million young people in poor countries – approximately one-fourth of the youth population – cannot read all or part of a sentence. Only one in five of the poorest children reach the end of primary school having learned the basics in reading and mathematics.

In a third of countries analyzed, less than three-fourths of existing primary school teachers are trained to national standards. Moreover, education systems are failing significant minorities even in high-income countries. In New Zealand, while almost all students from wealthy households achieved minimum standards in grades 4 and 8, only two-thirds of poor students did. In France, fewer than 60 percent of immigrants have reached the minimum benchmark in reading.

These are the very disturbing facts. But unfortunately, as they are ground through the mill of journalists, they too often come out in a predictable fashion that compounds the damage.

In too many reports, the fault for this is laid at the feet of the usual suspects – the teachers.

I want to say something that is perhaps radical here for a teacher trade unionist: there is inadequate teaching, ineffective teaching, and unprofessional teaching, occurring too often in too many parts of the world.

But the reports of the learning crisis cannot go unchallenged. You cannot trace the thread of a poor learning outcome for students and stop at the nexus point of student and teacher any more than you can understand a poor health outcome by the interaction of patient and physician.

As usual, the truth requires a deeper dive into the report.

The report rightly argues two main points: one, governments globally are not meeting their funding commitments to education, and where they do make investments, these benefit the privileged at the expense of the most marginalized, effectively widening inequalities.

Moreover, many countries have failed to adequately invest in teachers’ training and many have resorted to recruiting unqualified teachers on temporary contracts to meet the demands of an expanding education system.

Second, governments have not adequately developed and implemented – i.e. funded - comprehensive teacher policies. Worldwide, teachers work on precarious contracts, earn salaries well below the minimum wage and lack the fundamental qualifications, skills, support, and learning materials to teach and teach well.

Teaching and learning continues to take place in unsafe and unhealthy environments, without oversight, and which in some contexts boast overcrowded classrooms, scarce materials and poor sanitary facilities at best.

The critical lesson from this report is that the learning crisis will affect generations of children unless governments take urgent action: attracting the best candidates into teaching; giving them the training and the embedded professional development that is needed; deploying them within countries to areas where they are needed most; and offering them incentives to make a long-term commitment to teaching.

The fact is, sustainable quality education for all will not be achieved without appropriate investments in teachers’ competences and motivation through training, continuous professional development, decent working conditions and salaries, and access to social dialogue, matched by the appropriate tools and environments needed to facilitate teaching and learning. The real crisis is not in learning but in policy, commitment and long term, sustainable, financing.

And no organizations have fought as hard as those representing teachers for the resources and tools and proper environments for teaching and learning and to professionalize the teaching corps.

That is why Education International is leading a global campaign to ensure that education remains at the top of the development agenda as the world turns to the next iteration Millennium Development Goals. And not simply education as an issue of access, but education infused with the requirements of quality.

Quality matters. It cannot be a luxury for the few; it’s a necessity for every student. And not just literacy and numeracy. Both are vital. But if we are to truly affect the future, we must aim our sights higher.

A little more than one year ago, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, on the subject of education, aimed his sights higher. He said every child must be in school, the quality of those schools must improve and the product of those schools must be prepared as productive citizens, ready to lead the future.

The Secretary General spoke for the world when he said, “Education must fully assume its central role in helping people to forge more just, peaceful and tolerant societies.”

At Education International - 30 million teachers in more than 170 countries around the world – we have engaged in a decades-long advocacy of Education for All. Now we are aiming higher as well.

We have initiated a global campaign “Unite for Quality Education,” to bring our members and their communities and partners and nations together, in pursuit of better quality education for a better world.

Most of all, it inspires and motivates teachers in our work and in through our organizations, to be the leading advocates for access to quality education in every corner of the globe.

You will hear more about the Unite campaign tomorrow afternoon.

But the point is, advocacy of global citizenship through quality education is not simply in our DNA as teachers and education professionals. It’s embedded in our understanding of civilization. Quality education is not simply a public good. It is a basic human right.

Sixty-five years ago this December, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognised the transformative role of a quality education beyond letters and numbers. It said, “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and…the maintenance of peace.”

These words matter. Our vision of quality education is not only defined in terms of learning outcomes, but also in terms of the full development of the individual and their contribution to society.

Governments and global inter-governmental institutions have paid too little attention to education as a human right. The commitments made in the Millennium Declaration to ensure universal primary education and gender equality are yet to be achieved, with fewer than 1,000 days to 2015. Despite a significant improvement in primary school enrolment, progress has slowed and inequalities remain high. Those who tend to remain excluded are the poor, girls, and disabled children, children in rural, conflict and post-conflict situations and migrants, among others.

Tuition fees and the indirect costs of education still form the single biggest barrier to equitable access to quality education. A renewed commitment to free quality education for all is urgently needed. Being a public good and a basic right, education must be publicly financed.

No child should be excluded from quality education because of cost.

As education trade unionists, our commitment to quality education has never wavered. We believe that a better quality education is key to a better world. And we know the components of a better quality education. Leading our young people from poverty to participation and leadership for sustainable development requires quality teachers, quality tools and resources and quality learning environments.

Today, quality Education For All remains a dream for millions of young people.

More than 67 million children of primary school age and 71 million adolescents are out of school, while 775 million adults, two-thirds of them women, remain illiterate. We remain more than five million teachers short of what we need to achieve the goal of universal primary education by 2015.

Study after study shows the world that education is the stone in the pond. It disrupts the status quo.  When parents have more education, they have healthier children. Families are better able to cope with fluctuations of income.

EI has been involved in the Post-2015 development and education discussions, articulating a broader vision of education.

Quality education is fundamental to the achievement of all other development goals, including gender equality, health, nutrition and environmental sustainability.

This afternoon, we will be hearing about Gender Equality. It is a subject of intense interest to us at Education International. The Global Monitoring Report highlighted the need to address gender-based violence in schools, a major barrier to quality and equality in education. The Report also projects that it will take until 2072 for all the poorest young women in developing countries to be literate; and possibly until the next century for all girls from the poorest families in sub-Saharan Africa to finish lower secondary school.

This is no time for us to be naïve.

We know there are elements of the public and private sectors that would prefer teachers not engage in education policy or the political process by which policy is set. And some of these same elements are interested in nothing less than eliminating public education and mining these public resources for private profit.

We aren’t going anywhere. I want to make that clear. Instead, we will take advantage of every opportunity to state the facts about the critical importance of teachers in education and of public education as a public good and a right for every student.

We know what Nelson Mandela said so eloquently, that “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”

This is a weapon that cannot be wielded by teachers alone. To realize the ambitious vision of Mr. Ban Ki Moon to elevate our education and development goals to nothing less than global citizenship, we must be bold. We must challenge ourselves outside the bounds of traditional alliances, to recognize that working together, we have the power to change the world.

I am here to tell you that the teachers and education professionals across the globe represented in Education International are fully engaged. We are working to manifest in policy what teachers see in their classrooms, what parents dream for their children and what students know is their path to participation as global citizens.

I’m here to say with all my heart, the teachers of the world are proud to call ITU our partner; we congratulate you on this remarkable anniversary and we more than ready with you to take on the challenges that lay ahead.

Thank you very much.