Ei-iE

As the President of Education International(EI), Susan Hopgood approaches the World Congress with a mixture of hope and determination. She emphasises the EI's pivotal role in shaping a sustainable future and addressing global challenges through public education. Despite a world facing conflict, climate change, economic instability, and attacks on democracy, Hopgood asserts that EI's resolve to foster progress and defend democracy has never been stronger.

As the president of Education International what are your thoughts going into World Congress?

First, that this organization is hopeful and confident. We know we have a significant role in building the sustainable world we want and the world needs. But our eyes are wide open. We see the world as it is, war, climate change, economic downturn, attacks on democracy, increased autocracies, and more. The education crisis isn’t occurring in a vacuum. Progress is not inevitable, it must be fought for and earned against opponents with far greater resources than we have. But despite constant attacks and setbacks, our solidarity is greater than ever, and we continue to mobilise on the themes of this Congress – to grow our unions, elevate our profession and defend democracy.

I am so proud of the work EI continues to accomplish at a very high level year after year. In our fourth decade as a federation, we have built a combination of expertise and reputation to be a force not only for education but for the values of human rights, sustainability, and democracy around the world.

I’m also allowing myself to reflect a bit personally, about how fortunate I have been in my working life to have served as a trade unionist and in elected office alongside colleagues so dedicated to their work and so committed to common goals. It’s a very long distance for a Maths teacher from a country town in Victoria, Australia to travel and I consider myself privileged to have travelled it in such company.

The Covid-19 pandemic deeply affected students, teachers, and education systems. What did we learn during this period?

We learned that our communities may have sometimes taken schools for granted as the heart our communities, the symbols of resilience. But our communities learned about our own resilience. Tens of thousands of our colleagues and friends and family members lost their lives and thousands of schools closed, but millions of teachers kept education alive for tens of millions of students.

We learned that technology is too often a get-rich-quick scheme from the private sector, so we know we can’t and won’t let that happen going forward with tools like AI.

We learned about ourselves as a federation, holding and participating in an average 100 online global and regional events per year, advancing our work and reaching out to be part of global governance, including advising organisations like the WHO (World Health Organization) and the World Economic Forum.

And we learned that we must play a strong role in advocacy about global finance and government accountability to the public sector. The global shortage of 44 million teachers can never be solved while developing nations pay more to service debt than they do on education and every nation needs to root out corporate tax cheats literally stealing from public treasuries.

59 recommendations were released by the UN High Level Panel on the Teaching Profession. As a member of this panel, what is the significance of these recommendations?

There has never been a moment like this, quite frankly. The importance of teachers to the achievement of quality education for all has not always been universally recognised. But now, because of our campaigns, our advocacy and coalition building, there is a strongly shared belief that solving the teacher shortage crisis is a critical global priority.

The Panel looked at the education crisis and a sustainable path forward and essentially said that global policy and governance and the world’s teachers are in this together: governments must increase investment in public education systems, including quality teacher training and professional development, guarantee labour rights and decent working conditions, involve teacher unions in policymaking and trust and respect teachers and their professional expertise.

These are policies that EI and our member organisations in 180 nations with more than 30 million members have been advocating specifically since education became a standalone United Nations Sustainable Development goal nearly a decade ago.

This will be your last World Congress as EI president, what are your reflections and hopes for the future?

I believe we’ll carry on with even more urgency than ever. The spirit of problem-solving and partnership that marked the UN Panel’s work should be mobilised to advocate and fight for the very solutions that were prescribed.

We know we can’t attract and retain qualified teachers and end the teacher shortage without supporting, investing in, and respecting the world’s teachers. The UN said governments need to ensure competitive professional salaries, secure employment, good working conditions, and balanced workloads. They urge governments to guarantee public investment in education and to reject austerity measures.

My hope is that the recommendations from the UN provide a plan of action to member organisations in their national and local campaigns to force governments to address the global teacher shortage and other challenges the teaching profession faces. It’s also a clear mandate to continue to build gender equity in our profession and in our unions. EI and our unions have fought hard for this, and progress can never be taken for granted.

We know that international finance agencies block teacher recruitment, limit teacher salaries and helped create a $100 billion funding gap to meet the needs of public education. The UN called for equitable funding for education and sustainable investment in the teaching profession, protection from austerity, and no more World Bank and International Monetary Fund practices that limit education spending and teacher salaries.