Ei-iE

In a world facing a global teacher shortage, where the privatisation and commercialisation of education undermine the value of public service, Education International’s Go Public! Fund Education campaign stands as a vital movement. Led by the teaching profession, it is working to protect and strengthen public education across Latin America and around the world.

The campaign seeks not only to draw attention to the threats facing public education but also to step closer towards building a collective response that asserts the right to free, inclusive and quality education for all. By focusing on equal opportunities and social justice, the Go Public! Fund Education campaign argues that education cannot be reduced to a simple commodity, subject to market logic, but must be guaranteed by the state, as a social right.

What are we advocating?

As part of the campaign, a conference was held in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 19 and 20 September, highlighting the challenges and providing a space for reflection, debate and the planning of concrete actions to increase state investment in public education and to better value the teaching profession.

The event also served as a platform for reaffirming the 6+1 Commitment, one of the key proposals of the campaign in Uruguay. This commitment seeks to secure a budget of at least 6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for public education, along with an additional 1% for research and innovation. For Education International (EI) affiliates in Uruguay, this is an urgent call to ensure that the public education system is able to respond to the country’s real needs.

“The global Go Public! campaign is central to meeting four priorities: defending and promoting the status of our profession, ensuring quality public education for all, protecting democracy, human and trade union rights, and teaching for the planet. We can achieve this by strengthening our unions through more organising, more unity of action, more members and more women’s leadership,” said Angelo Gavrielatos, the EI campaign director, at the opening ceremony.

During a series of policy review sessions, at which the pedagogical and political dimensions of the campaign were discussed, it became clear that public education should not only be a service that is ‘accessible’ but a frame of reference for public policies that actively seek to close social divides.

The call for resistance to the increasing privatisation and commodification of education was loud and clear. Gabriela Bonilla from the Latin American Educational Policies Observatory (OLPE) exposed how private interests and business networks are accessing public funds, taking advantage of the lack of regulation to make profits and undermining the social right to education. “We must focus on the dispute over the financing model for public education and public money for public education. As we already know, the practice of using public funds to systematically buy services from the private sector has been normalised,” she said.

A proactive agenda for greater public education funding

The event included a round table held on 19 September by the CSEU (Education Unions Coordinator of Uruguay) at the University of the Republic’s Information and Communication Faculty, which was attended by representatives of 16 trade union organisations, as well as representatives of political parties, education authorities and social organisations.

Two key documents were presented at the event. The first, global in its reach, focused on the recent recommendations of the United Nations High Level Panel on the Teaching Profession. The second, produced by the CSEU, contains nine concrete action proposals for the next political cycle in Uruguay. Both documents have in common the urgent call to strengthen public education funding, to protect teachers’ labour rights and to guarantee socially inclusive public education that focuses on social quality and equity.

José Olivera, vice president of FENAPES (National Federation of Secondary Education Teachers), stressed the importance of broad and inclusive dialogue between all sectors of society in building public education policy that looks to the long term. “Uruguay cannot afford to carry on designing education policies without the active participation of teachers, students and families,” he stressed.

Sonia Alesso, president of Education International Latin America’s Regional Committee, presented the recommendations of the High Level Panel and reiterated the need to increase state investment in public education globally, noting that “the world has a deficit of 44 million teachers”, an alarming figure that requires urgent structural measures. “In many countries, increasingly precarious working conditions for teachers and cuts in education are seriously affecting access to and the quality of public education systems. There is not only a lack of public investment but also a lack of recognition for the need to ensure decent working conditions for teachers.”

Elvia Pereira, general secretary of the FUM-TEC (Uruguayan Teachers’ Union Federation - Primary Education Teachers), and the PIT-CNT trade union centre, reiterated the importance of public education as a fundamental human right and a tool for combating social inequalities. Pereira emphasised that “public education must ensure equal opportunities, regardless of the individual student’s socioeconomic background”.

“Public education is one of the few places where a real space is created around the commons and where equality is cultivated in times of growing inequality,” added Uruguayan academic Eloísa Bordoli, underlining public education’s crucial role in building a more equitable and just society.

Political scientist and journalist Gabriel Delacoste emphasised that education policy should never be confused with economic policy. “Education must be seen as a space for building citizenship and equality, not as an instrument that bows to market logic or economic interests.”

The event came to a close with a call to action to keep working to build a fairer and more democratic public education system, focusing on the situation of teachers and the teaching conditions in the country. This call takes on even greater relevance in the context of the election campaign, with presidential and parliamentary elections set for 27 October, underlining the urgent need for the next government of Uruguay to take responsibility for prioritising quality education as a social right for all.