Ei-iE

Global education union leaders convened to address current challenges and opportunities in education on the occasion of the 70th Executive Board (Board) meeting of Education International (EI) held online from April 1st-3rd, 2025.

A moment of deep reflection

In his opening remarks, EI President Mugwena Maluleke emphasized the importance of this meeting by stating: "The 70th meeting of the EI Executive Board is an important landmark, and we must take the time to acknowledge and celebrate it. It has been 32 years since EI was founded. In this time, our organization has not only endured, but it has also grown stronger."

He added that “ours is a global movement born out of hope, solidarity, and an unflinching commitment to social justice and peace. These are the values we must keep in mind as we turn our attention to the challenges we face today.”

Maluleke also addressed the current global challenges, highlighting the need for deep reflection on the state of the world. "This is the ‘moment’ for deep reflection on what is happening in the US. A matured democracy and the biggest economy in the world. Horrible things are happening that threaten world peace."

He added that autocrats, and oligarchs fear the power of education. “They fear because they know that in the hands of a teacher lies the power to inspire, to challenge, and to transform lives. They fear because they know that every teacher is a beacon of hope, guiding students through the journey of education and beyond. They fear education as a liberatory weapon against darkness and hate. They fear and attack our unions because unions are organisations for Democracy.”

Organizing, solidarity, and the profession

EI General Secretary, David Edwards, started its Progress Report by calling for action: "To say we are living in the ‘upside down’ seems to somehow understate the disastrous events of the last few months and the incalculable damage the Trump administration and his enablers have wrought. Our global union federation, our profession must lead at this moment. It is existentially critical that we organize to grow and renew an inclusive, representative union movement equipped to impactfully defend and advance: The status and well-being of our profession; Quality public education for all; People - Human and trade union rights, gender, and social justice; and our Planet - Peace, democracy, and climate justice."

On the first EI strategic priority – Our profession –, Edwards highlighted the progress made by EI's Go Public! Fund Education campaign: "With merely two years since the launch of the campaign, with potentially 30 Go Public countries and regional events around the world in 2025, we have already seen salaries increase, contract teachers given the stable, permanent positions they deserve, and governments for the first time recognize the value and necessity of working with teacher unions."

He explained that, in line with the campaign EI also launched the new edition of the Global Status of the Teaching Profession Report on January 24th, the International Day of Education. Collecting data from over 200 education unions in more than 120 countries, the report shows critical teacher shortages in Africa, Asia-Pacific, and North America. In all regions, countries report critical shortages in the special education workforce.  

He also reported that in Uruguay, one of the first countries to embrace the Go Public! campaign, the momentum created by education unionists in favour of quality public education led to the election of Yamandú Orsi, a teacher and unionist, at the country’s Presidency.

Tackling the second EI strategic priority – Defending and advancing quality public education for all means advocating for governments to fully fund public education systems, Edwards acknowledged that “this requires our advocacy for debt forgiveness and tax justice and our continued fight against privatization. But funding is not enough. We must ensure that human relationships remain at the heart of education, that artificial intelligence and technology are not used to replace humanity, but to serve it.”

He added that the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Board of Directors, meeting in Dubai in December 2024, unanimously supported prioritizing teachers and teacher support for the GPE2030 strategic plan.

In mid-February 2025, he said, EI also highlighted the global shortage of teachers and challenged the institutions on their austerity-driven agenda and attacks on public services and education workers at the biennial high-level meetings between the International Trade Union Confederation and the Global Union Federations and the Bretton Woods Institutions. EI called for an end to public sector wage bill constraints as well as a new approach to public spending, reiterating the need to ringfence investments in education and other public services in a context of austerity and debt crises.

On the third EI strategic priority – People, the EI General Secretary added that “as a movement, we are committed to defending and advancing human and trade union rights, to building gender and social justice for everyone, everywhere. We are leveraging our power as a movement to defend and advance rights through all available mechanisms, including conventions of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization.”

For the past 11 years, EI and member organizations have been campaigning for the release of the former leader of the Tehran Teachers Union of the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teacher Trade Associations Esmail Abdi and many of his colleagues who were jailed for simply exercising the right to assemble, to associate and to speak. International solidarity allowed Abdi to secure safe passage for his family in a foreign land. Edwards welcomed Abdi as he addressed the Board remotely.

"I was also recently in Ottawa with the Canadian Teachers’ Federation and Canadian Association of University Teachers who helped our colleague Fahima and her family escape the Taliban in Afghanistan and settle in Canada," Edwards added.

Mentioning the fourth EI strategic priority – Planet (peace, democracy and climate justice) – he noted that “we know that education does not exist in a vacuum. Wars and conflicts, the deterioration of democracies around the world, and the climate crisis affect each and every education worker. As unionists, we must use our workers’ capital to build the world we want. As educators, we must champion a pedagogy of solidarity, of peace, democracy and hope to build the world we need.”

On International Human Rights Day, EI held a webinar and launched its latest research on unions leading the way to decolonize education, highlighting the key role of unions in dismantling colonial legacies in public education systems worldwide.

He went on to highlight Korean teachers and unionists who mobilized to uphold democracy and protect the rights of educators in South Korea in December 2024, when the President of South Korea declared martial law to suppress political opposition, media freedoms, and civil liberties. “This crisis intensified the challenges faced by educators and unionists advocating for democratic rights and quality public education. The rapid and fearless response of the union movement became the defining factor in getting the military and the president to back down.”

The fight for public education and understanding populism

Diane Ravitch, historian of education, addressed the EI Board during a special session, “The urgency is now - EI’s response to authoritarian attacks on public education and democracy.”

She warned against the movement “afoot to turn education into a profit-making business. And that is certainly what is happening in the US. It is based on the simple theory that the private sector is always better than the public sector. The end result of this is that public schools are being defunded in order to subsidize the cost of private school education.”

However, Ravitch insisted, “it's a hoax, because it's being pushed by the wealthiest people in the country. Their own children will not be affected because their own children are already in elite private schools. And the irony is that the evidence shows that the public schools outperform those which are privately managed, the public schools are better.”

She went on stressing that “many of us consider it to be very important for the future of democracy and for the continued peaceful harmony of our society that we learn to live and work with other people who do not come from exactly the same background, and that happens most especially in public schools.”

She concluded: “At the moment we're in a fight for the future of public education, I have tremendous confidence that our unions will be the leaders of that fight.”

Andy Hargreaves, author and academic, discussed the concept of populism, saying: "We are here to talk about populism today. The term Populism isn't new. It's 100 years old. In 1967, Isaiah Berlin, the philosopher described it as talking about a true people that have been damaged by an elite. That is the essence of the populist message."

In the Eighties, he said, Margaret Thatcher was the source point of the term authoritarian populism, “so populism can be left or right. But authoritarian populism is about promoting your own elite by attacking other elites under a popular banner.”

He then presented six eye-opening dispositions to start thinking about the issue of authoritarianism: Understand before you judge; Uncover hidden truths; Ask how are we responsible? Work together, build coalitions; View problems as potential friends; and be one of the people, not an inaccessible expert.

Hargreaves also came up with four possible solutions: Make learning about democracy a top priority; Value working class skills and identities; Counter bad populism with good populism; And position teachers and the teaching profession as symbols of stability and caring.

Statement on the Global Disability Summit

The Board adopted a Statement on the Global Disability Summit which reaffirms “the central role of inclusive education in building just and equitable societies.

It acknowledges that EI and its member organizations “believe that this right is most effectively upheld through a social model of disability, which focuses on how societal barriers, rather than individual impairments, prevent full participation.”

It goes on noting that “globally, education unions play a key role in removing barriers, not only through organizing educators – including those with disabilities – but also promoting inclusive policies that are both relevant and effective. This is crucial in a time of a global teacher shortage and funding cuts that worsen the provision of inclusive education and programs that support children with disabilities and their families.”

Resolution on the attacks on public education, democracy, and union values in the United States

The EI Board also adopted a resolution expressing its solidarity with EI affiliates in the United States, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, “as they stand up to defend their students, their members, their profession, and their school communities.”

The resolution says that “in response to an avalanche of authoritarian measures enacted by the Trump Administration,” the EI Board “unequivocally reaffirms its commitment to public education, inclusive democracy, and human and trade union rights in the United States and around the world.”

EI therefore calls on:

• Member organizations around the world to show their support for members in the United States in their resistance to authoritarian and regressive policies, and continue their work to advance public education, human and trade union rights, and peace and democracy.
• Education institutions to reject the pressure to eliminate or weaken their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and to resist further attacks on their academic freedom.

EI Status of Women Committee’s recommendations

The 70th EI Board agreed on recommendations made by the EI Status of Women Committee (SWC), including that EI “follows up on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UN CSW) 69 Political Declaration and communicates with members on how to promote its implementation,” and consider “the establishment of an advisory structure dedicated to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), with a specific focus on the implications of the current global situation and strategies to enhance inclusion.” The EI Board also decided that the next EI World Women’s Conference, will be held in Brazil.

The education unions leaders also discussed financial matters, the EI Operational Plan, reports by EI regions, the 10th World Congress proceedings report, the EI Solidarity Fund, and the composition of special EI advisory bodies and committees.

The 70th Executive Board meeting of EI was a moment of deep reflection and collective action. Union leaders reaffirmed their commitment to public education, democracy, and human rights, and called for international solidarity to address current global challenges. The next EI Board meeting will be held from 1st-3rd December, 2025 in Brussels, Belgium.