Iraq: Education union joins global campaign for increased public financing of education
The Kurdistan Teachers Union (KTU) has organised a seminar to introduce to its members the new Education International (EI) “Go Public! Fund Education” campaign.
The campaign, launched on January 24th, International Day of Education, is an urgent call for governments to invest in public education, a fundamental human right and public good, and to invest more in teachers, the single most important factor in achieving quality education.
On February 2nd, the KTU General Secretariat held a seminar entitled “A Global Campaign for Equal and Fair Education”, which included KTU leader Ahmed Garmyani, as well as university professors and stakeholders in education.
The EI global agenda for the campaign, which has along the same lines as the one KTU is trying to promote with the Ministry of Education in the Iraqi region, includes supporting:
- Free, just and good government.
- Decent salaries and favorable working conditions for teachers and educators.
- Fair education budgets.
- The provision of educational technology that helps lead to high quality of learning.
- The development of formal education.
KTU representatives present at the 6th Biennial Conference of the EI Arab Countries Cross-Regional Structure also reported on this event. The conference gathered around 80 education unionists representing 28 organisations in 18 countries from December 14th-15th, in Amman, Jordan, under the theme: “Transforming unions to transform education - Where are we? What role for education unions? What’s next?”.
Participants were confident that the EI Go Public! Campaign will contribute to KTU achieving these five post-COVID goals:
- Improving equality in education.
- Increasing budget and developing new programs and tools to strengthen educational use of technology.
- Providing equal job opportunities and improving the environment of public schools by employing more qualified educators. This should be the priority of the ministry's agenda, KTU stressed.
- Further deepening justice between schools in terms of administration, staff, teaching personnel; as well as developing joint schools.
- Giving more attention to school buildings, laboratories, educational supplies and services.
