Wanted urgently: adequately trained teachers so all children can go to school by 2030

By Aaron Benavot, director of the EFA Global Monitoring Report and Albert Motivans, head of Education Statistics at the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. 

A new paper jointly released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report today puts a spotlight on the global teacher shortage while identifying those countries facing the greatest needs. Under pressure to fill the gap, many countries are hiring teachers who have little or no training. Without immediate action, the shortage of teachers, especially trained teachers, will jeopardize wider efforts to ensure that all children not only go to school but also learn.

How many teachers do we need? The year 2015 is just around the corner, and yet UIS data show that  countries will need to recruit about 4 million more teachers to achieve universal primary education by the deadline. Of the total number, 2.6 million would be needed to replace teachers who leave the profession, while the remaining 1.4 million must fill new positions to ensure that there are not more than 40 pupils per teacher. At least 27 million teachers would need to be recruited even if the deadline is extended to 2030, as is currently being proposed.

Some regions and countries need many more teachers than others. This interactive e-Atlas by the UIS shows which countries have teacher shortages and when they might close their gaps if current trends continue. By far, the greatest challenge is in sub-Saharan Africa. The region accounts for more than one-half (63%) of the additional teachers needed by 2015 or two-thirds (67%) by 2030.

New: Advocacy Toolkit for Teachers

Today is World Teachers Day. It is a day for teachers to speak their minds and describe the challenges and joys of their daily experiences in the classroom. It is also a day for policy makers to listen carefully to what teachers have to say, and take note of their suggestions for improvements in the future. To foster the links between teachers and policy makers, the EFA Global Monitoring Report has produced an Advocacy Toolkit for Teachers in partnership with Education International and the Teachers Taskforce for Education for All at UNESCO. This document underscores the importance of teachers playing an active role in the search for solutions to provide a quality education for all.

It is well-known that there is a huge teacher gap around the world. As was shown in the last EFA GMR, there is a chronic lack of trained teachers as well. Tomorrow, we will be releasing a new policy paper jointly with UIS showing the size and scope of the teacher shortage. This massive shortage of qualified teachers is taking its toll on the quality of education, contributing to the fact that 250 million children are not learning the basics, over half of whom are in school.

Financing the massive education catch-up needed in sub-Saharan Africa

This is the seventh in a series of blogs taking a retrospective view of the Education for All agenda and its subsequent implementation. This blog is by Birger Fredriksen, who was a member of the World Bank’s team attending the Dakar World Education Forum and now is a leading expert on the development of education in developing countries at the Results for Development Institute. Here, he reflects on the hugely higher level of education financing sub-Saharan Africa would have needed, compared to other developing regions, to reach the Dakar targets for 2015 and the importance of recognizing that this need will persist post-2015.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) needs massively increased education funding over the 2015-2030 period to catch-up with other developing regions in the provision of basic education for all. To build such basic human capital is a development stage that cannot be “leapfrogged”. How can SSA become more successful in mobilizing increased funding post-2015 than was the case after the Dakar (2000) and, especially, Jomtien (1990) world education conferences?

I attended both conferences as part of the World Bank’s team. My focus was on how to accelerate SSA’s progress towards Universal Primary Education (UPE). The Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) — which had doubled from 40% in 1960 to 80% in 1980 — had declined to 74% in 1990 and barely regained its 1980 level in 2000. It was recognized among donors that scarce funding was a major factor in that slow progress and that economic decline was the main culprit. Education budgets grew by only about 1% annually between 1980 and 2000 as compared to 2.4% for the school-age population.  But it was also recognized that more funding had to go hand in hand with major reforms to transform SSA’s education systems, originally designed for an elite, into mass education systems. The lack of such reforms was also considered the key reason for the low impact of aid in accelerating progress towards UPE during the 1990s. Thus the call for more performance-based aid and the promise by donors in Dakar to help fund countries that prepared good plans.

The increased donor focus on better plans and stronger national commitment for education pre-dated Dakar. As part of the UN Special Initiative for Africa (launched in 1996), the World Bank initiated in 1997 a program to help “low enrollment SSA countries” prepare better education plans as a basis for mobilizing more domestic and external funding. This work was supported by a special Norwegian Education Trust Fund (NETF) which, over a ten year period, provided almost $50 million for this purpose. Much work was also done (and presented in Dakar) on ensuring that savings from debt relief benefitted basic education.

Credit: Tagaza Djibo/UNESCO

Following Dakar, establishing a global fund for education was also discussed. However, there was little appetite among donors for another global fund. Instead, the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) was prepared (funded by the NETF) and launched in 2002. It focused on helping countries develop good national plans, with strong domestic political ownership and financial support, and on coordinating fund mobilization among donors in support of such plans. In December 2003, an FTI fund was established principally to fund program implementation in “donor orphan” countries.

Looking forward and backward: From Jomtien through Dakar and the MDGs to the post-2015 agenda

This is the sixth in a series of blogs taking a retrospective view of the EFA agenda and its implementation. This blog looks back to Jomtien through Dakar and the MDGs, then to the future and post-2015 agenda. It is written by Sheldon Shaeffer, former Director of UNESCO’s Regional Bureau for Education, Bangkok.

Few people would have guessed in 1989 when plans were being laid for the World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien that it would help set in motion a process which, by 2014, has led to dozens of conferences, organised by dozens of institutions (academic, multilateral, bilateral, INGO, and private sector), and produced hundreds of recommendations for goals and targets for the post-2015 international development agenda.

The Jomtien Conference did not, by itself, create the notion of international goals.  But its expanded vision for education, and the ultimate influence of its six suggested “dimensions” (which later became national targets) resulted in many national action plans and new monitoring processes.  These in turn led to the Dakar World Education Forum of 2000, its Framework for Action, and a set of even more explicit international education goals.  This then added to the process that led to the Millennium Development Declaration endorsed by the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, and eventually (derived from an earlier OECD publication, “Shaping the 21^st Century”), to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Photo: Akash/UNESCO

This historical process was not necessarily a seamless one.  The MDGs, unlike the broader, more visionary Declaration, were not developed in a systematic and consultative manner. This, plus the need to include goals from many different sectors, led to a document which left out most of the Dakar EFA goals  and focused only on universal primary education and gender equality.

The differences between the Dakar EFA goals and the MDGs led to some confusion at the national level.  Ministries of Education were asked to develop EFA action plans and reporting processes based on the broader range of Dakar goals. But at the same time they were required to contribute to national MDG programmes, based on the two MDGs education goals, and to multi-sectoral reports on the progress toward the MDGs.  In many countries, given their long association with EFA and their participation at the Dakar Forum, Ministries of Education devoted more of their attention to the EFA process and did not feel particular ownership of the larger MDG agenda.

BRICS: A new force on the international education stage

This blog by Elizabeth Fordham, Education Specialist, UNESCO, lays out the key findings of a new report looking at the changing balance of education power in the world as a result of the growing influence of the five major emerging economies – the BRICS.

BRICS nations – Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa – are changing the balance of education power in the world today. In the first comparative study of education trends and challenges across the five countries, a new Report by UNESCO, BRICS: Building Education for the Future, looks at how these major emerging economies are getting more children and adults educated, improving the quality of education available to them,  and developing the skills base needed to reach high-income status.  The report draws five broad conclusions from the analysis of BRICS.

Changing the face of education

Education progress in BRICS, which are home to over 40% of the world’s population, has had a major impact on the global distribution of human talent. India’s success in expanding access to education has created the world’s largest primary school system and brought 42.7 million more pupils into secondary education in just over a decade. In 2004, China outstripped the USA as the country with the world’s largest tertiary population and all BRICS are witnessing remarkable rates of growth in higher education.  Today, BRICS account for over one in three of university students worldwide.

Free textbooks at a rural school in China. © Wang Ying/China Education Daily

The five countries are determined to transform this quantitative advantage into a qualitative one by raising student achievement. Parts of China already top international rankings at secondary level and all BRICS have ambitious learning goals. BRICS’ universities figure prominently in emerging economy ratings, and the countries have bold plans to compete with the top global education performers.  China’s National Education Plan expresses this ambition, promising that by 2020 the country will have world class universities and become ‘a power to be reckoned with in the global higher education landscape’.

Photostory: The power of education

Sustainable development begins with an education as demonstrated by the following people from around the world. Download our booklet, released yesterday to coincide with the UN General Assembly, to show how education is a catalyst for lasting development.

Click on a photo to read their stories.

Education is key for the economic growth of a nation. “Generally [education] improves our knowledge of things, and increases our chances of finding a job later and being able to help out at home. School is important because if you go to primary school and pass, you can go to secondary school, and then from there get a job that will help you earn a living.” Credit: UNESCO/Karel Prinsloo/ARETE

The desire for education and freedom in poverty stricken areas. “I regret not knowing how to read or write. I wish I could be educated and free to move around. It makes me very upset. Egyptian society reminds me that I’m not only a house cleaner but also someone without qualifications. ” Credit: UNESCO/ Magali Corouge

The resources for better nutrition and health. “Since we are educated, we read about feeding our children nutritious food. We know that we should keep our surroundings clean and maintain good hygiene, we should serve food hot, not stale, and that we should cover the utensils and not expose them to flies and mosquitoes. In the earlier days, we were told that mother’s milk isn’t good for the child and causes indigestion. But, since we are educated, we learnt that mother’s milk is the most important nutrition to an infant, and breast-feeding is healthy for both the mother and the child.” Credit: UNESCO/Poulomi Basu

The value of education in a woman’s life. “I think education is very important to a girl, as it makes her very independent, and gives her a chance to stand on her own feet. The society looks down on girls, who are not educated, and takes them for granted and treats them badly. An educated woman is respected.” Credit: UNESCO/Poulomi Basu

For more peaceful and inclusive societies. “At this school we teach them to respect people who are from other countries because here we have Peruvians and there are also children from Bolivia and Colombia. We teach them not to discriminate against these people. The work we’re doing with them is quite important.” Credit: UNESCO/Hugo Infante

New GMR booklet: Sustainable development begins with education

As the General Assembly kicks off in New York, the GMR has produced a new widely-supported booklet showing that education is a catalyst for each of the proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.

Education is positively intertwined with each of the proposed sustainable development targets that will replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015. That’s the key point of a new booklet that we are releasing today in New York at the start of the UN General Assembly. For the new global development agenda to succeed and last, it is critically important that we approach the future with holistic strategies and cross-sectoral collaborations.

The booklet’s arguments and findings have received far-reaching support from across the development world, as the quotes in this blog make clear. They will be discussed today in New York at an event chaired by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Post-2015 development planning, and including speakers from Women Deliver, the World Food Programme and UNICEF.

The need to provide quality education to the greatest number of people is interwoven through all the proposed new goals:

Goal 1: Poverty reduction: The booklet shows that education is critical to escape chronic poverty and to prevent the transmission of poverty between generations. Education also enables those working in the formal labour market to earn higher wages: One year of education is associated with a 10% increase in wages.

Goal 2: Nutrition improvement: The devastating impact of malnutrition on children’s lives is preventable with the help of education. If all women had a secondary education, they would know the nutrients that children need, the hygiene rules they should follow and they would have a stronger voice in the home to ensure proper care. Improved nutrition would save more than 12 million children from being stunted – a sign of early childhood malnutrition.

The role of civil society in the Dakar World Education Forum

This is the fifth in a series of blogs taking a retrospective view of the EFA agenda and its implementation. This blog looks back to the World Education Conference in Dakar in 2000 from the perspective of David Archer, Head of Programme Development at ActionAid. David joined ActionAid in 1990, the year of the original EFA meeting in Jomtien. He was closely involved in strengthening civil society engagement on Education for All, and helped co-found the Global Campaign for Education in the build up to the World Education Forum in Dakar.

The World Education Forum in Dakar in April 2000 was a momentous occasion for NGOs and teacher unions, who coordinated more effectively than ever before to advance a common agenda on education. The previous September had seen the formation of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), bringing together key actors who all demanded an urgent response to the global crisis in education. When GCE first declared that there was a crisis, the response from the UN system was more or less to say “Crisis? What crisis?” Yet despite the promises made a decade earlier in Jomtien, over 100 million children were not in school and there were major concerns about quality and equity. It can be argued that the Dakar Framework for Action would have been much weaker had it not been for these concerted civil society efforts.

The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) initially brought together four key actors. ActionAid was already running the “Elimu” campaign which focused on democratising education decision making – supporting stronger citizen oversight locally and forming inclusive national education coalitions to review and influence progress on education. Meanwhile Oxfam had launched their “Education Now!” Campaign, putting a human face on their work on structural adjustment and debt by focusing on education financing and demanding a global action plan.  At the same time Education International, the global federation of teachers unions, with 23 million members (at the time), launched a campaign called “Quality Public Education for All”, challenging the neo-liberal agenda and the creeping privatisation of education. Finally the Global March Against Child Labour, a broad alliance based on mass mobilisation in the Global South (formed in 1997) came to see universalising education as key to ending child labour. National coalitions on education from Brazil, Bangladesh and Kenya also joined the founding meeting of GCE.

Improving literacy for sustainable development

South SudanCredit: © BRAC

Today is International Literacy Day. The theme for this year is Literacy and Sustainable Development. The day will be “an opportunity to remember a simple truth: literacy not only changes lives, it saves them,” says the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, in her message for the Day. It will be an opportune moment for the education community to remind the Open Working Group of the importance of literacy for achieving a whole range of sustainable development priorities.

And it is a truth that literacy saves lives. As showed by our Education Transforms booklet last year, providing all women with a primary education would reduce child mortality by a sixth, and maternal deaths by two-thirds. It enables children to live their lives too: if all women had primary education, there would be 15% fewer children married under the age 15. This evidence must be recognised by those working on the international post-2015 development agenda.

The links between education and development will be further explored in a new booklet by the EFA Global Monitoring Report being released on September 18^th, just before the United Nations General Assembly. The undeniable evidence of the links between education and reducing hunger, preventing disease, and escaping poverty in the 2013/14 GMR–reinforced in our new research–have led us to promote a public campaign action calling on all development actors to support the need for closer cross-sectoral collaboration. Join us in pledging you will work together with others for development that lasts. Your signature will join others in being presented to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and his advisors as discussions over sustainable development post-2015 take center stage.

A personal perspective on the follow up after Dakar

This is the fourth in a series of blogs taking a retrospective view of the Education for All agenda and its subsequent implementation. This blog is by Clinton Robinson, who was an independent consultant working for UNESCO at the start of the Millennium and rapporteur for the EFA working group and EFA high level group after Dakar. He was subsequently on staff in the UNESCO EFA Coordination Unit. Here, he reflects on the coordination mechanisms set up after Dakar to help follow up on the EFA Agenda.

How do you take the outcomes of a meeting of 164 countries, organised by five different international agencies, and turn them into a 15-year collective commitment? Putting it that way shows how complex the follow-up to the Dakar Conference in 2000 would prove to be. The Dakar Framework for Action written in 2000 foresaw two mechanisms: a small, flexible high-level group to drive political commitment, and six working groups, one for each goal. UNESCO, as the designated coordinating agency, convened the EFA High-Level Group, which met each year from 2001 to 2011. In place of the six working groups, a single working group was established at the technical level, which also met annually.

The EFA High-Level Group brought together a selected, rotating group of ministers of education from the ‘south’ and ministers of development cooperation from the ‘north’, thus structuring the dialogue to a large extent around aid. The EFA challenges in ‘northern’ countries were not on the agenda, and this stifled what might have been interesting exchanges of experience from widely differing contexts. The aims of the working group, meanwhile, were less well defined, but the group did provide a platform for discussion of substance, including some cutting edge issues such as EFA and HIV/AIDS, private sector engagement, and education for rural people.