World Teachers’ Day: UN agencies advocate better salaries for teachers
Some UN agencies on Wednesday advocated better salaries and working conditions for teachers, noting that they are at the heart of education and that their work must lead to improved salaries.
The heads of the three UN agencies – UN Educational and Cultural (UNESCO); International Labour Organisation (ILO); UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – made the call in a joint statement to celebrate the World Teachers’ Day annually marked on Oct. 5.
The Director General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay; Gilbert Houngbo, Director-General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO); Catherine Russell, Executive Director at the UNICEF, and David Edwards, General Secretary of Education International, said that international community had committed to transform education – a process that must be led by teachers.
“Today, on World Teachers’ Day, we celebrate the critical role of teachers in transforming learners’ potential by ensuring they have the tools they need to take responsibility for themselves, for others and for the planet,” they said.
“We call on countries to ensure that teachers are trusted and recognised as knowledge producers, reflective practitioners and policy partners.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that teachers are the engines at the heart of global education systems, the statement said.
Read Also: World teachers day: Reps eulogise Nigerian teachers
Without them, it is impossible to provide inclusive, equitable and quality education to every learner.
Teachers are also essential to pandemic recovery and preparing learners for the future.
“Yet unless we transform conditions for teachers, the promise of that education will remain out of reach for those who need it most,” the partners warned.
They recalled that the Transforming Education Summit, held in September at UN Headquarters, reaffirmed that transformation requires the right number of empowered, motivated and qualified teachers and education personnel in the right place with the right skills.
However, in many parts of the world, classrooms are overcrowded, they said, and teachers are too few, on top of being overworked, demotivated and unsupported.
As a result, an unprecedented number are leaving the profession. There has also been a significant decline in people studying to become teachers.
“If these issues are not addressed, the loss of a professional teaching corps could be a fatal blow to the realisation of Sustainable Development Goal 4,” they warned, referring to global efforts to ensure quality education for all, by 2030.
Furthermore, teacher loss disproportionately affects students in remote or poor areas, as well as women and girls, and vulnerable and marginalised populations.
The partners pointed to recent estimates which reveal an additional 24.4 million primary school teachers will be needed globally, along with some 44.4 million secondary education teachers, if the world is to achieve universal basic education by the end of the decade.
Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia alone will require 24 million more teachers, roughly half the number of new teachers needed in developing countries.
These regions have some of the most overcrowded classrooms in the world, and the most overburdened teachers and understaffed educational systems.
A remarkable 90 per cent of their secondary schools face serious teaching shortages.
“Therefore, bringing qualified, supported and motivated teachers into classrooms – and keeping them there – is the single most important thing we can do to improve the learning and wellbeing of students and communities.
“The valuable work that teachers do must also be translated into better working conditions and pay,” they said.
