By Animesh Priya and Sameer Sampat

The Teacher Task Force created thematic groups to build on members’ expertise and support efforts to improve teachers’ status and the quality of teaching and learning. In March 2021, the TTF formed a new thematic group on school leadership. The group, co-led by the Varkey Foundation and Global School Leaders, is based on a growing recognition of the key role played by school leaders in supporting teachers to provide quality education. This blog was contributed by Global School Leaders.

The role of school leaders in fostering quality teaching

Teachers are the most important in-school factor when it comes to learning. Yet improving teacher quality has been a vexing problem for education systems, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Our organization, Global School Leaders, works to strengthen leadership at school level as a means to improve the quality of teaching that students receive.  

To understand school leaders’ current approaches to improving quality teaching, we surveyed principals of 34 schools from India, Indonesia, Kenya, and Malaysia as well as 116 of their teachers and 145 of their students.

We found three important insights for governments, multilateral organizations, civil society organizations, private sector organizations and foundations looking to identify potential solutions to enhance teacher quality.

1. School leaders believing in the universal capacity for all students to learn is key to ensuring an inclusive and equitable learning environment. Our survey showed that 74% of school leaders but only 48% of teachers believe that “all students can learn regardless of the familial background or educational experience”. In schools where the school leader believes all students can learn, the percentage of teachers also holding this belief is nearly 50% higher than in peer schools where the leader does not believe that all students can learn. This indicates that the beliefs of school leaders can greatly influence the attitudes of teachers and foster a more inclusive and equitable learning environment. Ensuring each teacher is supported by an empowering, mission-driven leader is therefore important to foster both teacher and student success.
2. School leaders can provide more opportunities for teachers to grow professionally. Fewer than 40% of teachers surveyed reported receiving monthly observations of their classroom practice by their school leader that lasts at least 5 minutes per visit. Fewer than 50% of teachers reported that their school leaders had carried out monthly in-service capacity-building activities related to improving teacher skills and only 16% stated that they had opportunities to learn from their colleagues. Only 19% of the teachers reported that their school leaders helped solve their classroom problems and 17% of the teachers reported that their school leader provided staff with opportunities to take part in school decision-making and problem-solving. School leaders can function as leaders of professional learning in their schools while also empowering teachers to learn from each other through structures such as teacher professional learning communities.  Improving the quantity and quality of the in-school, practice-based professional development that teachers receive will be critical to motivating and retaining teachers.
3. Teachers recognize that they play an important role in educating learners. School leaders can nurture and grow this recognition to empower their teams. Our survey showed that 75% of teachers believed that they were “ultimately responsible” for their student’s learning at school. Over 60% of teachers believed in their ability to reach the most unmotivated students when they tried. They also believed in their responsibility for both student well-being and academic performance. Similarly, 60% of teachers reported that their students received better grades when they found better ways to teach those students. This supports the notion that teachers recognize the key role they play in ensuring the quality of the education that learners receive. School leaders can utilize this recognition as one tool they can draw on to motivate teachers when they face difficulties. Where this recognition does not exist in the teaching force, school leaders can be instrumental in providing training, practical examples, and guidance to teachers on how to develop this belief. 

Reinforcing the capacity and role of school leaders

We strongly believe in the role that effective school leadership plays in empowering teachers. As part of the next phase in this project, we will track school leaders’ and teachers’ evolving responses to these questions to see how they change mindsets and practice as school leaders undertake training programmes designed to allow them to better support their teachers. It is imperative that pre- and in-service school leaders are prepared and trained and given continuous professional development opportunities to reinforce their knowledge and skills. We believe that understanding the detailed actions educators take can help enhance the quality of education.

Join the event

The World Bank in partnership with Global School Leaders is launching a 3 part webinar series on the evolving role of school leaders in the face of crisis management. The gatherings will facilitate south-to-south knowledge sharing across large-scale programs in response to the growing learning crisis, exacerbated by COVID-19. It will bring together academic, government, NGO, and foundation representatives from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The first session is scheduled for July 21st 8 AM EST. You can register here. Follow GSL here for twitter updates and upcoming information on panelists and future webinars

The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this article do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO and the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

Photo credit: Global School Leaders

To learn, students need teachers who are trained, qualified, motivated and well-resourced. To achieve this, countries need comprehensive, holistic teacher policies that are developed with the close involvement of teachers and their representative organizations. That’s why the Teacher Task Force (TTF) has worked with its partners to create the Teacher Policy Development Guide, which aims to strengthen teachers and the teaching profession by fostering such national policies.

On 7 July 2021, the TTF and UNESCO’s International Institute for Capacity-building in Africa (IICBA) held a joint workshop for the African region on building national capacity in teacher policy development. The workshop was attended by more than 120 participants who shared their experiences of teacher policy development. Participating in the workshop, Ms Koumbou Boly Barry, Special Rapporteur on the right to education at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Egypt’s Deputy Minister for Teacher Affairs, Dr Reda Hegazy, and other national stakeholders from Mali and Uganda highlighted important lessons including:

• Teachers are a central component to ensuring quality education; therefore, it is crucial to listen to teachers at all levels and include them and their representatives throughout the teacher policy development process;
• There are key tensions regarding education access and quality in Africa, which requires effective benchmarking to budget expansion of the workforce against the quest to ensure that teachers are qualified and trained;
• The goal of teacher policies should be to professionalize teachers and build their autonomy. Given the lack of qualified teachers across the region, fully integrating teacher training in policy-making is critical; it should include initial and continuing professional development and foster self-directed learning, mentoring and the creation of communities of practice;
• Teacher policies need to include past, present and future perspectives. They should build on past successes and lessons learned and also be flexible and forward looking to ensure they support teachers’ present and future needs to ensure quality education.
• Reliable and valid data and indicators on teachers collected at country level are key to inform effective teacher policy development.

According to Dr Egau Okou from the Ministry of Education and Sports in Uganda, crafting the best possible teacher policy also requires high-level support within government as well as careful planning and coordination among all stakeholders involved, to take into account the complex, interrelated dimensions that affect teaching and education. As the Teacher Policy Development Guide states,

A holistic national teacher policy that is adequately resourced and implemented with the necessary political will and administrative skill can be a vital first step on the road to achieving a highly motivated, professional teaching corps”.

What is included in the Teacher Policy Development Guide to support effective policy-making?

The Teacher Policy Development Guide advocates a holistic approach based on guiding principles:

• vision or mission statement;
• targets, benchmarks and timelines;
• comprehensive coverage of key dimensions;
• assessing the environment for challenges, gaps and difficulties;
• relevant data and management;
• coordination mechanisms;
• funding needs and sources;
• participation and stakeholder commitment; and
• evaluation and revision.

The guide also emphasizes nine interrelated, context-sensitive dimensions that are essential for an integrated, comprehensive national teacher policy:

• Teacher recruitment and retention needs to take into account human resource needs, how to attract and retain teachers, teachers’ employment status, licensing and certification, equity in teacher recruitment, recruitment of school leaders and recruitment in fragile states and emergency situations.
• Teacher education comprises three stages:  initial teacher education, an induction period and continuing professional development. The guide covers selection criteria, curricula, qualifications and professional development of teacher educators, and mentoring of newly qualified teachers.
• Deployment strategy needs to address equitable deployment, initial postings, the right of teachers to balance family life, managing transfers, and balancing the needs of teachers and the school.
• Career structure needs to reflect the requirements of the education system, and be diversified, equitable and closely tied to other policy dimensions.
• Teachers’ employment and working conditions need to create a conducive teaching environment by considering hours of work and work-life balance, class size, school infrastructure, ensuring quality teaching and learning materials, student behaviour and discipline, school violence, and teachers’ autonomy.
• Teacher rewards and remuneration includes establishing salary scales, and financial and non-financial incentives, taking into account teacher recruitment, retention, development, motivation and effectiveness.
• Teacher standards need to clearly describe what constitutes good teaching and which skills and knowledge teachers need to deliver this. The guide elaborates on structure and content of standards, use of standards, standards for head teachers and key conditions for their successful implementation.
• Teacher accountability elaborates issues of performance evaluation, appraisal, incentives and quality assurance.
• School governance includes aspects of school leadership, and the roles of everyone involved in ensuring the development of a material and cultural environment conducive to effective teaching and learning.

The Guide is a tool to help countries develop teacher policies that are specific to their national context, drawing on good practices from a wide range of countries and organizations. It provides examples of how different dimensions of teacher policy are covered in various countries along with a reference list of existing international and global guidelines and frameworks to guide the policy development process. Building on its practical orientation, it includes various features including checklists and tips.

Key phases in the national teacher policy process

The guide describes the key stages of policy formulation, the roles of everyone involved and considers costing and policy implementation. In particular it highlights the following phases of a “policy life-cycle approach” as a framework to assist ministries in formulating policies including:

1. issue identification and agenda-setting
2. policy formulation – analysis, principles and options
3. adoption/ decision
4. implementation – communication and dissemination
5. monitoring and evaluation.

During the workshop, the representative from Uganda stressed a number of key lessons learned during the development of their new teacher policy. In particular this included the developing of an exhaustive diagnostic study to assist for identifying issues and setting the agenda prior to policy development work. She also stressed the role of strong leadership and inclusive and accountable processes throughout.

Examining the use of the Teacher Policy Development Guide across Africa

The Guide has been used in a number of countries globally and across Africa. A study commissioned by the TTF, to be released later this year, will examine its application in teacher policy development across nine African countries, including the processes it stimulated and the outputs of the policy development process itself. The study will illustrate how the Guide has be an effective tool in support of national policy-making, as confirmed by other countries attending the joint workshop.

For more information about the guide, see: https://teachertaskforce.org/what-we-do/country-support/teacher-policy-development-guide

For more information about the workshop including a recording of the workshop, see: https://teachertaskforce.org/events/regional-virtual-capacity-building-workshop-teacher-policy-development-africa

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Photo credit: Connor Ashleigh for AusAID

This blog was originally published on the GPE site.

Qualified and motivated teachers are the single-most important school-based determinant of quality education. That’s why the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 is calling on national decision makers and international funding organizations to choose the best investment they can make in today’s teachers for tomorrow’s future.

Investing in education is critical to reach the world’s agenda for sustainable development, as well as to recover from the COVID-19 crisis and foster citizens who can tackle future global challenges.

At a time in which so many voices are coming together to support the Global Partnership for Education’s replenishment campaign, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 is making a plea: let’s put teachers at the center of education investments.

Funding and training gaps for teachers

Around the world, education systems are facing massive challenges when it comes to teachers.

In many low and lower-middle income countries there are not enough teachers, and large numbers of them have not received sufficient training and support. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, only two-thirds of primary teachers have been trained to practice at this level, and this proportion falls to only half of secondary teachers.

The Global Partnership for Education estimates that it costs, on average, US $371 dollars to train a teacher in its partner countries. Its ambition is to train 3.5 million teachers, who could reach 140 million students. This will represent about 1 in every 6 dollars – about 16% - of the budget the partnership hopes to spend over the next five years.

This will make an incredibly important contribution to meeting the trained teacher gap, which we believe is one of the cornerstones of reaching the other education goals and the SDGs.

Investment is particularly needed so that teachers are prepared for the challenges that the COVID-19 crisis has caused, notably to enable remedial and adaptive teaching and to ensure that a generation of learners is not lost.

Yet, teacher professional development is just one aspect for which funding is urgently needed if we are to sustainably build a teacher workforce that is motivated, supported and protected.

A call to action for more financing for teachers

For this reason, the members of the Teacher Task Force have come together to launch a campaign calling on governments and the donor community to #InvestInTeachers and increase funding, to:

• maintain teachers’ salaries and enhance their working conditions to attract quality candidates
• improve teachers’ initial education and continuing professional development
• ensure health and safety and provide socio-emotional support for teachers and students.

Students who are already disadvantaged – living in remote or conflict-affected areas, for example – are disproportionally affected by teacher shortages. In many countries, there are concerns about the impact on teachers of low salaries, heavy workloads, high levels of stress and poor working conditions.

The COVID-19 crisis added yet another layer of complexity, with teachers bearing the brunt of the massive upheavals that nearly every education system faced once schools moved to total or partial closures.

During the pandemic, special training to help deal with the crisis was offered to teachers in less than half of all countries and only about 15% in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.

Qualified and motivated teachers are the single-most important school-based determinant of quality education.

When teachers are better paid, their students have higher test scores, in high-income countries as well as in sub-Saharan Africa. Teachers play a critical role in fighting gender stereotypes and promoting inclusion within classrooms and beyond.

During the COVID-19 crisis, teachers not only adapted swiftly to online and distance learning, but also provided crucial socio-emotional support for students and their families, and shared vital health information within communities.

A campaign for teachers to ensure a better future for all

Just over a year ago, the members of the Teacher Task Force came together to shine a light on the teaching community’s role in tackling the education disruptions brought on by the pandemic.

In our Call for Action on Teachers, we identified six target areas where action is necessary to ensure that teachers can support learning continuity. These included preserving wages and salaries, protecting teachers’ and learners’ well-being, ensuring teachers are included in decision making, improving and accelerating teacher training, ensuring responses had a strong equity lens, and including teachers in recovery packages.

One year later, we can see many positive advances. While teachers have been recognized for their role in ensuring learning continuity, there has been a renewed acknowledgement of the importance of face-to-face teaching and the safe space that schools provide. In particular, teachers have innovated in spectacular ways, finding solutions to ensure that students keep learning, within both online and offline environments.

There are countless examples of teachers who have spontaneously come together to create learning groups and peer support, often across borders. One teacher in Indonesia created an online community, which grew to over 800 teachers, and in the Maldives, a parent-teacher support group was created to guide teachers and parents dealing with distance learning for special needs children.

However, the crisis has clearly shown the need to sustain and increase domestic and international investment in teachers and teaching. Our “InvestInTeachers” campaign has already begun on social media, and you can sign up to receive updates on new research and events on our website.

Join us in calling on national decision makers and international funding organizations to choose the best investment they can make – in today’s teachers for tomorrow’s future.

For more information visit the campaign’s webpage.