UNESCO and Plan International are pleased to invite you to the international webinar Every learner matters: Disability inclusion and gender equality in education that will take place on Monday 4 December 2023, from 13:00 to 14:30 (CET), on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (3 December).
One of the purposes of this webinar will be to identify challenges and recommendations to be addressed at different levels, including by governments, teachers and families.
The commitment of eliminating barriers to education and creating accessible and inclusive learning environments, as marked in the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development, is essential to leave no learner behind.
While progress has been made, the inclusion of learners with disabilities in education demands going beyond access and providing adequate infrastructure: it is also a matter of assuring their participation, learning progression and attainment, and creating safe and inclusive learning environments.
To ensure that the right to education is fully guaranteed, we must understand and tackle the roots of exclusion and discrimination. Gender inequality is a compounding factor of exclusion of learners with disabilities. For this, education systems must be disability inclusive as well as gender transformative.
The theme of this year’s webinar focuses on disability and gender inequality as intersecting challenges to education. It will also address key topics as comprehensive sexuality education, bullying and violence, school health and nutrition. Examples of good practices from different regions of the world will be presented by a wide range of experts and stakeholders.
The event will take place through the Zoom platform and will be available in English, French and Spanish with International Sign Language interpretation. Automatic closed captions will be provided through Zoom.
To join the webinar on Zoom, please register in advance.
UNESCO and Plan International are pleased to invite you to the international webinar Every learner matters: Disability inclusion and gender equality in education that will take place on Monday 4 December 2023, from 13:00 to 14:30 (CET), on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (3 December).
One of the purposes of this webinar will be to identify challenges and recommendations to be addressed at different levels, including by governments, teachers and families.
The commitment of eliminating barriers to education and creating accessible and inclusive learning environments, as marked in the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development, is essential to leave no learner behind.
While progress has been made, the inclusion of learners with disabilities in education demands going beyond access and providing adequate infrastructure: it is also a matter of assuring their participation, learning progression and attainment, and creating safe and inclusive learning environments.
To ensure that the right to education is fully guaranteed, we must understand and tackle the roots of exclusion and discrimination. Gender inequality is a compounding factor of exclusion of learners with disabilities. For this, education systems must be disability inclusive as well as gender transformative.
The theme of this year’s webinar focuses on disability and gender inequality as intersecting challenges to education. It will also address key topics as comprehensive sexuality education, bullying and violence, school health and nutrition. Examples of good practices from different regions of the world will be presented by a wide range of experts and stakeholders.
The event will take place through the Zoom platform and will be available in English, French and Spanish with International Sign Language interpretation. Automatic closed captions will be provided through Zoom.
To join the webinar on Zoom, please register in advance.
30 November - 12 December 2023
Consult the list of UNESCO education events tackling teacher capacity-building and greening teacher training.
UNESCO is actively involved in accelerating climate change education and will showcase its efforts at the global stage during this year's United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 30 November to 12 December 2023. This international event provides a valuable platform for securing commitments and actions from countries regarding climate change education.
hroughout the 13-day event, UNESCO will co-host a series of events highlighting the essential role of education in getting every learner climate-ready. In collaboration with the UAE Ministry of Education UNESCO as secretariat to the Greening Education Partnership will establish the first historical Greening Education Hub, featuring over 200 sessions organized to promote concrete actions and solutions through education. Youth members of the Partnership will also play a leading role in the dialogue and paving the next steps.
Objectives
The following is an overview of UNESCO-related events taking place at COP28.
30 November-12 December, Green Zone, Expo City, Dubai, UAE
The inaugural Greening Education Hub, known as the Greening Education Hub: LEGACY – إ ث from the Land of Zayed, will be set up in the green zone. The hub is hosted by the UAE Ministry of Education, co-organised with the Greening Education Partnership, supported by its UNESCO secretariat. The space and the corresponding events will emphasize education's pivotal role in addressing the climate crisis.
The hub is designed around the four action pillars of the Greening Education Partnership: greening schools, greening curriculum, greening teacher training and education system's capacities, and greening communities.
The programming will include:
8 December 2023, Green Zone, Expo City, Dubai, UAE
High-level session on greening education
On the occasion of Youth and Education Day, UNESCO in partnership with the Ministry of Education of UAE will organize a session focusing on youth-based action to green education. Key stakeholders will engage in discussions on accelerating green education across the world. The objective of this event is to secure political support and strengthen the global commitment on the common agenda for education and climate change at COP28 and beyond.
During the event, The Declaration on the Common Agenda for Education and Climate Change at COP28, which was drafted on input from the GEP members countries, will be presented. It aims to strengthen and renew the country commitments and actions at COP28 and beyond on the role of education in adapting and mitigating climate change and the need for more investment to accelerate greening education globally.
The high-level session will be followed by technical concurrent sessions on boosting the objectives of the Greening Education Partnership and accelerating action on the four pillars. Members working on each pillar will gather to discuss next steps and activities for achieving the Partnerships’ mission.
9 December 2023, Green zone, Expo City Dubai, UAE
This session will focus on reflections on the achievements of the member groups working on the four pillars and discuss the way forward, highlighting elements in the annual report and key data and evidence from the baseline survey report.
12 December 14:00-15:00 UTC+1
This session marks the end of the second season of UNFCCC-UNESCO webinars. It will review COP28, discussing what we've learned, achieved, committed to, and where we go next in promoting climate change education, with a focus on greening schools.
In the previous webinars, we explored how schools can go "green" by incorporating Education for Sustainable Development into their teaching, facilities, governance, and community engagement. Building on the commitments made at COP28 by governments and others, the discussion will revolve around how to encourage cooperation across different sectors and among various stakeholders, bridging governments and society to support global efforts in making education and schools more environmentally conscious.
This session will tackle these questions:
This blog post originally appeared on the Global Partnership for Education's "Education for All" Blog on 9 November 2023.
As we approach 2030, we face a significant challenge: the global shortage of teachers. However, there’s room for optimism. The forthcoming Global Report on Teachers, a collaborative effort by the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 and UNESCO, promises insights and solutions to tackle this issue.
Teachers play a transformative role in shaping the future. They are central to unlocking every child’s potential and driving the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4, focused on providing inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030. Yet, near the midpoint of 2030, we are confronted with the alarming reality of a pervasive global teacher shortage. To help us understand this problem and how to tackle it, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 and UNESCO will release the first Global Report on Teachers in early 2024 during the 14th Policy Dialogue Forum.
Among the most concerning new findings in the report is the urgent need for more teachers. Meeting the ambitious goal of providing quality education for all by 2030 requires a staggering 44 million new primary and secondary teachers worldwide.
This shortage has far-reaching consequences, including overburdened teachers, large class sizes, educational inequalities and increased financial strain on educational systems. Attrition rates of primary education teachers have nearly doubled globally between 2015 and 2022, from 4.6% to 9%, with teachers often leaving the profession within their first 5 years.
The issue of teacher shortage is not limited to any specific region, it affects countries at different income levels alike.
The Global Report on Teachers stresses that addressing teacher shortages is a complex challenge requiring a holistic and systemic approach that is inclusive, mindful of gender equality and teachers’ quality of life. To ensure we have an adequate supply of qualified and motivated teachers, we must collect more and better data, and look beyond recruitment. We need to consider teacher motivation, well-being, retention, training, working conditions and social status to have a comprehensive solution for the global teacher shortage.
One critical strategy is the creation of attractive career pathways with equitable access to professional development for teachers. Ensuring teachers have a sense of agency, autonomy and purpose in their profession can go a long way in sustaining motivation throughout their careers. Inclusive policies that promote gender equality in the teaching profession, as highlighted in the report, are vital as a teaching workforce should reflect the diversity of the communities it serves, enhancing the relevance of education and enriching students’ learning experience in turn.
It’s vital to address the underrepresentation of women in specific subjects, upper levels of education and leadership positions, while also encouraging men to enter and remain in teaching.
Furthermore, teacher wellbeing and motivation are closely linked to their working conditions. We can increase the number of quality teachers by fostering a collaborative school culture characterized by mutual support. Involving teachers in the decision-making that impacts on their professional life can lead to them being more satisfied in their role, extending to how they engage in the classroom in a positive way.
Adequate domestic expenditure on education is crucial to financing education, as are competitive teacher salaries in the broader labor market that enhance teachers’ sense of value within society. Investing in teachers within their first years of joining the profession can be a sustainable strategy to simultaneously curb teacher attrition and address shortages.
The effects of these realities on teachers and on the children and adolescents they teach are profound. For example, in Colombia, which witnessed 83 attacks in 2021 (UIS, 2023), teachers report that threats and acts of violence shift the quality of their teaching practices. Some teachers also report that violence alters their sense of trust and the authenticity of their engagement with pupils and their families. Some teachers further reported they avoid teaching certain subjects due to the violence that state-sanctioned histories can incite.
Some teachers who actively engage in peacebuilding efforts to curb the recruitment of their pupils into armed forces have also been targeted by paramilitary groups. In Colombia’s El Salado community, for example, all 25 teachers working at one school received messages from a paramilitary group threatening to extreme violence against the teachers themselves. Incidents like these are not isolated.
In Afghanistan, where the Taliban has re-ascended, there are reports of numerous education leaders being threatened, arrested, or killed for promoting girls’ education. Elsewhere, armed extremists like Boko Haram in Nigeria oppose western-oriented education and have threatened, killed, or abducted teachers to prevent them from teaching national curricula (GCPEA, 2022). Teachers share that their morale is deeply affected by attacks on their colleagues, with the daily insecurity that they experience making it almost impossible to teach.
In Syria, GCPEA describes how resistance forces target and forcibly conscript teachers. In Myanmar, teachers aligned with the resistance National Unity Government (NUG), which is in opposition to the current government, have been targeted. Over 40 teachers were abducted and killed in 2021 alone.
The global teacher shortage is not just about quantity, but also the quality of teachers we prepare and retain for the teaching workforce. The Global Report on Teachers aims to offer evidence-informed solutions to this complex issue to ensure every child can have a qualified and motivated teacher. The report recasts teaching as a collaborative profession, recognizing professional development as a lifelong learning journey, prompts social dialogue to improve teachers' working conditions and status and promotes teacher engagement in decision-making and public debate on education.
Highlights from the Global Report on Teachers were presented at an event during UNESCO’s General Conference, marking an important milestone in collective efforts to overcome the teacher shortage crisis. This event not only celebrated progress, but also underscored the pressing need for international cooperation to expand outreach of teacher policies and to encourage mutual learning. Together, we can build a world where every child has the opportunity to learn and thrive, and where teachers are appreciated as the foundation of a brighter future.
For more information, please visit:
Title image: Teacher Sreytouch Leng and her students in class in Prey Veng, Cambodia. Credit: UNESCO/Erika Pineros.
Join us for the launch of the World Bank’s Making Teacher Policy Work report.
The report explores why, despite the growing evidence on effective teacher policies, we still do not observe high-quality teaching and learning in action in every classroom.
The report argues that we need to go beyond the theory of what works in teacher policy to how to support teachers in different contexts to adopt what works, while making sure it is implementable at scale and can be sustained over time.
This event will kick off by introducing the key messages from Making Teacher Policy Work. Following this, a panel including policymakers, teachers, and researchers from around the world will discuss the importance of putting teachers at the center of education policymaking and to share challenges, opportunities, and promising innovations in teacher policy.
We will explore new perspectives on questions such as: Why do pay for performance programs often fail to improve student learning? How can policymakers address global teacher shortages? How can teacher professional development most effectively support teachers to adopt new practices, including the use of technology, to improve their lessons?
REGISTER HERE to participate in the event. The event will be live streamed for participants who are not based in Washington, D.C.
The call for applications is open.
The World Giftedness Center (WGC) of the Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Distinguished Academic Performance aims to support best practices and distinguished efforts in gifted education, talent development, and related areas. WGC has launched two awards to enhance quality talented education around the world:
The deadline for application to both awards is 19 November 2023 and the award prize is of USD 25,000 for each.
Applications should be submitted here, and any questions should be sent to wgc.awards@ha.ae.
Please consult all the information on the official website of the Award.