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  • 27.12.2022
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Time to teach. Ghana

The principal objective of the Time to Teach study in Ghana is to generate evidence on the determinants of teacher absenteeism in pre-tertiary schools, and to provide potential recommendations for...
Blog
  • 09.05.2023

Building transformative education systems through holistic teacher policy development: Lessons from sub-Saharan Africa

This blog was written by Prof. Yusuf Sayed to mark the launch of the joint UNESCO/Teacher Task Force report, Supporting teachers through policy development: Lessons from sub-Saharan Africa, at the African Federation of Teaching Regulatory Authorities (AFTRA) 10th Teaching and Learning Conference and 12th Roundtable in Namibia, 9-12 May 2023.


The Transforming Education Summit (TES) underlined that to build more resilient and transformative education, countries must address a number of teacher issues, including shortages of qualified personnel, limited opportunities for education and training, low professional status, inadequate working conditions, and limitations to their empowerment and capacity to innovate. But even while these issues are front of mind for a lot of policy-makers, the teacher shortage keeps on growing. About 16.5 million teachers need to be recruited in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve universal primary and secondary enrolment. Moreover, a substantial minority of teachers have had limited access to training or opportunities to enhance their competencies, and just 69 per cent of primary teachers and 61 per cent of secondary teachers hold the minimum required qualifications in the region. Teachers’ working conditions, salaries and contractual positions are inadequate, and their involvement in policy formulation is limited. In 20 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, primary teachers earn, on average, less than PPP $7,500 per annum.

Teacher policy is key to achieving the SDGs

Target 4.c of the Sustainable Development Goals commits the world to: ‘By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States.’ This underscores the growing global understanding that quality teachers who can teach effectively are needed to ensure inclusive, equitable and quality lifelong learning for all. Multiple regional policies come to the same conclusion, including the African Union Continental Education Strategy for Africa (AU-CESA) 2016-2025, the Africa Agenda 2063 and the Southeast Asia Teachers Competency Framework.

Developing holistic, comprehensive national teacher policies is essential to achieving these goals and supporting teachers to play their part in building a more sustainable world. To this end, the Teacher Task Force and UNESCO co-developed the Teacher Policy Development Guide to help national policy-makers and practitioners develop holistic, comprehensive and integrated teacher policies that address all dimensions of teachers’ work and practices. The Guide argues for a long-term systemic approach, together with ongoing review and reflection to continually improve and align teacher policy to the wider policy landscape, including education sector plans, cross-sectoral perspectives and national goals.

The Guide has already been used across sub-Saharan Africa to develop effective teacher policy. Supporting teachers through policy development: Lessons from sub-Saharan Africa reviews this progress to highlight lessons, good practices and recommendations that other countries can apply. Participating countries included Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Togo and Uganda.

Developing structured and inclusive policy development processes

The process used to develop policy is critical to its eventual success. The review highlights the importance of using collaboration frameworks to develop policy, based on a wide range of perspectives and voices, including those of civil and teacher service commissions, teacher training institutions, regional education managers and inspectors. Reflecting teachers’ voices was found to be critical; frameworks that emphasized social dialogue and drew in teachers and their representatives helped ensure teachers’ buy-in.

Across countries, a two-tier committee structure was found to be effective for managing policy development processes. A steering committee of a core team of higher-level decision-makers provided strategic guidance and oversight, while a technical committee, reporting to the steering committee, was responsible for the day-to-day developmental work. This system helped to ensure that processes were seen to be inclusive and transparent, with meaningful stakeholder involvement throughout.

Using the Teacher Policy Development Guide to inform content

The Guide was used to inform the content of countries’ teacher policies, and was found to be easy to implement, practical and relevant. As the Guide recommends, countries linked teacher policy vision to overall education policies and plans and national social and macroeconomic development frameworks. All countries included in their policies the Guide’s nine key dimensions: teacher recruitment and retention; teacher education; deployment; career structures; teacher employment and working conditions; teacher reward and remuneration; teacher standards; teacher accountability; and school governance. Each country adapted the dimensions to their own contexts, arranging them differently around national thematic strategic axes determined through a reflective and collaborative process. Some countries found they had additional policy-making needs, which resulted in the development of new dimensions, such as social dialogue and teacher autonomy, as well as cross-cutting themes of inclusivity and gender.

Lessons for development partners

The review showed that development partners, including international organizations, bilateral aid agencies and civil society organizations, can play a vital role in supporting countries to develop their policies, by providing financial and technical support and assisting with coordination. International agencies can also help build international forums and online platforms for policy learning and sharing, allowing countries to learn from each other and adapt policy responses to their national contexts. Ongoing initiatives, such as capacity-building programmes for teachers, school leaders and other education staff, can also provide valuable lessons for policy-making.

Holistic teacher policy as a key lever to transform education

Teachers can change the world, but they need help to do it. Education policy reform must place teachers at its heart and as indicated in the final recommendations on teachers during the TES, holistic teacher policies must be created, with teachers playing a central role in policy development and educational decision-making through social dialogue. Such teacher policies can provide teachers with better working conditions and the support they need to deliver equitable learning experiences for all learners, including the marginalized and disadvantaged. Yet for this to happen, improvements in the financing of teachers through integrated national reform strategies and effective functional governance must also be addressed if education is to truly transform and the Sustainable Goals are to be realized.

Consult the UNESCO/Teacher Task Force report: Supporting teachers through policy development: Lessons from sub-Saharan Africa.

Photo credit: Kehinde Olufemi Akinbo

Blog
  • 14.01.2021

What we learned from the first phase of the Survey of teachers in pre-primary education (STEPP) project

Research shows that teachers and educators are the cornerstone of quality early childhood care and education (ECCE). Good teacher training and support, recognition and working conditions are proven to have positive impact on their capacity, motivation and practice with young children, and therefore constitute a critical policy issue.

The recently released UNESCO report Survey of teachers in pre-primary education (STEPP): lessons from the implementation of the pilot study and field trial of international survey instruments documents the achievements and lessons learned from the first phase of the STEPP project.

STEPP is a first international survey for low- and middle-income countries, aligned with the OECD Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) targeting higher income countries. Launched in 2016, STEPP is an OECD-UNESCO joint initiative that supports the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 4.2 on early childhood care and education (ECCE). The project has benefited from funding support from the Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Distinguished Academic Performance.

The survey collects data and information from teachers, educators and directors working in ECCE centres regarding the training, learning environment, pedagogical and professional practices and working conditions. It seeks to generate a better understanding of the situations and needs of pre-primary education personnel and to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement, which will inform policy discussions and measures to strengthen the quality of pre-primary teachers’ work.

This publication presents the achievements and lessons learned from the first phase of the STEPP project during which the STEPP instruments were developed and tested through the Pilot Study and Field Trial. It highlights the experiences of the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Indonesia, Namibia, the Philippines, Togo and Viet Nam in participating in every step of the instrument development, made possible through an effective mobilization of country expertise and resources. The knowledge and experience gained through this phase of the project acts as a building block, generating positive outcomes and constructive commentary that will feed into the design and methodology for the main survey, to be implemented in the second phase of the project.

Quality ECCE personnel is key to building strong foundations for lifelong learning in young children. UNESCO invites all partners to join efforts in increasing investments in strengthening the training and support for these critical professionals. 

 

News
  • 18.04.2018

Togo develops national Teacher Policy

Following the adoption of the Education 2030 agenda, putting teachers at the centre of the right to quality education, the Government of Togo set out to develop a comprehensive national teacher policy. The International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 is called upon to support countries requesting technical assistance on teachers and teaching. It is in this context that the Teacher Task Force responded to Togo’s demand for technical assistance in developing their national teacher policy, through the use of the Teacher Policy Development Guide.

Why was a policy needed?

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the population of primary school age children was 1 180 321 in 2015 but the number of teachers in primary education was only 33 900. Out of this number, only 32.6% of primary education teachers were qualified according to national standards and the pupil-teacher ratio was 41 to 1 for this level. Togo had resorted to the use of “contract teachers” in the 90’s and is now aiming to endow its educational system with a stronger teaching force.

Development process

In order to facilitate the implementation and achievement of equitable access to a quality education, Togo developed a national teacher policy encompassing all levels of and facets of the teaching profession. This policy was developed concurrently with the revision of Togo’s Education Sector plan with the objective of integrating it into the revised sector plan.

Togo’s national teacher policy aims to propose measures to improve teachers’ working conditions and motivation.

A national multisectorial technical team was put in place involving the different education stakeholders in the country: ministries representatives, parents’ associations’ representatives as well as teacher unions’ representatives and representatives from the education sector. The technical team was placed under the overall authority of a ministerial committee. Their task was to develop the national teacher policy following the approach proposed by the Task Force’ Teacher Policy Development Guide.

Togo’s national teacher policy was built around three main lines: teachers’ efficiency, motivation and professionalization. Each main line covers a set of the dimensions described in the Teacher Policy development Guide. During its development, the national technical team decided to add a tenth dimension on the participation of teachers to social dialogue.

The concept of efficiency as defined in Togo’s teacher policy is linked to teachers’ competencies and performance. More particularly, it deals with professional standards, qualification frameworks as well as recruitment, deployment and retention strategies.

Regarding motivation, the focus is on defining structured career pathways, improving teachers’ working conditions, defining remuneration standards in line with the remuneration of professions of equal qualifications and responsibilities in the country, and increasing school governance role in monitoring and following up teachers’ good performance.

In terms of professionalization, the policy looks at teachers’ accountability through performance: self-evaluation,peer evaluation and evaluation of learning outcomes It also elaborates proposals to improve teachers’ representation and participation in social dialogue.

What’s next?

National authorities will review the policy document produced by the technical team for formal adoption. The most important phase will be the implementation of the national teacher policy. Continuous engagement with stakeholders, adequate mobilization of financial resources, the creation of the implementation and monitoring structures and reliance on accurate and reliable qualitative and quantitative data on teachers will help Togo in its efforts to achieve national educational goals and the SDG 4 Teacher target. The Teacher Task Force will remain a key partner in this process.

 

Photo credit: Jordan Rowland/Unsplash