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  • 27.07.2021

The persistent teacher gap in sub-Saharan Africa is jeopardizing education recovery

The new projections released last week by the Teacher Task Force reveal that more and smarter investment in teachers and teaching is needed to enable Africa’s children and youth to access quality education. According to new calculations, to reach education goals by 2030, sub-Saharan Africa will need to recruit a 15 million teachers.

The advocacy brief, Closing the gap – Ensuring there are enough qualified and supported teachers in sub-Saharan Africa, is published by the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, hosted by UNESCO. The brief shows that, despite some gains in the past 5 years, progress in recruiting more teachers has been too slow, and many countries need to accelerate the number of teachers they recruit per year.

Of the countries in the region, Central African Republic, Chad, Mali and Niger will need the highest increase in the number of primary teachers in the coming years (6% or more growth annually). In secondary education, even higher annual growth in teacher numbers is needed: a handful of countries need more than 10% annual growth, including Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Mozambique, Niger and the United Republic of Tanzania.

Countries need teachers with the qualifications to provide education of high quality to children and youth. However, due to growth in enrolment in recent decades, a high proportion of teachers are unqualified. In 2000, an average of 84% of primary teachers had the minimum required qualifications, but by 2019, only 65% did.

The pupil–trained teacher ratio has recently improved in primary education sub-Saharan Africa, but remains high. On average, there is one trained teacher per 58 students at primary level, while in secondary the ratio is closer to 43 pupils per trained teacher. Higher pupil-trained teacher ratios imply less face-to-face student–teacher contact time, less individualized teaching and lower levels of quality education. 

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the lowest percentage of female teachers in primary education, at just below 50%. In secondary education, 30% of secondary teachers were female in 2018. Within countries, shortages of female teachers are particularly acute in rural areas. This has important implications for girls’ enrolment, since female teachers have a positive impact on girls entering and remaining in school.

Resources are needed to recruit large numbers of new teachers, as well as to retain both teachers entering schools for the first time and those already teaching. As the study shows, even when countries cover the lion’s share of their education costs, low-income countries will need external financial support to fund essential non-salary costs, which include initial teacher training and continuous professional development, preparation for blended learning, access to ICT, and improved working conditions. For example, Burkina Faso faces a funding gap of US$97 million in its efforts to provide teacher training and other interventions for 2021–2025.

To provide critical initial and continuing professional development for teachers, both domestic finance and international aid will need to increase, and better policies and governance will be needed to ensure effective and efficient spending.

The COVID-19 crisis spotlighted the importance of teachers, but also the difficult working conditions in which many are teaching. Evidence points to heavy workloads and high levels of burn-out, as teachers have been asked to support communities and ensure learning continuity with little or no preparation or support. Countries and the international community are now looking towards the recovery of education systems, with ambitious plans for remedial learning to compensate for learning losses, which means that teacher support and preparation will be more crucial than ever. But without further investments in teacher professional development, governance and accountability, it is unlikely that these ambitions will be realized.

The Teacher Task Force is issuing a call for greater investment in teachers and teaching to ensure that all learners have access to a qualified and supported teacher by 2030. It recommends that governments and partners:

  • Develop holistic teacher policies and cost them properly, especially in the countries with the most severe shortages. These policies will allow countries to better understand where teachers are needed the most, in particular for disadvantaged areas, as well as to identify the most cost-effective interventions and the policy trade-offs required.
  • Increase domestic resources available for education and ensure that teachers are paid a living wage. Domestic education budgets need to be increased or maintained to ensure they reach the internationally agreed benchmark of national education expenditure of at least 15%–20% of GDP.
  • Increase international funding to education with a stronger focus on teachers and teaching, in particular initial and continued professional development.
  • Improve teacher preparation, support and working conditions to reduce attrition and ensure, in particular, that young teachers remain in the profession. Actions must urgently be taken to protect teachers, whether from attacks on schools or from COVID-19. 
  • Collect more national and internationally comparable data, if better and sounder educational financing and teachers’ planning is to be carried out, and to ensure that the investments made have their desired results.

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The International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 is a global network of over 155 members (including countries, UN members and regional organizations, civil society organizations, the teaching profession and foundations) working to promote teachers and teaching issues. Its Secretariat is hosted by UNESCO at its headquarters in Paris.

Consult the advocacy brief Closing the gap – Ensuring there are enough qualified and supported teachers in sub-Saharan Africa.

For more information, contact: Anna Ruszkiewicz (ae.ruszkiewicz@unesco.org).

 

Blog
  • 08.07.2021

Investing in teachers is investing in our common future

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.

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