The International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 (TTF), as stated in its mission and as one of the specific objectives of its 2018-2021 Strategic Plan, is called upon to support countries requesting technical assistance on teachers and teaching. It is in this context that the TTF supported Madagascar in developing its national teacher policy through the use of the Teacher Policy Development Guide. The policy was validated in March 2018.

Identifying the needs

Madagascar is facing significant challenges in its recruitment of a qualified teacher force. Indeed, according to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the pupil to qualified teacher ratio in primary education in the country was 40 to 7 in 2016. Furthermore, the proportion of teachers who have received at least the minimum organized teacher training was 14.87% in 2016. It is estimated that 22 000 new teachers will need to be recruited by 2022.

Development process

The country started the review of its national education sector plan in 2014 and aimed at including a teacher policy component. While developing its new education sector plan, the country created a thematic group dedicated to the conduct of a diagnostic study on the situation of teachers in the country, using the UNESCO Methodological Guide for the Analysis of Teacher Issues. This group, under the supervision of the ministries in charge of education, included various stakeholders: economists, demographists, ministries representatives, teacher unions’ representatives, education NGOs representatives, Ministry of Finance representatives, parents’ associations’ representatives, sociologists and representatives of from the Ministry of Public Service.

Through a large consultation process, the diagnostic study highlighted amongst other things, the increasing demands for teachers, the low performance of students, the increasing number of teachers recruited with no professional training, the incapacity of teacher training institutions to train and the need for better teacher recruitment planning. Based on the diagnostic study results, the dedicated thematic group, involving the country’s three ministries of education, provided training on needs analyses, data collection and teacher policy development.

Following guidelines from the Teacher Policy Development Guide, the national teacher policy was developed with means of action that articulate how the nine different dimensions established in the Guide should be implemented by each of the Ministries involved.

What’s next?

Following its adoption by the Government and National Assembly, Madagascar will begin implementing its policy, starting with mobilizing resources and doing advocacy work to raise awareness on the teacher policy within the national education community.

The Teacher Task Force and the World Bank are joining forces to see how data can benefit the development of teacher policies.

Using the Systems Approach for Better Education Results for Teachers (SABER-Teachers) tools and guidelines, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 (Teacher Task Force) is collaborating with the World Bank to carry out a stocktaking review of the requirements of the teaching profession in 25 countries. The study covers the following regions of the world: Europe (France, Ireland, Slovenia, Norway, Turkey, Croatia), Arab States (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria), Sub-Saharan Africa (DR Congo, Mauritania, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ghana), Latin America and the Caribbean (Haiti, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil), Asia (India – Karnataka, Lao PDR, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand).

The review was guided by the following questions: what is the minimum level of academic qualification required to become a teacher? What are the main tasks performed by teachers? What system is put forward to guide salary packages, deployment and transfer of teachers? What criteria guides teacher performance evaluation? What solutions have countries put forward or envisaged? What does this review suggest as recommendations in order to improve the situation?

All data collection, related analysis and report preparations were completed by the Teacher Task Force with support from staff of the World Bank Group.

Data for better policies

The SABER-Teachers is an initiative from the World Bank to produce comparative data and knowledge on education policies and institutions, with the aim of helping countries systematically strengthen their education systems.

The main goal of teacher policies is to ensure that every classroom has a motivated, supported and competent teacher at its helm. However, evidence on the impact of teacher policies on the ground remain insufficient and scarce. Indeed, teacher policies’ impact can vastly differ based on the national context and the other education policies already in place.

SABER-Teachers helps governments strengthen their frameworks for effective teaching by identifying gaps in their teacher policies. To this end, SABER-Teachers analyses teacher policies formally adopted by a given education system. These studies aim to fill these gaps by disseminating comprehensive information on teacher policies based on data collected and analysed from various countries.

Country reports

The reports produced from this collaboration will focus specifically on policies in the area of teachers. To this end, the following eight teacher policy goals have been set up for evaluation:

• Setting Clear Expectations for Teachers
• Attracting the Best into Teaching
• Preparing Teachers with Useful Training and Experience
• Matching Teachers’ Skills with Students’ Needs
• Leading Teachers with Strong Principals
• Monitoring Teaching and Learning
• Supporting Teachers to Improve Instruction
• Motivating Teachers to Perform

To identify these goals, three criteria were applied. Each goal had to be linked to student performance through empirical evidence. They had to be a priority for resource allocation, and they had to be actionable, meaning that they identified actions that governments could take to strengthen education policy.

The resulting reports describe the performance of each country’s Education system in achieving each of the eight teacher policy goals. They also contain comparative information from education systems that have consistently scored highly on international student achievement tests and those that have previously participated in the SABER-Teachers initiative.

The first reports from this collaboration to be published are from Singapore, Croatia and Norway. The upcoming reports to be published in 2018 are the following: Slovenia, France, Qatar, Namibia, Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines. 

Reports from this collection are available in our library. More reports are available on the SABER website.