This Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report underlines the fact that people in the most marginalised groups have continued to be denied opportunities for education over the decade. It argues for an accelerated progress in the final stages of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and proposes a robust global post-2015 education framework to tackle unfinished business while addressing new challenges. Post-2015 education goals will only be achieved if accompanied by clear, measurable targets with indicators tracking that no one is left behind, and if specific education financing targets for governments and aid donors are set.
The report is divided into three parts. Part 1 provides an update of progress towards the six EFA goals. The second part presents clear evidence that progress in education is vital for achieving development goals after 2015. Part 3 puts the spotlight on the importance of implementing strong policies to unlock the potential of teachers so as to support them in overcoming the global learning crisis.
Recommendations:
To end the learning crisis, all countries have to make sure every child has access to a well-trained and motivated teacher. The 10 strategies outlined here are based on the evidence of successful policies, programmes and strategies from a wide range of countries and educational environments. By implementing such teaching reforms, countries can ensure that all children and young people, especially the disadvantaged, receive the education they need to realise their potential and lead fulfilling lives.
- Fill teacher gaps: Many countries suffer from chronic teacher shortages. It is vital that policy-makers introduce strategies to recruit new teachers and to train, deploy and retain them.
- Attract the best candidates to teaching: Children need the best teachers to optimise their learning opportunities. Teachers should be drawn from a wide range of backgrounds, reflecting learners’ diversity. Affirmative action should be considered to attract more women into teaching. To increase the pool of better-educated female teachers, policy-makers should also aim to improve girls’ access to secondary education, especially in disadvantaged areas.
- Train teachers to meet the needs of all children: Every teacher should receive training to equip them to meet the learning needs of all children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Many teacher candidates are recruited with weak subject knowledge because they have also suffered from a poor quality education.
- Prepare teacher educators and mentors to support teachers: Policy-makers should give training of teacher educators high priority, ensuring that educators have adequate exposure to the classroom learning requirements facing those teaching in difficult circumstances.
- Get teachers to where they are needed most: Adequate compensation, bonus pay, good housing and support in the form of professional development opportunities should be used to encourage trained teachers to accept positions in disadvantaged areas. In remote or rural areas with acute teacher shortages, governments should recruit teachers locally and provide them with on-going training to ensure that all children, irrespective of their location, have teachers with the capacity to improve their learning.
- Use competitive career and pay structures to retain the best teachers: To recruit the best teachers and retain them, teacher pay must be similar to that of professionals in comparable fields to avoid the risk of teachers losing motivation or leaving the profession.
- Improve teacher governance to maximise impact: Teacher governance policies that recognise and reward good teacher behaviour should be given top priority, but it is also necessary to tackle unprofessional behaviour such as absenteeism, private tutoring and gender-based violence.
- Equip teachers with innovative curricula to improve learning: Teachers need the support of inclusive and flexible curriculum strategies designed to meet the learning needs of children from disadvantaged groups, including those who have had their schooling interrupted. Policy-makers should ensure that the early grade curriculum focuses on securing strong foundation skills for all, is delivered in a language children understand and is backed with appropriate resources.
- Develop classroom assessments to help teachers identify and support students at risk of not learning: Teachers need strong skills in classroom-based assessment practices to identify and help learners who are struggling. Pre-service and on-going teacher education should train teachers how to use assessment tools to detect learning difficulties early, and how to devise appropriate strategies to tackle these difficulties.
- Provide better data on trained teachers: To achieve good quality education for all, it is crucial to know how many trained teachers each country has and how many additional teachers are needed, but in many poor countries reliable information is often lacking. Countries should invest in collecting and analysing annual data on the number of trained teachers available in different parts of the country, and by gender, language, ethnicity and disability, at all levels of education.