Panama. The state of public teacher policies

This report analyses the state of public teacher policies in Panama. It was prepared with the support of the Inter-American Dialogue and Unidos por la Educación [United for Education], in the Republic of Panama.

The report is part of a series of follow-up reports by the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL) that focused on four countries: Argentina, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru. It follows a first series of reports on teacher policies in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, published in 2015.

The paper analyses three challenges. The first relates to training for effective teaching. It considers establishing clear standards and expectations for students and teachers, using time effectively to ensure learning in the classroom, and teacher training. The second challenge concerns the task of recruiting, hiring and retaining talented teachers, and explores the public policy associated with attracting, selecting, hiring, paying and retaining educators. The third challenge involves establishing a system that incentivizes good practice. This section looks at official teacher and student evaluations, ways of recognizing good work, and incentives for providing teaching to the young people most in need.

The report concludes with a series of recommendations designed to promote priority actions aimed at strengthening the teaching profession and improving the quality of education. These proposals focus on teacher evaluation, teaching qualifications, education research, retirement and professional qualification systems, and eliminating the negative impact of partisan politics.