The International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 has released a new Fact Sheet on how teachers have been affected by COVID-19, which draws on recent survey data. The data points to significant challenges to teachers in most countries in the world, but also sheds light on the resources made available to the teaching profession and the huge divide between the world’s richest and poorest regions.  While many countries are still struggling with full or partial school closures, the experience of the past year shows us that, in most of them, governments will need to introduce effective responses to support teachers and ensure no learners are left behind.

With the rapid closure of schools, different forms of remote/distance education including high-, low- and no-tech solutions became the main vehicle for teachers to deliver or support instruction. The majority of countries reported the inclusion of remote learning in their education responses, but due to the digital divide and lack of household devices and internet, different approaches emerged. In Europe, 92% of countries asked teachers to conduct online learning, whereas teachers were encouraged to support radio- and television-based learning in 91% of countries in Central and Southern Asia and 73% in sub-Saharan Africa.  With the reopening of schools, marking a second significant shift in teaching within months, regional approaches continued to diverge as half of European countries introduced hybrid instruction with teachers juggling between online and offline components, compared to 58% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa that offered fully in-person classes with its own set of challenges.

How were teachers supported to cope with new learning modalities?

For most teachers the move to distance teaching resulted in heavier workloads, having to learn to deliver lessons remotely, adapt content, train themselves in new technologies and establish new working routines. To support teachers, 62% of countries globally provided teachers with instructions on distance teaching and learning and 55% provided content adapted for remote teaching such as open educational resources (OERs) and sample lesson plans (55%). While teachers can also play a greater role in the co-creation of online content, just 44% of countries, however, offered specialised training focusing in particular on the use of remote learning platforms and information and communication technology (ICT) tools.

It is also urgent to reduce the digital divide unveiled by school closures. Countries can support teachers by providing them with computers, mobile phones and free Internet. Yet globally, only 35% of countries provided teachers with devices and subsidized Internet access, and this decreased to just 12% in sub-Saharan Africa.  

Were teachers’ salaries protected and how were they impacted?

Protecting employment and wages and providing benefits are key to the recognition of the essential role that teachers have played to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on learning. This is critical to mitigate teacher attrition and ensure their engagement for sustaining quality education. School closures resulted in challenges for the payment of salaries in both the public and private sectors, particularly for ‘contract teachers’. Yet whereas the majority of public sector teachers were not impacted during school closures, 10% of countries globally reported not paying or reducing payments to contract teachers, increasing to 20% in sub-Saharan Africa.

How have governments ensured teachers’ health, safety and well-being?

The protection of teachers’ and students’ health and safety remains the priority in the return to in-person teaching. Based on national requirements to prevent the spread of COVID-19, countries have responded with a number of different measures such as the introduction of hybrid learning, imposing shift work and adding teachers to reduce class sizes. Hybrid teaching was introduced in 80% of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, while imposing teaching in shifts occurred in two thirds of countries in Central and Southern Asia. Lastly, the addition of teachers to reduce class size occurred in 14% of countries, globally, ranging from 26% in Europe and Northern America to 8% in Latin America, and none in Oceania. More broadly, about 1 in 4 countries have reported recruiting teachers beyond the normal recruitment cycle.

Governments have also had to ensure proper sanitation in schools, including providing soap, masks and personal protective equipment. Less than two-thirds (63%) of countries around the world reported having enough resources and school infrastructure to ensure proper sanitation in schools and protect teachers and learners. This varied from 89% of countries in Europe and Northern America to fewer than 50% in Central and Southern Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Oceania and sub-Saharan Africa.

Moreover, a comprehensive strategy for socio-emotional monitoring and support is needed to ensure teacher well-being. Globally, just 40% of countries reported providing professional and psychosocial support for teachers, ranging from two-thirds of countries (67%) in Europe to just 14% in Oceania and 4% in sub-Saharan Africa.

What are the policy implications?

As teachers are at the heart of ensuring learning continuity, it is critical that policy-makers and education stakeholders implement measures to mitigate the disruptions to teachers’ work. This includes offering teachers specialized training and support, safeguarding their wages and benefits, and guaranteeing their return to a safe and healthy school environment. The global disparities in support and working conditions available to teachers mean that more targeted interventions are urgently needed to design locally suitable solutions and help level the playing field.

In 2020 UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank as part of the coordinated global education response to the COVID-19 pandemic, conducted a Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures. The survey included two data collections during 2020: the first on school closures and the transition to remote education and the second that assessed the measures for reopening schools. This data collection was administered by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and cover government responses to school closures from pre-primary to secondary education.

The objective of this survey was to support regions and countries with data on teacher responses to the COVID-19 crisis to inform further decision-making that fosters the conditions for teaching and learning to continue successfully during further school closures and during the preparation and return to school. It also has implications for general education crisis management and for building more resilient education systems to mitigate learning loss and avoid a generational catastrophe in education.

This blog was first published on March 15, 2021, on the Global Partnership for Education website.

As countries roll out plans to inoculate their populations against COVID-19, the urgent need to vaccinate teachers is an increasingly pressing concern. But are teachers prioritized in national plans? Here’s an overview of what some countries are currently doing for teachers, and recommendations on why teachers must be considered as a priority group.

As countries proceed with rollout plans to inoculate their populations against COVID-19, the urgent need to vaccinate teachers is an increasingly pressing concern. The pandemic crippled education systems across the world.

By April 2020, most of the world’s schools were closed. To expedite their reopening, countries must act to protect teachers’ health, safety and wellbeing. This is a critical precursor to the renormalization of in-person teaching and learning and to the much-needed return of the socialization function of education.

In December 2020, UNESCO and Education International (EI), the global federation of education unions, issued a call to governments and the international community to consider the vital importance of vaccinating teachers and school personnel.

As UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and EI’s General Secretary David Edwards say in their joint video message,

Reopening schools and education institutions safely and keeping them open as long as possible is an imperative. In this context, as we see positive developments regarding vaccination, we believe that teachers and education support personnel must be considered as a priority group.”

As early as March 2020, the Teacher Task Force had launched an international Call for Action on Teachers to highlight critical measures that countries should take regarding teachers in the global pandemic, including the “protection of teachers’ and students’ health, safety and well-being”.

This was reaffirmed during the Extraordinary session of the Global Education Meeting (2020 GEM), convened by UNESCO in October 2020, where heads of state and ministers committed to support all teachers and education personnel as frontline workers and to prioritize their health and safety.

What countries are vaccinating teachers?

The Teacher Task Force notes that despite the urgency of protecting teachers and other education personnel, and the international community’s attempts to promote their priority for vaccination, they are not consistently prioritized in national plans, which is partly due to a slow global rollout.

Where well-defined rollout plans exist, most countries tend to give priority to health care workers, the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions putting them at high risk.

One exception is the jurisdiction of New Delhi in India, where all personnel, including teachers, who were actively involved in the city’s COVID-19 management efforts will be vaccinated on a priority basis as front line workers.

Chile has been relatively successful in its program to vaccinate teachers. To prepare for the return to classes, the Chilean government included teachers and education workers early on in the country’s massive vaccination drive. In just the previous two weeks, more than half of the country’s 513,000 teachers and education workers received shots in time for the start of the school year.

Teachers in the second wave

In other countries, teachers are included in the second priority group for vaccination. This is true in Argentina, Colombia and Turkey. In Vietnam, teachers are given higher priority as they will be vaccinated in the same group as senior citizens and people with chronic illnesses, along with other workers providing essential services and diplomats.

Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, teachers are listed in the second priority group along with first responders, the military, those working in the justice system, transport workers and public servants essential to the pandemic response. Some who question this ranking have launched an online petition to Parliament to prioritize teachers and school/child care staff.

In a three-phase plan, teachers in South Africa are listed in a very large second-level priority group comprising around 17 million people, which includes essential workers such as police officers, persons in congregate settings such as prisons and shelters, people aged 60 and over, and people with various comorbidities.

Some countries have indirectly given precedence to teachers by taking the approach of prioritizing workers writ large, in order to spur stalled economies. In Indonesia, teachers along with the elderly form a second priority group in the national rollout plan. The country aims to vaccinate 5 million teachers by June.

Similarly, in Bangladesh, it was announced in early February that all primary teachers would be vaccinated, and by the end of the month teachers under the age of 40 registered on the health directorate’s list could sign up online to receive the vaccine.

With an increasing global rollout, some major commitments have been made. In the United States, all states have been asked to give priority to teachers in vaccination efforts, in accordance with a goal to have all pre-primary to secondary teachers and child care workers receiving their first shots by the end of March.

Similarly, the Ministry of Education in Singapore announced that it would begin vaccinating 150,000 teachers and other staff in educational institutions from as of early March.

Little information is available from African countries. Rwanda, however, which received 347,000 doses of vaccine from the UN-backed COVAX initiative in early March, has emphasized the vaccination of teachers, with the Ministry of Health stating that “teachers and lecturers are among the frontline workers being vaccinated against COVID-19.”

Elsewhere on the continent, teachers in Uganda will be included in the second priority group after health care workers and security personnel, while Kenya has also put teachers in a high priority group, after health care workers and security personnel but before those with possible comorbidities and over 58 years old.

Teachers still missing out

In other countries such as Italy and Brazil, teachers are relegated to a lower position in national plans for vaccine prioritization. Brazil has grouped teachers with security workers and prison staff, which has led to strikes in Sao Paulo to protest, among other issues, the health concerns that teachers face in schools.

In the Russian Federation, a certain mistrust of the vaccine may hamper efforts to vaccinate teachers, despite their high priority along with medical staff and social workers, in initial stages of mass vaccination.

Recently, new statistics reveal that two-thirds of poorer countries will face education budget cuts. This is problematic for numerous reasons, two of the main ones being the need to vaccinate teachers and recruit staff to meet the challenges of increased workload, teacher attrition and illness.

Many low-income countries are unlikely to obtain enough doses to vaccinate their teachers for some time. This puts massive pressure on teachers to teach in-person while unvaccinated putting theirs and others’ health at risk.

A recent study suggests that without greater international cooperation, more than 85 poor countries will not have widespread access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023.

Recommendations

In view of the global situation outlined above, the Teacher Task Force makes the following recommendations:

• As called for by UNESCO and Education International, teachers should be considered frontline workers and a high-priority group to be vaccinated early to ensure that schools can reopen safely for in-person education.

• Governments should work with teacher unions to ensure that all schools continue to adhere strictly to rules of safe operation, and that unvaccinated teachers have access to psychological and socio-emotional care, sick leave and support from school leaders and district/central level authorities.

• Where high-priority groups require identification for access to vaccination, ministries should ensure that teacher lists are accurate and that teachers have adequate identification.

• Lessons learned from previous pandemics should inform vaccine distribution plans to ensure that dissemination mechanisms are effectively put in place and run efficiently so that all teachers have access, including those in remote regions.

• Governments should ensure adequate funds are available to support vaccination roll out to guarantee the safety of teachers and education support staff and the safe reopening of schools.

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Cover photo credit: Bret Bostock/Flickr
Caption: A medical syringe with a vaccine