While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to teaching and learning, it has also shone a bright light on the core strength of education worldwide: the leadership, creativity and ingenuity of teachers. That’s why the theme of World Teachers’ Day on 5 October this year was “Teachers: Leading in crisis, reimagining the future”.

To coincide with World Teachers’ Day and explore this theme, the Teacher Task Force organized a series of regional discussions on the key role of leadership in solving problems during the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthening the resilience of education systems. Building on the regional meetings in May and June 2020 on distance teaching and the return to school, five discussions were held:

• Arab States (Arabic, English and French): 8 October
• Asia and Pacific (English): 8 October
• Latin America (Spanish and English): 7 October
• Sub-Saharan Africa (English): 7 October
• Sub-Saharan Africa (French): 8 October

These meetings gave representatives from a wide range of countries an opportunity to highlight the way teachers have shown leadership not only in their teaching but also right across the school and in partnership with parents and the community.

The need to organize and deliver remote learning during lockdowns, for example, drew many ingenious responses from teachers. In Rwanda, teachers wrote scripts for and taught radio lessons. In both Rwanda and Lebanon, teachers taught television lessons.  

Where no technology was available, teachers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo visited pupils door-to-door to deposit and collect school work.

Social media came to the fore in several countries. Teachers in Pakistan started informal WhatsApp classes. In Bhutan, teachers used WeChat, WhatsApp and Telegram Messenger for teaching.

Teachers also demonstrated considerable leadership in their roles as front line workers in the fight against COVID-19, raising general awareness about strict hygiene protocols and ensuring these were respected. In Senegal, teachers took ownership of the design and radio broadcasting of preventive messages against COVID-19. In Bhutan, teachers even repaired fittings and built taps.

School leaders have been instrumental in showing leadership and mentoring other teachers. In Senegal, school leaders helped teachers to produce digital resources, jointly with inspectors and trainers. In Thailand, school leaders encouraged teachers to develop computer programmes for online learning management. In China, school leaders led initiatives emphasizing researching at home, reading, and group study, involving interactions between teachers, parents and students.

Participants in the meetings also explained how school leaders and teachers were working with communities and parents to ensure the continuation of remote teaching and learning, and provide a safe and healthy learning environment.

In the Gambia, for example, community members were trained along with teachers and students to provide leadership and help ensure a safe return to school. In the Balata Refugee Camp in Palestine, students are involved in decision-making through a children’s parliament, working in partnership with teachers and parent coordinators.

The meetings developed a set of recommendations to support teacher leadership both during the COVID-19 crisis and in the longer-term to build better school and teacher resilience.  They included:

• Teachers’ leadership role should be formalized in teacher policies, education sector plans, professional development frameworks and salaries.
• Teachers should be encouraged, supported and empowered to embrace their leadership roles.
• Teachers’ leadership roles should be acknowledged by giving them greater professional autonomy.
• Teachers’ leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic should be acknowledged and rewarded including through incentives and career paths and structures.
• Holistic support for teachers, with an increased focus on their psychological and socio-emotional well-being, is the key to fostering a leadership mindset.

Read the full report on the Teacher Task Force Regional Meetings to mark World Teachers’ Day, 5 October 2020.

On Monday 2 November 2020, gunmen shot dead 22 students and teachers at Kabul University, Afghanistan. Barely a week had passed since gunmen entered a school in Kumba, Cameroon, and killed seven children. A week before that, the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty had also shocked the world. 

These attacks on students and teachers are horrific, but not a new phenomenon. Across the globe there were over 7,300 direct attacks on schools between 2015 and 2019, according to the Education Under Attack 2020 report published earlier this year by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). An estimated 22,000 students, teachers and other education personnel were harmed in total.

Why are schools being attacked? The report identified multiple reasons, including conflicting and discordant ideologies between the educational system and various armed groups in a number of countries. “Islamic State”, for example, claimed responsibility for the Kabul University shooting and another recent suicide bombing on a higher education centre in the city.

Another reason is that government-run schools and universities may be viewed as symbols of state power and control, and therefore targeted by groups fighting the state.” This is the underlying cause of multiple attacks on schools in Cameroon in the last four years, as linguistic minority groups aim to seek greater autonomy from the state. 

Three teachers were killed in the space of a week in early 2018, as the number of primary-aged children attending school in the country’s Anglophone provinces reportedly fell to just four percent. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the latest attack, however: the government accused the separatists, while separatist leaders blamed government soldiers.

Schools may also be attacked when they are used as polling stations in elections, or because state or non-state armed groups locate bases in or near them. This has been a problem in Syria in particular, where 16 of 22 schools identified by the UN in 2017 as being used for military purposes were subsequently attacked.

The worst-hit countries over the last five years, according to the GCPEA report, are the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen – but the problem reaches far beyond war-torn trouble spots. The report identifies eleven “very heavily affected” countries, including India (with attacks concentrated in Jammu and Kashmir), Turkey (in relation to state anti-terror laws and conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and the Philippines (notably affecting indigenous peoples).

How do you ensure schools’ civilian status?

The report’s top recommendation is that states approve and promote the Safe Schools Declaration. Drawn up in 2015 in a process led by Norway and Argentina, it encourages parties engaged in armed conflict to respect the civilian nature of schools. The report finds positive signs that it may already be having an impact: 12 countries with reported military use of schools signed up to the declaration in 2015, and by 2018 their incidence of military school use had roughly halved.

Determining how best to protect schools, teachers and their students without further politicising them is a difficult balance. As one teacher in a private school in Kumba, Cameroon told Human Rights Watch after the attack last month, “We don’t want soldiers in the classrooms because the neutrality of schools should be preserved, but we deserve better protection.”

In 2016, a Human Rights Watch report on Afghanistan’s Baghlan province noted that the military often use schools as bases in villages where they are the only reinforced-concrete structure: “Children are being put in harm’s way by the very Afghan forces mandated to protect them”, noted the senior researcher. 

The report’s other recommendations include developing school safety plans and early warning systems in close collaboration with local communities and civil society organisations that understand local contexts.

Michaël Prazan, a former teacher, told the BBC that Samuel Paty’s murder highlighted the need for early warnings to protect teachers and students: “We need to be more responsive,” he said referring to helping vulnerable students displaying troubling behaviour. “We need to deal with it quickly before it spills over onto the internet and a death threat for the teacher."

However, teachers may struggle to do this alone. Udo Beckmann, who leads a teaching union in Germany, told Deutsche Welle that teachers in his country’s schools need more training and assistance from psychologists and social workers.

Ultimately, as French teaching unions pointed out in a joint statement on Samuel Paty, the safety of teachers depends on support from across society for them to carry out their professional vocation – preparing the next generation of citizens. 

Photo caption: A bombed school in Yemen in 2013
Credit: Julien Harneis

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how important teachers are. As schools have shuttered, teachers have become a lifeline for students, going to extraordinary lengths to keep their pupils learning. Their job is vital. And with class preparation, homework marking, extra-curricular activities and pastoral care all to do, on top of teaching classes, teachers' workloads can be relentless. But as a recent report from the International Institute for Educational Planning shows, teacher salaries rarely reflect the size and importance of the job. So why don’t we pay them enough?

A salary crisis

In many cases, teachers are paid less now than they were 20 years ago. According to the latest OECD ‘Education at a Glance’ report, teachers’ salaries have decreased (in real terms) in a third of countries since 2000. After the 2009 financial crisis, teachers’ average salaries were either frozen or cut across all countries, only starting to climb again after 2013. Even now, in ostensibly wealthy nations, teachers are underpaid. Take the USA, where data from 2018 show that teachers are paid 22% less than peers who have the same level of college education and a similar number of years’ experience.

Better pay, better teachers

The effects of this pay disparity are serious, and it is quickly developing into a crisis. Low salaries make it harder to attract new teachers and retain those already in the profession. When college graduates see their peers offered better salaries and a better lifestyle in other professions, it can become difficult to convince them to pursue teaching. 

It has been shown that increasing starting salaries would make teaching more appealing, increasing competition for jobs and raising the standard of applicants. As a consequence the social status of teaching as a profession would rise, boosting teacher motivation.

As for retention, it’s often the best teachers – those who work the hardest and go above-and-beyond for their students – that become disillusioned when their efforts go unrecognised. Eventually, many are driven to seek a better lifestyle in another line of work. 

Better teachers, better societies

Investing to attract better teachers yields both short and long-term benefits for students and for society as a whole. Research shows a direct correlation between teacher pay and student performance – a 10% pay increase is likely to lead to a 5-10% increase in student performance. 

What should not be overlooked are the long-term benefits of good teaching. Better-performing students are more likely to go on to further studies and earn more. They are also less likely to fall pregnant at a young age.

What needs to happen

There’s no good argument against raising teachers’ salaries. In times of financial hardship, it can be tempting for governments to see teacher salaries, the single biggest expenditure in education, as an easy target for cuts. That was the attitude in 2008, and now with the pandemic looming that temptation could return. But that would be a short-term fix to society’s long-term detriment -- and teachers won’t stand for it. Around the world, teachers have expressed their dissatisfaction with educational reforms that have shied away from raising salaries. In Ecuador and Ethiopia, reforms to teaching as a career have had little impact on the profession’s appeal, at least while low salaries determine its social status. On the other hand, the government in Thailand transformed teaching’s status as a profession by substantially increasing teacher remuneration in the 2000s. The Thai education system is reaping the benefits now, with more motivated and happy teachers that stay in the job for longer.

Likewise in Nigeria, after teachers protested their low pay and blamed it for the country’s falling education standards, changes have recently been announced to ensure teachers feel more supported and appreciated for their work. President Muhammadu Buhari introduced a raft of improvements, including a new pay-scale for teachers, a special pension, and even the promise of affordable housing for teachers in rural areas. The result is a system that should incentivise the best graduates to become teachers, and improve retention by rewarding those who stay.

The question of whether or not to pay teachers more is ultimately down to priorities. For any country concerned with the long-term health of its economy and society, the evidence is clear: an investment in teachers is one of the best investments a country can make.

Photo credit: Maria Fleischmann / World Bank