Improving teacher support and participation in local education groups

The project “Improving Teacher Support and Participation in Local Education Groups” was funded by the Global Partnership for Education as part of the Global and Regional Activities programme to enhance the capacity of teachers and their representatives to actively and effectively participate in social dialogue and policy processes, notably in Local Education Groups.

The project, jointly implemented by Education International and UNESCO, involved the countries of Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Gambia, Haiti, Liberia, Mali, Nepal, Senegal and Uganda. It was designed to achieve the following goals:

• Improve technical and organizational capacity of teacher organizations to participate meaningfully in education policy and planning processes, including via Local Education Groups (Component 1).
• Enhance teacher organizations’ and governments’ capacity to analyse and discuss teacher employment and work issues (Component 2).
• Identify and pilot innovative teacher in-service support mechanisms that promote teachers’ effective engagement in social dialogue and education policy (Component 3).

This report presents the work conducted by UNESCO for addressing component 3. It summarizes – with respect to the participating countries – the situation of teachers and their participation in social and policy dialogue. The final section of the report discusses the recommendations based on what was learned through the literature review and during the workshops organized by the project. The literature review is presented in Appendix A, while the Guiding Framework appears in Appendix B.