Teaching on the front line: National teacher responses to the COVID-19 crisis

As the COVID-19 pandemic reached its height in April 2020, 190 countries around the world enacted country- wide school closures. These measures affected at least 1.6 billion students and more than 100 million members of the global education workforce, including 63 million primary and secondary teachers. Governments, school leaders and teachers were pressed to create innovative responses so that teaching and learning could continue.

This fact sheet sheds light on national teacher responses in primary and secondary education to ensure teaching continued during the pandemic. It addresses remote teaching practices, protection of teachers’ employment, school reopening, teacher recruitment, teacher support, health and safety and monitoring of pupils. It is based on data from the Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures conducted in 2020 by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank and administered by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).