The International Teachers Task Force on Education 2030 will host a Lab Debate at this year’s European Development Days. Titled “Female Teachers and Gender Equality in Education”, our debate will look into how we can support women to enter and remain in the teaching profession, as well as gender-responsive teaching methodologies for trainee teachers. This is in line with this year’s EDD theme “Women and Girls at the Forefront of Sustainable Development: protect, empower, invest.”

Although Sustainable Development Goal 4 and the Education 2030 Framework for Action provide clear guidelines to achieving universal and gender-sensitive education, girls still face more barriers in accessing education, and gender stereotypes are often reinforced in their educational experiences. Girls are still 1.5 times more likely than boys to be excluded from primary school, and half of out-of-school primary-aged girls are unlikely to ever enter school. Wealth disparities and the rural-urban divide further exacerbate barriers and vulnerabilities faced by girls, which increase as they get older.

Research suggests that female teachers have an important role in addressing access and quality issues in girls’ educational experiences – especially in places where women are discriminated against and under-represented in political, employment, and leadership positions.

This debate will explore policy, funding and civil society best practices in empowering women to enter and remain in the teaching profession and their role in providing a gender-responsive education to all children.

Our speakers include H.E. Paul Mavima, Minister of Primary and Secondary Education in Zimbabwe; H.E. Marie Odile Attanasso, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Benin; Mrs Teopista Birungi Mayanja, Regional Coordinator for the Africa Network Campaign for Education for All (ANCEFA); and Mrs. Conceição da Glòria Sozinho, Director of ADPP Teacher Training College in Chimoio, Mozambique. They will share their experiences and lessons learned towards achieving gender parity in the teaching profession and gender-responsive teacher training.

The Debate will be held at in Room D1 on Wednesday 6 June at 09:00 am. For more information please go to https://eudevdays.eu/.

Following the adoption of the Education 2030 agenda, putting teachers at the centre of the right to quality education, the Government of Togo set out to develop a comprehensive national teacher policy. The International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 is called upon to support countries requesting technical assistance on teachers and teaching. It is in this context that the Teacher Task Force responded to Togo’s demand for technical assistance in developing their national teacher policy, through the use of the Teacher Policy Development Guide.

Why was a policy needed?

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the population of primary school age children was 1 180 321 in 2015 but the number of teachers in primary education was only 33 900. Out of this number, only 32.6% of primary education teachers were qualified according to national standards and the pupil-teacher ratio was 41 to 1 for this level. Togo had resorted to the use of “contract teachers” in the 90’s and is now aiming to endow its educational system with a stronger teaching force.

Development process

In order to facilitate the implementation and achievement of equitable access to a quality education, Togo developed a national teacher policy encompassing all levels of and facets of the teaching profession. This policy was developed concurrently with the revision of Togo’s Education Sector plan with the objective of integrating it into the revised sector plan.

Togo’s national teacher policy aims to propose measures to improve teachers’ working conditions and motivation.

A national multisectorial technical team was put in place involving the different education stakeholders in the country: ministries representatives, parents’ associations’ representatives as well as teacher unions’ representatives and representatives from the education sector. The technical team was placed under the overall authority of a ministerial committee. Their task was to develop the national teacher policy following the approach proposed by the Task Force’ Teacher Policy Development Guide.

Togo’s national teacher policy was built around three main lines: teachers’ efficiency, motivation and professionalization. Each main line covers a set of the dimensions described in the Teacher Policy development Guide. During its development, the national technical team decided to add a tenth dimension on the participation of teachers to social dialogue.

The concept of efficiency as defined in Togo’s teacher policy is linked to teachers’ competencies and performance. More particularly, it deals with professional standards, qualification frameworks as well as recruitment, deployment and retention strategies.

Regarding motivation, the focus is on defining structured career pathways, improving teachers’ working conditions, defining remuneration standards in line with the remuneration of professions of equal qualifications and responsibilities in the country, and increasing school governance role in monitoring and following up teachers’ good performance.

In terms of professionalization, the policy looks at teachers’ accountability through performance: self-evaluation,peer evaluation and evaluation of learning outcomes It also elaborates proposals to improve teachers’ representation and participation in social dialogue.

What’s next?

National authorities will review the policy document produced by the technical team for formal adoption. The most important phase will be the implementation of the national teacher policy. Continuous engagement with stakeholders, adequate mobilization of financial resources, the creation of the implementation and monitoring structures and reliance on accurate and reliable qualitative and quantitative data on teachers will help Togo in its efforts to achieve national educational goals and the SDG 4 Teacher target. The Teacher Task Force will remain a key partner in this process.

Photo credit: Jordan Rowland/Unsplash

The International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 (TTF), as stated in its mission and as one of the specific objectives of its 2018-2021 Strategic Plan, is called upon to support countries requesting technical assistance on teachers and teaching. It is in this context that the TTF supported Madagascar in developing its national teacher policy through the use of the Teacher Policy Development Guide. The policy was validated in March 2018.

Identifying the needs

Madagascar is facing significant challenges in its recruitment of a qualified teacher force. Indeed, according to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the pupil to qualified teacher ratio in primary education in the country was 40 to 7 in 2016. Furthermore, the proportion of teachers who have received at least the minimum organized teacher training was 14.87% in 2016. It is estimated that 22 000 new teachers will need to be recruited by 2022.

Development process

The country started the review of its national education sector plan in 2014 and aimed at including a teacher policy component. While developing its new education sector plan, the country created a thematic group dedicated to the conduct of a diagnostic study on the situation of teachers in the country, using the UNESCO Methodological Guide for the Analysis of Teacher Issues. This group, under the supervision of the ministries in charge of education, included various stakeholders: economists, demographists, ministries representatives, teacher unions’ representatives, education NGOs representatives, Ministry of Finance representatives, parents’ associations’ representatives, sociologists and representatives of from the Ministry of Public Service.

Through a large consultation process, the diagnostic study highlighted amongst other things, the increasing demands for teachers, the low performance of students, the increasing number of teachers recruited with no professional training, the incapacity of teacher training institutions to train and the need for better teacher recruitment planning. Based on the diagnostic study results, the dedicated thematic group, involving the country’s three ministries of education, provided training on needs analyses, data collection and teacher policy development.

Following guidelines from the Teacher Policy Development Guide, the national teacher policy was developed with means of action that articulate how the nine different dimensions established in the Guide should be implemented by each of the Ministries involved.

What’s next?

Following its adoption by the Government and National Assembly, Madagascar will begin implementing its policy, starting with mobilizing resources and doing advocacy work to raise awareness on the teacher policy within the national education community.

The Teacher Task Force and the World Bank are joining forces to see how data can benefit the development of teacher policies.

Using the Systems Approach for Better Education Results for Teachers (SABER-Teachers) tools and guidelines, the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 (Teacher Task Force) is collaborating with the World Bank to carry out a stocktaking review of the requirements of the teaching profession in 25 countries. The study covers the following regions of the world: Europe (France, Ireland, Slovenia, Norway, Turkey, Croatia), Arab States (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria), Sub-Saharan Africa (DR Congo, Mauritania, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ghana), Latin America and the Caribbean (Haiti, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil), Asia (India – Karnataka, Lao PDR, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand).

The review was guided by the following questions: what is the minimum level of academic qualification required to become a teacher? What are the main tasks performed by teachers? What system is put forward to guide salary packages, deployment and transfer of teachers? What criteria guides teacher performance evaluation? What solutions have countries put forward or envisaged? What does this review suggest as recommendations in order to improve the situation?

All data collection, related analysis and report preparations were completed by the Teacher Task Force with support from staff of the World Bank Group.

Data for better policies

The SABER-Teachers is an initiative from the World Bank to produce comparative data and knowledge on education policies and institutions, with the aim of helping countries systematically strengthen their education systems.

The main goal of teacher policies is to ensure that every classroom has a motivated, supported and competent teacher at its helm. However, evidence on the impact of teacher policies on the ground remain insufficient and scarce. Indeed, teacher policies’ impact can vastly differ based on the national context and the other education policies already in place.

SABER-Teachers helps governments strengthen their frameworks for effective teaching by identifying gaps in their teacher policies. To this end, SABER-Teachers analyses teacher policies formally adopted by a given education system. These studies aim to fill these gaps by disseminating comprehensive information on teacher policies based on data collected and analysed from various countries.

Country reports

The reports produced from this collaboration will focus specifically on policies in the area of teachers. To this end, the following eight teacher policy goals have been set up for evaluation:

• Setting Clear Expectations for Teachers
• Attracting the Best into Teaching
• Preparing Teachers with Useful Training and Experience
• Matching Teachers’ Skills with Students’ Needs
• Leading Teachers with Strong Principals
• Monitoring Teaching and Learning
• Supporting Teachers to Improve Instruction
• Motivating Teachers to Perform

To identify these goals, three criteria were applied. Each goal had to be linked to student performance through empirical evidence. They had to be a priority for resource allocation, and they had to be actionable, meaning that they identified actions that governments could take to strengthen education policy.

The resulting reports describe the performance of each country’s Education system in achieving each of the eight teacher policy goals. They also contain comparative information from education systems that have consistently scored highly on international student achievement tests and those that have previously participated in the SABER-Teachers initiative.

The first reports from this collaboration to be published are from Singapore, Croatia and Norway. The upcoming reports to be published in 2018 are the following: Slovenia, France, Qatar, Namibia, Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines. 

Reports from this collection are available in our library. More reports are available on the SABER website.