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  • 07.04.2020

Policy frameworks on contract teachers

Education is a fundamental human right that must be secured for all because it is inseparable from human dignity. This means that all of the countries striving to achieve Education for All (EFA) face...
News
  • 04.10.2019

We need to invest in young teachers

By choosing this year’s theme to be “Young teachers: the future of the profession”, the World Teachers’ Day’s co-convening agencies wish to address one of the issues that has been plaguing the profession for some time now: how can the teaching profession attract and retain young, bright talents in the profession?

The global education goal, SDG 4, calls on countries to ensure that children are not only going to school but also learning, yet the proportion of teachers that are trained has been falling since 2000, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Even more worrisome, new projections by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report found that, at current trends, learning rates are expected to stagnate in middle-income countries, and drop by one-third in Francophone African countries by 2030. This would leave 20% of young people and 30% of adults still unable to read by 2030.

To turn these worrying trends around, we must invest in teachers, their education and professional development.

The reality of teaching

To get the real picture of teachers’ current training and working conditions, the Teacher Task Force collaborated with UIS and the GEM Report to produce a fact sheet giving the latest data on the global indicator for the Teacher Target.

Every learner has the right to be taught by a trained and qualified teacher. Unfortunately, this is not a reality for all of them. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 64% of teachers were trained according to national standards at primary level in 2018-17. This share falls to 50% at secondary level. Comparatively in 2005, these figures had gone up to 71% and 79% respectively.

The share of trained primary school teachers has also fallen in Southern Asia, where it has gone from 78% in 2013 to 72% in 2018.

To teach efficiently, teachers need decent working conditions, like having electricity or sanitation facilities in schools. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 34% of primary schools had access to electricity and 44% had access to basic drinking water in 2018-17. To make matters worse, 1 in 4 primary school did not have single-sex basic sanitation facilities in low-income countries.

To the issue of training and working condition plaguing the profession is the additional fact that the teaching profession also suffers from a poor image and status. Compared to jobs requiring similar qualifications, teaching often offers lower salaries for the responsibility and the amount of work required.

This leads to teachers leaving the profession in high numbers without enough new recruits to replace them, especially young new teachers.

Missing: young teachers

The future of society depends on the future of education. We need young teachers willing to take on the challenges of tomorrow.

Indeed, attracting young candidates to the teaching profession is a major challenge worldwide, and this is not just a supply issue. The hardships and obstacles affecting the profession disproportionately affect young teachers.

In their latest Education at a Glance report, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that young teachers, defined as under 30 years old, make up a small proportion of the teaching population in their member states. Indeed, teachers under 30 account for 13% in primary education, 11% in lower secondary and 8% in upper secondary on average across OECD countries in 2017.

Keeping young teachers in the profession is also a critical concern. Student teachers often indicate the experience of facing their first classroom as the most daunting part of their job. This leads to high attrition rates in this age group. Solid teacher education and induction practices, as well as peer mentoring have been highlighted as models that could offer young teacher the support they need in their first years in the profession.

A problem without solutions?

The main concerns around the attractiveness of the teaching profession could be addressed in teacher policies developed as presented in our Teacher Policy Development Guide.

Indeed, in the guide are listed nine dimensions that we believe essential to address the current issues facing the profession. Among these dimensions, we list training and education, working conditions and remuneration as mandatory component of any policy pertaining to teachers.

It is our belief that tackling the problem of attracting and retaining young people in the teaching profession will require sound and holistic teacher policies developed with the input of a broad range of stakeholders, including young people themselves.

Held annually on 5 October, World Teachers’ Day commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. This Recommendation sets benchmarks regarding the rights and responsibilities of teachers and standards for their initial preparation and further education, recruitment, employment, and teaching and learning conditions.

Blog
  • 03.10.2019

Young teachers are the future of the profession

According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 258 million children and youth are not in school. More worrisome is that over 600 million children and adolescents who are enrolled in school are not learning the basics. In both cases, children are being denied their right to a quality education.

To remedy this learning crisis, the world needs new teachers - about 69 million more if we are to meet our commitments before 2030.

This is why the chosen theme for World Teachers’ Day 2019 is “Young teachers: the future of the profession”. Beyond being a celebration of those who have dedicated their lives to transmitting knowledge and shaping minds, World Teachers’ Day is also the occasion to shine a light on important issues that are affecting the profession and keep teachers at the forefront of the global education agenda.

Wanted: young teachers

The number of trained teachers has decreased since 2013. Using national definitions, the 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report estimated that only 85% of teachers were trained in 2017. This represents a 1.5 percentage point decrease.

The OECD’s 2019 Education at a Glance report gives us a snapshot of the situation. Young teachers, defined as those under 30 years old, make up only 25% of the teaching workforce across all levels of education in OECD surveyed countries.

In France, the proportion of young teachers from primary to upper secondary was 11% in 2017. In the Republic of Korea, they represented 14% of the teaching workforce. Chile is one of the countries with the highest average of young teachers with them representing 21% of the workforce.

It gets even bleaker when we look at it by levels of education. In 2017, there were only 13% of teachers aged 30 and under in primary education and only 11% in lower secondary education. This proportion gets even lower in upper secondary education with 8% of teachers in that age group.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the percentage of newly recruited teachers is still low in most countries, especially for primary education, according to the latest available data. In Benin, the percentage of teachers who were newly recruited was 12% at primary level. Out of those newly recruited teachers, only half were trained according to nationally defined standards.

In South Africa the percentage of newly recruited teachers at primary level was 8%, and 91% of them were trained according to national standards. In Cote d’Ivoire, the percentage of newly recruited teachers for primary education was 13% and 99% of them were trained according to national standards.

More alarming is the low ratio of teacher training graduates to teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, that ratio was 4.0, in Senegal it was 3.7, while in Tanzania it was 12.2.

What we can deduct from these numbers is that worldwide, young people are not joining the profession at high enough rates.

Capture EI Figure

Attractiveness of the Teaching Profession to Young People Figure 1 Source: EI, The Global Status of Teachers and the Teaching Profession, 2018 p.27

Why so unattractive?

Teachers were once highly respected professionals that often served as inspirational role models for young people. Take Miss Honey, Mathilda’s teacher from Roald Dahl’s eponym book, or John Keating, the fictitious English teacher from Dead Poet Society, or even Professor Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series. All these teachers have inspired respect, gratitude and even love to hordes of readers and viewers.

However, it is much different for teachers these days. Teaching is more often than not described as a hard, thankless profession, exercised in difficult working conditions. It is no longer viewed as a profession of choice. In Tanzania, for instance, the teaching profession is no longer perceived by young people as being a respectful profession but as the last recourse for those who did not perform well in national exams.

In their updated The Future of the Teaching Profession report, Education International highlights the fact that early career teachers sometimes find their initial encounters with a class a daunting experience.

They even list concerns that worried student teachers the most:

  • Discipline and classroom management,
  • Personal and institutional adjustments,
  • Teaching methods and strategies, and
  • Working with special needs students.

A survey conducted in the United Kingdom by the National Union of Teachers in 2017, found that half of the respondent teachers aged under 35 expected to leave the profession within the next five years because of the demanding workload.

So why would a young person decide on pursuing this career when they have so many other choices today?

What can we do?

A first easy step to improving the attractiveness of the teaching profession would be through the development and implementation of holistic national teacher policies.

The Teacher Task Force, in its Teacher Policy Development Guide, recommends that properly mapped out career paths, good working conditions and appropriate rewards and remuneration need to be considered as measures to motivate and retain teachers in the profession and included in all teacher policies. The United Kingdom is already looking at elevating young teachers’ starting salary as a mean to increase recruitment rates.

Benin has also just launched a 9-month long deployment contract for young teacher trainees, which features a fixed salary and housing allowance directly wired to their bank account as well as health care.

It has also been acknowledged by research that lessening the workload of young teachers can help them cope with the demands of the profession. In Kazakhstan, new teachers work four hours a week less than experienced teachers do.

As young teachers often cite unpreparedness when arriving in front of a class, we recommend that, beyond initial teacher education, teacher policies include a provision for an induction period, providing young teachers with in-school support in the form of mentors and peer networks.

According to the TALIS 2018 Results, 77% of school leaders who responded to the survey agreed that mentoring is of high importance when it comes to supporting young teachers. In Singapore, more than 50% of novice teachers have an assigned mentor.

So on World Teachers’ Day 2019, we would like to remind the international community that if we do not find solutions to attract young bright minds into the profession, we will fail to bridge the “teacher gap” and fall short of achieving the commitment to quality education set out in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Join our panel discussion

Held annually on October 5 since 1994, World Teachers’ Day commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. This Recommendation sets benchmarks regarding the rights and responsibilities of teachers and standards for their initial preparation and further education, recruitment, employment, and teaching and learning conditions.

This year, UNESCO is holding panel discussions on Monday, October 7 at its headquarters in Paris, France. The debates will convene student teachers, young teachers, teacher trainers, academics and youth representatives to try and identify solutions to attract and retain young people in the teaching profession.

This blog was originally published on the Global Partnership for Education's Education for All blog on the occasion of World Teachers' Day 2019. The Global Partnership for Education is a member of the Teacher Task Force and sits on its Steering Committee.

Report
  • pdf
  • 25.07.2019

Improving Teaching and Learning

Progress made in improving access to education has not translated into improvements in learning for many children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds and in conflict areas. The UNESCO...