This is a summary repost of the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti article of which the full version can be consulted here. 

Important new research on teacher absenteeism in sub-Saharan Africa was launched 24 November at a regional online workshop of national and international education stakeholders organized in Nairobi, Kenya. Time to Teach: Teacher attendance and time on task in Eastern and Southern Africa, provides insights into the drivers of primary school teacher absenteeism, a major obstacle in efforts to address the learning crisis among children of low- and middle-income countries around the world.

Produced by UNICEF Innocenti, the report synthesizes findings from eight sub-Saharan countries with a focus on the many complex factors that affect teacher time on task across the region. The study provides robust evidence on the challenges faced by teachers to improve policies on teacher working conditions, accountability and motivation. Reduced teacher time on task is considered one of the greatest challenges toward inclusive and quality education.

Photo credit: screenshot from the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti video. 

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

Even before governments across the world closed schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing education was a major challenge for refugee or internally displaced children. During 2020’s lockdowns, children in refugee camps have been at especially high risk of missing out on remote education due to lack of access to the necessary technology.

As schools reopen around the world, more attention is needed to the particular challenges faced by teachers in refugee camps.

Ja Aung is a middle-school teacher in Hpung Lung Yang [GSA1] camp for internally displaced persons in Kachin State, Myanmar. The camp’s plywood and sheet-metal structures house around two thousand people forced from their homes by fighting between the Kachin Independence Army and Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar. Before the pandemic, she reflected on the difficulties of her role:

“The biggest challenge that I face as a teacher is communication”, says Ja Aung. “As the schools where I teach are in the border areas between China and Myanmar, students speak different Kachin dialects and accents, not just the common Kachin language, Jinghpaw.

Ja Aung is not alone – communication is one of the four main challenges pinpointed in Save the Children’s report Hear It From The Teachers: Getting Refugee Children Back To Learning. In a survey, 61% of refugee teachers employed by the charity reported issues with some children not speaking the language of instruction in the classroom.

As the report explains, studies suggest that the most effective way to integrate pupils who do not speak the majority language is to incorporate some lessons in their mother tongue, rather than immerse them in the new language. But that can be challenging when children in a class speak multiple languages.

How to teach in a crisis

Training is another challenge the report highlights: “A lack of effective teacher professional development is a key issue for teachers of refugees around the globe”.

Ja Aung concurs: “I am lucky that I received 9-month teacher training,” she says, referring to a unique pre-service teaching program, called the New Generation Teacher Training College which is a partnership between the local Diocesan Commission of Education and Jesuit Refugee Service.

Aung spent seven months studying an intensive teacher preparation curriculum and had an additional two month placement at a local school.

 “I found that the teachers who did not receive any teacher training or trained for short term such as one week faced many challenges, as they did not get a chance to learn skills for teaching such as elements of pedagogy like school and classroom management.

“It would be good if there will be ongoing teacher training program for all teachers, Ja Aung adds.

Recognising the need for teacher training, the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies developed an open-source package: Training for Primary School Teachers in Crisis Contexts comprises four modules, with a participant handbook and facilitator’s guide available online.

This package underpins initiatives such as the New Generation Teacher Training College, as well as Teachers for Teachers, run by Columbia University with various partners, which offers services including peer coaching and mobile mentoring via WhatsApp and a private Facebook group.

The modules cover subjects including classroom management, child development, lesson planning, using local resources in the classroom, positive discipline, identifying signs of distress in children, and how teachers can look after their own well-being.

When asked what she would especially like to learn more about, “child psychology” is the first topic Ja Aung mentions. She already uses techniques such as building a child’s self-confidence by hanging their drawings on the wall, and scheduling “singing and dancing at the last period on every Friday… I believe this boosts their well-being.”

Ja Aung’s interest is shared by the teachers surveyed for Save The Children’s report: three-quarters of respondents drew attention to students’ psychosocial wellbeing as a priority, with some children being quiet and distant while others are hostile or hyperactive.

“Teachers regularly reported that they needed to provide refugee students with targeted support to better understand what was behind their behaviors, the report notes.

Keeping children in class

The final challenge identified by Save The Children is that many refugee children drop out of school to look after siblings or earn an income. UNHCR figures suggest that while 77% of primary-aged refugee children were in school in 2019, this dropped to just 31% at secondary level.

Refugee girls are especially at risk of dropping out because of early marriage, pregnancy, or parental concerns about mixing with boys. One estimate, based on UNHCR statistics, is that half the refugee girls who were in secondary school before COVID-19 are unlikely to return when schools reopen.

While getting vulnerable children back to school is currently a challenge across the world, these figures point to the need for more research into the particular difficulties in refugee contexts.

Photo credit: INEE

While schools in most countries have now reopened their doors after the Covid-19 hiatus, in Bangladesh the government  recently decided to extend the shutdown of educational institutions. Pupils have been out of school since March 17.

For teachers, the extended period out of school is both a challenge – to keep students engaged and learning – and an opportunity to rethink how education should be delivered.

Reimagining teaching

Sharmistha Deb is a teacher whose experience of supporting her female fourth-grade students remotely has led her to start a project developing new content on social-emotional learning.

“Research suggests that such learning can help reduce anxiety, suicide, substance abuse, depression, and impulsive behaviour in children,” says Sharmistha, “while increasing test scores, attendance, and social behaviours such as kindness, personal awareness and empathy.”

Lockdown has challenged the wellbeing of many children in Bangladesh. One assessment, conducted in May, found that over half were not taking part in online classes or watching the televised lessons aimed at families without internet access.

Asif Saleh, the executive director of BRAC – an NGO that provides a wide range of services across Bangladesh – has raised concerns about an increase in child marriages in rural areas, while urban areas are seeing more problems with youth crime and drugs.

Learning from previous crises

These reports mirror experiences in Africa during the Ebola crisis, according to UNESCO’s report ‘Addressing the gender dimensions of COVID-related school closures’: Ebola-related school closures “led to increases in early and forced marriages, transactional sex to cover basic needs and sexual abuse, while adolescent pregnancy increased by up to 65% in some communities”.

Sharmistha, a Fellow of the Teach for Bangladesh Fellowship programme, which aims to reduce educational disparities and build the long term leadership skills of educators, wanted the 33 girls in her class to feel connected and important while their school was closed. She uses a range of apps to keep in touch with them – Imo, Viber, WhatsApp and Facebook, as well as phone calls – and check on their mental health.

She found they were experiencing a wide range of psychological impacts due to being isolated from their friends and having to adjust to radically different daily routines, often with more responsibilities for looking after family members. Lockdown increased the financial insecurity of their households, which had already put some of the girls at risk of exploitation and child marriage.

Mental health mentoring

Sharmistha talks to the girls about five ways to boost mental health – prayer, healthy food, meditation, exercise and sleep. These conversations have deepened Sharmistha’s belief that teachers need to support students with their emotional wellbeing, help them to deal with anxiety and develop their self-confidence so they in turn can support their families and communities.

“Students may need additional psychological and socio-emotional support” because of lockdown, notes Supporting teachers in back-to-school efforts: A toolkit for school leaders, a recent publication by UNESCO, the Teacher Task Force and ILO. “A whole new set of vulnerabilities could have reared up during school closures, including disruption of vital safety nets such as school meals or exposure to other trauma in ‘at-risk’ households.”

Among the toolkit’s suggestions is “providing checklists for teachers to assess learners’ behaviour and reactions in relation to stress and anxiety”, and making sure teachers know how to report suspicions of abuse.

Building back equal: Girls back to school guide, calls for “professional development for teachers, school management and other education sector staff to identify and support girls who are struggling psychologically.”

Getting girls back to school

There is the challenge of getting girls back to school, after months away and amid continuing fear of the pandemic. Erum Mariam, the executive director of BRAC Institute of Educational Development, says frontline workers need to “give these families psychosocial assistance and to convince parents to send their children back to school… We cannot work under the assumption that once schools open, children will return.”

After the Ebola crisis there were “increases in school drop-outs among girls when schools reopened”.

Sharmistha is already planning how to integrate social-emotional learning into her lessons, with activities on mindfulness, self-control, relationship building, anger management, coping with stress, empathy, conflict resolution and social sensitivity, and identifying the early signs of mental illness.

“We need to develop social-emotional learning strategies that actually work as proactive initiatives for preventing mental illness,” she explains.

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This blog is part of a series of stories addressing the importance of the work of, and the challenges faced by teachers in the lead up to the 2020 World Teachers’ Day celebrations.

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Cover photo credit: Teach For Bangladesh

Mental health professionals give advice for back-to-school anxiety

As those with the responsibility for educating the next generation, teachers have always worked under great pressure.

Teachers in many countries have been increasingly struggling with high-stakes testing, large class sizes, limited resources, excessive workload, and lack of recognition. This year, Covid-19 has uprooted their lives, burdened them with new responsibilities, and dented their morale. Education Support, a UK charity dedicated to teacher wellbeing, warned that teachers are reporting higher levels of stress and anxiety during the pandemic: “Covid-19 has turned the education sector upside down”.

Studies and surveys show that - even pre-pandemic - teachers appeared more stressed than ever before: Education Support’s Teacher Wellbeing Index found 72 per cent of UK education professionals say they are stressed; the American Federation of Teachers found 78 per cent of US teachers are emotionally and physically exhausted at the end of school days; and a UCL Institute of Education study found five per cent of teachers in England are suffering from long-term mental health complications (up from one per cent in the 1990s).

Stress often leads to burn out and mental illness; many teachers conclude that they must leave the classroom for the sake of their health and happiness. Research from the UK’s Department for Education showed that anxiety, sleeping difficulties, and panic attacks are frequently cited as reasons for giving up teaching.

Through the coronavirus pandemic, discussions about well-being at work have been bubbling into the mainstream, with some organisations addressing the subject of employee mental health for the first time. Teachers’ organisations - both national and international - have published guidance on how to protect teaching wellbeing through this unprecedented challenge, from advising school leaders on safe and supportive reopening to suggesting self-care practices for educators.

UNESCO, the Teacher Task Force, and the International Labour Organisation have jointly published a toolkit to help school leaders reopen schools while protecting teachers. Providing practical advice such as on preparing teachers for a changed school environment, it also suggests how to mitigate mental health impacts. This can include regular psychological and socio-emotional assessment, building peer support networks, and providing training in stress management skills. In one school in Pakistan, teachers unable to teach online were trained in counselling to support other teachers, while members of the school community were offered mindfulness and yoga classes.

The UK teachers’ union NASUWT, meanwhile, published guidance on maintaining well-being while teaching remotely. This included how to protect work-life balance (such as by keeping a routine and dedicated workplace), where to seek support (such as Employer Assistance Programmes and mental health first aiders), and how to practice general self-care. The AFT worked with the Anxiety and Depression Association of America to produce a guide of existing resources on well-being during Covid-19. Australia’s ReachOut Schools is also providing free wellbeing resources specific to teachers and teaching website Twinkl has partnered with mental health charity Mind to create activities to help teachers manage their mental health through Covid-19.

Meanwhile, Education Support is providing a dedicated 24-hour helpline for teachers and one-to-one telephone counselling for headteachers through a government partnership.

Regardless of its benefits, self-care cannot always resolve stress. Therefore, teachers are also advocating for changes in schools – and education systems more broadly – to tackle sources of stress and establish a more supportive working environment. The UK government has acknowledged the strain placed on teachers, and has promised to reduce workload and the burden of school inspections, among other measures. Many governments could make comparable changes to reduce engrained sources of stress for teachers, such as tackling large class sizes, de-emphasising exam results, and ensuring all teachers are appropriately paid and supported (e.g.: with access to health insurance and paid sick leave).

While the rights of teachers are already recognised in international standards, governments should consider adopting further policies aimed towards promoting teacher well-being. These could include regular stress risk assessments (advocated by the National Education Union (NEU)), or monitoring teacher mental health (suggested by UCL education experts). Some of these policies could also be proactively adopted by schools.

The NEU advises school leaders: “Acting to reduce levels of stress within your school will lead to less short- and long-term sick leave which will, in turn, reduce pressures on other colleagues as well as benefiting pupils”. In addition to introducing stress risk assessments, the NEU recommends openly addressing the stigma of mental ill health, making reasonable adjustments to support staff when necessary (such as by allowing absences during working hours to attend talking therapies), and appointing a school governor to lead on mental health strategy.

Teachers around the world face a variety of pressures, but every school benefits from them being motivated, engaged, and mentally healthy. When teachers have access to individual psychological support – from self-care guidance to talking therapies – and leaders take measures to tackle sources of stress in the school environment, their schools will be in a better position to thrive.

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This blog is part of a series of stories addressing the importance of the work of, and the challenges faced by teachers in the lead up to this year’s World Teachers’ Day celebrations.

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Cover photo credit: Engin Akyurt/Unsplash

Four ways the COVID-19 crisis could change the teaching experience for the better

COVID-19 has brought countless new challenges to teachers and education systems across the world. Teachers have had to adapt and evolve rapidly in response to school closures. 

As schools reopen in a world where lockdowns may be more common-place, teachers have been forced to create and employ new ways for educating children. In this new teaching reality, it is essential to review roles and responsibilities as well as the rights, protections and wellbeing of educators.

Experts are beginning to point to ways that COVID-19 will be the catalyst to create more sustainable, resilient and inclusive societies, and education is a bedrock of those. 

Here are four ways the crisis could change the teaching profession for the better:

New digital skills will equip teachers for the future

As the virus spread and schools closed, teachers had to adapt quickly to an online model of teaching which was new to many. Inequities in connectivity and access to technology, resources and digital support has made the experience different according to school, country and even subject. Often teachers were given insufficient training, support or resources.

Teachers have reported the challenge of their own as well as students’ digital literacy and access to online learning. For many, it was a sudden swerve into an unknown world with a lack of clarity over how different online tools could interact with learning. The skills they have acquired in the past three months have prepared them for an increasingly digital future. 

It was not an easy initiative to take", says Shaila Sharmin, a fellow at Teach For Bangladesh. “We didn't have any resources as we were not prepared for this long lockdown. We had no skill regarding video editing. In spite of the challenges, we made it happen.”

Teachers have a new resilience

One way of strengthening the support for new ways of education delivery is leadership as well as dialogue with the school and peer support networks. Teachers report gaining more confidence through communication with their colleagues, as well as with parents. 

 I help parents and family with tips and suggestions on how to organize the home study routine. I also offer guidance on how to help students understand whether they have managed to reach all the learning objectives", says Débora Garofalo, a technology teacher in the public education network at the São Paulo State Education Secretariat.

It is vital, then, that teachers are listened to and their concerns heard as new forms of education are developed.

Developing support systems with colleagues and sharing technical knowledge and expertise has improved online teaching skills as well as building community at a time of stress and isolation.

Teachers report that peer learning has been a key element of developing online methods. Sharing solutions and what has worked for different teachers will help educators build networks and a more resilient way of teaching.

What makes it manageable is the fact that we are in it together", says Anne-Fleur Lurvink, a secondary school teacher, from Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Resources gaps have been exposed

Resources are central to strengthening the future of education and preventing a generational crisis in response to COVID-19. Governments will now be under more pressure to protect education funding and rethink how teachers are motivated. 

Teachers have proved that they are the front line workers “who hold the system together” and so they need support and resources to help them do their jobs. Protection of physical health and safety as schools reopen must be a fundamental right. Teachers may be facing challenges at home as well as professional upheaval. Therefore offering support and resources for psychological well-being and mental health as well as professional help will be important as the crisis continues. 

Respect for the profession has grown 

Calls to seize the chance to address the education crisis that many countries were already experiencing before the pandemic are rising. Parents having to homeschool their children has given many a new perspective on what it takes to educate.

Suggestions of how to improve teaching includes greater support for the teaching profession, protecting teachers from burnout which can lead to absenteeism and leaving the profession, enhanced communication and connectivity and making digital platforms open source and free rather than run by private companies. Schools and education systems which engaged the most with parents, teachers and students are showing signs of increased resilience. 

Another area is evolving curricula to represent what is relevant to the world today and its inhabitants, during a climate and biodiversity crisis and at a time of science denial and misinformation. 

As COVID-19 has shown, the wellbeing of the planet and the health of humanity are inextricably linked. Teachers and the education they provide are integral to a more sustainable future.

Cover photo credit: Dan Gaken/Flickr

This blog is part of a series of stories addressing the importance of the work of, and the challenges faced by teachers in the lead up to this year’s World Teachers’ Day celebrations.