PRESS CONFERENCE ON GLOBAL TEACHER SHORTAGES

 

With massive teacher shortages threatening efforts to provide every child with a good quality primary education by 2015, countries across the world would need to recruit more than 18 million teachers over the next decade, according to a new report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics. 

Entitled Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015, the report provides global and regional assessments on the state of teachers and educational quality.  It is one of the highlights of the Education for All Week (24-28 April), celebrated each year on the anniversary of the World Education Forum, held in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000.  The theme of this year’s celebrations is “Every Child Needs a Teacher”.

Introducing the report at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon, Peter Smith, UNESCO Assistant Director General for Education, said the report called for a fundamental re-examination of what the status quo was and what people should settle for in terms of looking at educational designs, policies and financing gaps in the developing world.  He was joined by Albert Motivans from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

Mr. Smith noted that last year in the United States, pop star Michael Jackson’s trial received 15 times more coverage than children starving to death and being killed in Darfur.  “It’s really extraordinary ... children in the Third World who are dying a slow death from lack of education got even less coverage.”

Having been at UNESCO for 10 months now, he added, “It is just astonishing to me, and continues to be a source of astonishment, that we can raise money for Angkor Wat and preserving valuable, critical heritage of the past.  And that is an important part of what we do.  But we are much less successful, we are, relatively speaking, unable to raise money and put it on the table in ways that matter and count for children, who are, if you will, the heritage of our future and of their parents.”

It was well known, he said, regardless of the level of education and regardless of who was standing in front of the class or whether the class was meeting in a tent, that people who went to school, stayed in school and finished school did better than people who did not.  They were healthier; participated civically, economically and socially; had more power; and did better.  The key to stable societies was education; and the key to education was literacy.  “I don’t know of a successful, stable society that doesn’t have good education programmes.”

Responding to questions, he said “More of the same won’t get us where we need to go.”  It was necessary to maximize successful approaches and models in order to create solutions that addressed the situations that existed.  Children would not stay in an educational system that did not serve them.  “We have to invent new solutions or we are as good as writing off these generations.”

Other issues, he said, was the use of technology, including the Internet, for training teachers and educating children; how to allow qualified professionals in education to carry recognition of their credentials across boundaries, which was increasingly a problem due to migration; and addressing the financing gap.

The report is available at www.uis.unesco.org/publications/teachers2006.

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For information media • not an official record