Every Child Needs a Teacher!

It's Global Action Week again! This year, the global community is focussing on the dire need for trained, motivated, and respected teachers to ensure that every child can realize their right to a quality education.

61 million children are not in primary school. The biggest thing we can do to give them their right to education is make sure they have access to a trained teacher. To do this, we need 1.7 million more teachers.

Failure to deal with the trained teacher shortage is one of the biggest hurdles we have to achieving Education for All – both for getting kids into classrooms, and for assuring quality and positive learning outcomes. Teachers make the difference between children just being in school and learning. If we value learning, we must value teachers.

Ensuring high quality teachers for all requires teachers to be recruited, trained, paid, developed and managed as professionals. Remedying the problems required to address the teacher gap requires focused intervention, including significant, well-targeted financing.

Want to know more? Visit www.everychildneedsateacher.org. Take action by writing to the World Bank askign for sufficient funds and supportive policies to address the trained teacher gap.

Other resources:

Read the GCE's backgroung report Every Child Needs A Teacher: Closing the Trained Teacher Gap.

Check out the GCE's Policy Demands for teachers!

Learn more about the context of teachers and teaching with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics e-Atlas of teachers.

Update on Education and the Post-2015 Development Agenda

The international community is aflutter with discussions on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, with more and more positions and news and opportunities arising daily. Here’s a brief snapshot of what has been happening related to education.

In February, CIDA invited Canadian civil society organizations to participate in a consultation on the future of the education agenda, in order to inform the agency’s position in the lead-up to the Global Meeting on Education. Read CGCE’s response to the discussion questions.

The UN World We Want online thematic consultation for education has concluded. Summaries of the key findings from the four e-discussions are now available:

• Equitable Access to Education
• Quality of Learning
• Global Citizenship, Jobs and Skills
• Governance and Financing of Education

The EFA Global Monitoring Report has launched a new Post-2015 hub for resources and updates related to education and the Post-2015 discussions. The team has also drafted a proposal on Post-2015 Education Goals for comment.

 Finally, the Global Meeting on Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda took place March 18-19, 2013 in Dakar, Senegal. This meeting was the culmination of the consultation on education, and outcomes will be presented to the Secretary General of the United Nations, as well as the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons. The meeting resulted in agreement on the overarching education goal of “equitable quality lifelong education and learning for all,” highlighting the consensus that equal access to quality education should be the basis of the education agenda in the Post-2015 framework.  Read a summary of the Dakar meeting here.