Two million more apples for the teacher

Oct 14th, 2011 2:23 PM UTC
By Lauren Pfeifer

A teacher at the Kidoti Primary School in Tanzania.

We’ve proclaimed a “day” to celebrate everything from ice cream to talking like a pirate, but last Wednesday, the world celebrated a group of people who have touched every one of our lives: teachers.

On World Teacher’s Day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) celebrated teachers and released updated estimates of the global demand for primary school teachers through 2015, the deadline for reaching the Millennium Development Goal of Universal Primary Education (UPE).

By 2015, just over 2 million new teaching positions around the world need to be filled around the globe. Because of the growing number of primary school students and current gaps in education systems, 55 percent of those 2 million positions are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Adding together the new positions with those to keep current positions filled, 350,000 teachers need to be hired in sub-Saharan Africa every year through 2015. Some countries in sub-Saharan Africa may have trouble recruiting the teachers needed to fill all of these positions. For example, in Mozambique, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Uganda and Tanzania, more teachers are needed than the number of students who enrolled in secondary school in 2009.

The UNESCO report measures the severity of these teacher gaps by the growth needed in each country. The overwhelming majority of countries with “severe” teacher gaps are in sub-Saharan Africa. The gap in 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa is considered “severe”, where there needs to be an increase in teacher hiring between 3 to 20 percent. Eight additional countries have a “moderate” teacher gap, where teacher hiring needs to be increased by between 0.25 to 2.9 percent. However, there is hope that even countries considered to have “severe” teacher gaps can overcome them. Teacher recruitment in countries like Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia and Senegal has been higher than the levels needed to reach UPE by 2015. If these trends continue, 10 of the countries with “severe” teacher gaps in sub-Saharan Africa are on track to get enough teachers in classrooms to meet the UPE goal.

In total, more than 8 million teachers will need to be hired between now and 2015. It is important that to increase education quality around the world, we hire the teachers we need, especially in developing countries. Good teachers pass along not only knowledge, but with it the improved health outcomes, increased eventual income and lower child mortality rates we know come from a quality primary education.

TAGS: Education, ONE, Policy News