Executive summary
To elevate education, you need to elevate the educator
Qualified teachers are the foundation for children to achieve both academically and socially. A good teacher can change a child’s life trajectory and unlock their pathway to further levels of education, higher salaries and better long-term outcomes for them and their family.
A high-quality education system cannot be achieved without qualified teachers. Yet, the shortage of qualified teachers represents one of the greatest barriers to universal primary and secondary education. Globally 44 million teachers are needed to deliver Sustainable Development Goal 4 by 2030, including an additional 15 million teachers in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
The reality of the global teacher shortage can be seen in schools across the world. Teachers are burnt out and leaving the profession they love, and classrooms are bursting at the seams. As a result, teaching quality is diminished and learning opportunities limited for a generation of children. In low-income countries, each primary teacher has an average of 52 pupils per class. In emergency and displacement contexts, the figure is considerably higher — qualified teachers are even more thinly stretched, with many teachers holding even less than ten days of training.
To reclaim the promise of education, prioritise teachers
With the number of children out of school around the world rising, and amidst a global learning crisis, addressing the shortages of qualified teachers is the pathway to quality education for all. Efforts to increase school enrolments and improve learning outcomes will fail without bold action to increase the supply of qualified teachers and invest in their safety, working conditions and continuous professional development.
The Labour Government has rightly put education at the heart of its mission to spread and expand opportunity, recognising that the ‘ability to deliver a high standard of education for every child is being severely undermined by a crisis in recruitment and retention of school staff’. This is true in the UK and magnified across the globe.
The National Education Union calls on the UK Government to stand at the forefront of a global endeavour to get SDG 4 back on track by investing in education at home and abroad and putting the world’s teachers at the heart of its education mission.
A child in Lagos has the same right to access a qualified teacher as a child in Liverpool, and the UK must accept its share of responsibility for the global teacher shortage. Therefore, while the focus of this report is on actions that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office could take to address the global teacher shortage under the new Labour Government, it must be recognised that UK Government policies in recent years — illustrated most notably by the failure to recruit and retain adequate numbers of UK trained teachers — have exacerbated shortages of qualified teachers in the Global South.
This report is a contribution to the growing calls to transform the teaching profession so that every child can access a professionally trained, qualified and well-supported teacher.
It builds on the landmark publication earlier this year of the High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession, and the first Global Report on Teachers, to outline the fundamental role that the UK Government must play in addressing the global teacher shortage.
Given the stakes, the UK cannot afford to short-change education
The scale and severity of new and emerging global threats from conflict to climate change underscore more strongly than ever education’s importance as an investment in a more peaceful, prosperous, greener and fairer future. It is quality teaching that will equip and empower the world’s children with the knowledge, skills and agency to address challenges head on and build a better world.
Investing in qualified teachers is one of the greatest investments we can make in children’s futures. To unlock the transformative potential of education, the UK must re-prioritise investment in quality, publicly provided, free education, with a focus on supporting lower-income countries to recruit, train, and retain qualified teachers, and invest in their safety and working conditions.
Tackling the global teacher shortage can unlock the UK’s development agenda
From supporting economic transformation and conflict prevention, to empowering women and girls, qualified teachers are imperative to the success of the UK’s efforts to tackle global poverty, instability, and the climate and nature crisis. To realise this vision, the NEU calls for the FCDO to develop a new global teacher strategy as part of an ambitious, coherent and partnership-led approach to supporting the recruitment, retention and training of qualified teachers in the Global South.
The report also outlines the need to prioritise investment in education in emergencies and education financing to address the most persistent drivers of the global teacher shortage. This includes working with the international community to establish and resource a Global Fund for Teachers’ Salaries, and progressing wide-ranging reforms to the international finance architecture to unlock financing for public education and quality teaching.
To support all children to access a qualified, well-trained and well-supported teacher and catalyse progress toward SDG 4 and wider development objectives the UK Government should:
- Recognise that the teacher shortage crisis is global: take action to recruit and retain adequate numbers of UK trained teachers, safeguard the rights of overseas trained teachers and enhance collaboration with teachers’ unions, source countries and international bodies.
- Develop a new FCDO global teacher strategy: as part of an ambitious, coherent and partnership-led approach to supporting the recruitment, retention and training of qualified teachers, that is led by the expertise and experiences of teachers and their unions in the Global South.
- Advance the rights, working conditions and supply of qualified teachers in emergency and crisis-contexts: work with the international community to establish and resource a Global Fund for Teachers’ Salaries, and improve policy, planning and financing for teachers in emergencies to unlock education for a generation of children caught in crises.
- Champion and unlock financing for public education and quality teaching: support international reforms that enable progressive taxation, domestic resource mobilisation and debt relief and cancellation to ensure lower-income countries have the necessary fiscal space to increase financing on education; alongside renewed bilateral and multilateral investments that address gaps in the education workforce.