Many teachers are still not receiving enough relevant training.

 

The most recent data published by the UIS indicates that, globally in 2022, around 85 percent of primary and secondary school teachers met the minimum requirements to teach in their countries. Regionally representative figures for this indicator are available for few regions, but those that exist show wide variation in the composition of the teacher workforce. Among regions with data, Central Asia has the highest proportion of trained teachers. In subSaharan Africa, only 64 percent of primary and 50 percent of secondary school teachers have the minimum required training. This proportion has been declining since 2000, because of the need for additional teachers due to rapid expansion in access, including schools hiring contract teachers without qualifications to cover gaps at lower cost (Figure 2). For instance, in Latin America and the Caribbean, over 80 percent of teachers are trained. By contrast, in sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of trained teachers fell from 84 percent in 2000 to 69 percent in 2019.

The picture looks bleaker when considering the ratio between students and the number of trained teachers: this ratio emphasizes the disparity between countries in different income categories. The pupil to trained teacher ratios are much higher in low- and low-middle-income countries with many countries having ratios well above the “recommended 40 students per teacher in primary education” (Figure 3). This is the consequence of the the rising demand for education from a growing school-age population and the need to offer alternative pathways to teaching to meet this demand, which often involve teachers having no pre-service training or in-service training. Several SubSaharan countries are facing severe overcrowding by this definition. Although Madagascar has 36 students per teacher in total, given that less than 2 out of 10 teachers are trained, there were 240 primary students per trained teacher in 2022. Sao Tome and Principe faces a similar situation with 114 primary students per trained teacher. Bangladesh had 64 primary students per trained teacher in 2022, although the ratio has been decreasing as a decade before there were 80 students per trained teacher.