The need for monitoring teacher requirements.

 

SDG 4 calls for the provision of high-quality education worldwide, and teachers are the cornerstone on which to build inclusive, equitable, and quality education. SDG 4.c aims to “substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States” by 2030. 

The SDG 4 teacher monitoring framework places focus on whether enough teachers have the knowledge and skills to meet the education needs of countries, particularly given the evolving context of education in a continuously changing social, technological, and globalized context. To this end, the global reporting framework includes indicator 4.c.1 “Proportion of teachers with the minimum required qualifications, by education level” that measures the percentage of trained teachers by level of education and by sex. Six other indicators complement 4.c.1 reflecting the framework: demand as measured by ratios of pupils per trained teacher and pupils per qualified teacher, continuous professional development as measured by the proportion of teachers receiving in-service training, the profession’s attractiveness and motivation as measured by teacher’s salaries relative to others, and the supply of teachers as measured through attrition rates. Five of these indicators are defined by countries’ policies related to requirements for the preparation and development of teachers. 

The United Nations Secretary-General announced the establishment of a High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession aimed at ensuring that every learner has access to a professionally trained, qualified, and well-supported teacher. Since 2000, in the push to achieve universal primary education, the recruitment of qualified teachers has not kept up with demand in all countries. Many countries have been forced to allow individuals who were not formally qualified to become teachers to fill the gaps in teaching personnel. The COVID-19 pandemic has created additional challenges. The transition to remote teaching, the challenges of returning to school, and learning losses have compromised teachers’ capacity to maintain education quality. COVID-19 has also set back teachers’ morale and motivation and exerted extra pressure on teachers who found themselves unprepared and underequipped to address these challenges (UIS, GEMR and TTF, 2020). 

As the custodian agency of the SDG 4 indicator framework, the UIS aims to advance the discussion around quality teaching with a new dataset on teacher requirement policies. It is hoped that this new dataset will inform policies and practice around teacher supply and quality globally which, in turn, will support the international effort to achieve the ambitious goal of SDG4: a quality education for all the world’s learners