Introduction 

Education International believes that quality teaching is essential for quality learning. Given the global challenges that the teaching profession is facing, such as using standardized testing to gauge teaching standards, EI considers thatteaching professionals and their organisations should lead the debate about what quality and excellence are in teaching.  

In EIs Global Policy on education, it is clearly stated that teachers at all levels of education must be appropriately trained and qualified to achieve  quality teaching and learning. The teaching and learning environment should be designed in a way that supports teachers and other education employees in their missions. 

Teachers should maintain high professional standards and should be accountable to society. To this end, professional standards should be established with the full involvement of the teaching profession in each country.  

Policy 

EI has been active since its creation on issues of quality teaching. It has, in particular, focused on a wide range of professional issues related, for example, to initial teacher training, in-service training and continuous professional development while, maintaining high standards and ensuring that the status of teachers is protected and ensured.  

The major issues of quality education, which centre around the role of the teaching profession, came together in the Unite for Quality Education campaign launched in 2014. The three pillars of that campaign are quality teaching, quality tools for teaching and learning, and quality environments for teaching and learning.  

The campaign mobilised teachers on all continents and helped convince governments to create a stand-alone education goal as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (goal 4) that succeeded the MDGs. The SDGs are to be met by 2030. EI’s focus has shifted to putting pressure on governments and intergovernmental organisations to ensure full implementation of the SDGs.  

In addition, EI has decided to augment its activities to promote the ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning  the Status of Teachers (1966) and the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel. Although the recommendation is not recent, its major principles remain at least as valid and fundamental as they were when it was adopted.  

EI is developing a global consultation process with the purpose of collecting members’ views on issues such as recruitment, career development, workload, class size, education and training, social security , salary policies and the increased use of precarious and fixed-term contracts.  These views will be encapsulated in a policy brief on quality terms of employment in the education sector, to be submitted to the 8th EI World Congress in 2019.   

Activities 

Global Network for Quality Teaching and Effectiveness 

The process of identifying, developing, recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers to support student learning, especially the learning needs of the most disadvantaged children, is a global challenge.  

In parts of North America and  Europe, the status of the teaching profession is threatened. One sign of that decline is that only a small number of high-performing college students are attracted into the teaching profession due to other career options that have more attractive pay and working conditions.  

Sub-Saharan Africa experiences acute teacher shortages due to a number of factors, including the ongoing impact of HIV &AIDS and restrictive budgetary conditions, often imposed by foreign development agencies. This affects compensation and, sometimes problems of payment of that compensation as well as inadequate training and bad environments for teaching and learning. These includes deteriorating infrastructure, large class sizes and poor or limited availability of tools and study materials. 

With the expansion of free public education in Latin America and the Caribbean, school enrolments have skyrocketed, creating overcrowded classrooms with abysmal learning and teaching environments.  

In parts of the Asia-Pacific region, there are urgent calls to reform teacher education and preparation programs as nations strive to position themselves to compete in the global economy.  

Progress to Date 

Since its inception in 2007, Quality-Ed conducted feasibility studies in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Peru, and Uganda, leading to the setting up of two pilots in Uganda and Mali. In 2010, project partners in Uganda and Mali developed a national teacher competence profile. National consensus-building around a competence profile is the foundation of subsequent activities, alongside data collection and practical guidance for teachers on life skills.  

The project is now in the second and third phases in which teachers are being trained according to a competence framework, following on from communication and advocacy activities in 2011 and the subsequent alignment of training systems with the profile. In April 2012, the Ministry of Education and Sports in Uganda launched the dissemination of materials produced under the project, in partnership with the Quality-Ed team in the country. In 2011, ON and EI also commissioned an international comparative study of teacher competence profiles, highlighting the need for defining ‘quality educators’ through a democratic and participatory process among all those with an interest in the quality of education. Following that study, in 2012, ON and EI developed Guidelines Towards A National Competence Profile for Primary Teachers. More than 10 000 teachers have been trained since the project’s inception. In Mali, nearly a thousand community teachers who benefitted from the programme have now been integrated into the public service. In 2014, the project won the UNESCO – Hamdan Prize for Outstanding Practice and Performance in Enhancing the Effectiveness of Teachers. `