Ei-iE

Teachers’ training and qualifications have been at the heart of a seminar organised by the German education union GEW, one of the numerous culmination events around the globe of the Unite for Quality Education campaign.

The challenges facing the teaching profession have increased dramatically in recent times. But too often the training and the qualifications of the teaching staff are not at the height of the demands posed to them by today’s society. Policy has not always helped overcome this, and a sharp decrease in investment in the last years has only added to it. The German GEW has set its focus until 2017 on the reform of teachers’ training. The seminar that took place in Leipzig last week was the starting point of this new policy priority.

“We want to focus on our policy positions and begin a participatory process that starts today, and which will include all stakeholders, inside and outside of the GEW”, stated Marlis Tepe, head of the union. With this aim, the GEW has launched a “Forum for the future of teachers’ training”, which will host the work on reform proposals until 2017.

The seminar was attended by Education International’s Deputy General Secretary Haldis Holst, who put the accent on professional ethics, which in her view is as important as knowledge and pedagogy: “We, the teachers, are the experts. We cannot leave it to politicians alone to decide what good teaching means, but we have to develop our own understanding of it”.