Ei-iE

Education unions are joining forces to tackle the global teacher shortage and its causes, which include low pay, excessive workloads and declining working conditions. On 30 July, at the 10th World Congress of Education International in Buenos Aires, Argentina, delegates from education unions from all continents came together in a thematic session to address this global challenge.

Education unions are joining forces to tackle the global teacher shortage and its causes, which include low pay, excessive workloads and declining working conditions. On 30 July, at the 10th World Congress of Education International in Buenos Aires, Argentina, delegates from education unions from all continents came together in a thematic session to address this global challenge.

The session, held as part of EI’s “Go public! Fund education” campaign, focused on how the recommendations of the UN High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession can be used by education unions to support their key demands: better pay and working conditions to attract and retain qualified teachers.

Angelo Gavrielatos, manager of the Go Public! campaign, opened the session by reiterating the importance of the recommendations as a roadmap for the union struggle. “The key to tackling and reversing the growing teacher shortage, estimated at 44 million, worldwide, is to make sure that we retain and hire the teachers we need,” said Gavrielatos. “The High-Level Panel’s recommendations are the foundation for achieving this. Let’s organise and mobilise for their implementation in all countries. Let’s invest in the teaching profession, let’s invest in public education. Go public!”

Acting on the High-Level Panel’s recommendations

Moderated by Rebeca Logan, EI’s campaigns and communications director, a panel of women trade union leaders from every continent discussed which recommendations were most relevant to their national contexts, what actions were being taken to implement them and the steps to follow in the next stage.

The panel members were Manal Hdaife of the Public Primary School Teachers’ League (PPSTL), Sonia Alesso of the Confederación de Trabajadores de la Educación de la República Argentina (CTERA), Unifa Rosyidi of the Persekutuan Guru Republic (PGRI - Indonesia) and Agnes Beatrice Bikoko of the Fédération Camerounaise des Syndicats de l’Éducation (FECASE).

Manal Hdaife stressed the need to promote policies aimed at increasing public funding for education and investing in the teaching profession. “Quality public education cannot be achieved without adequate funding, which would provide us with well-qualified teachers.”

The PPSTL leader explained that the union is holding workshops in every region to bring the recommendations to as many teachers as possible. These workshops will culminate in roundtable discussions involving all the stakeholders, to urge governments to implement the recommendations and make them public.

Referring to the recommendations, Sonia Alesso emphasised that it is a “great document” that requires all the organisations affiliated to Education International to get to work, both “with reading it and disseminating it among their rank and file”. Alesso stressed the importance of working to secure more state funding for public education, highlighting the recommendations that refer to state investment in the teaching profession, sustainability, peace and democracy, and the transformation of teaching through a new social contract.

“Right-wing governments want to roll back education, they want to abolish academic freedom, they want to interfere in our decisions and we need a new social contract that puts workers’ rights, human rights first,” she insisted.

Ending precarious employment and promoting gender justice

Referring to the situation in Indonesia, Unifa Rosyidi highlighted the recommendations that refer to the need to guarantee job security for education workers. “We want to put an end to precarious employment, and we want contract teachers to be hired as permanent staff,” she remarked.

Rosyidi also insisted on the need to keep up the fight to promote gender equality, an issue covered in the recommendations. “We need women teachers to be leaders and we need to ask the government to establish procedures to ensure women’s leadership,” she said.

The union leader also spoke of her union’s plans to meet with the finance minister to discuss the implementation of the recommendations.

Funding: a matter of life and death

Agnes Beatrice Bikoko referred to the complex situation in Cameroon, underlining the recommendations on funding, salaries, quality and accessible training and guaranteed professional development.

Funding “is a matter of life and death (...) because the most vulnerable families cannot enrol their children in public schools, which are lacking, while the private sector segregates the students from the privileged class”. Similarly, she continued, “schools and universities must have the education funding they need to invest in quality teachers”.

She called for action to protect and improve the teaching profession’s dignity in relation to students. “Public schooling cannot be kept alive without state investment. Education is a right, not a privilege,” she concluded.

The session culminated in a plenary discussion that highlighted the collective commitment of Education International’s affiliates to secure, through a joint political-organisational strategy, a well-paid and respected teaching profession with guaranteed job security.