Ei-iE

The 10th Education International (EI) World Congress, meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 29 July to 2 August 2024:

Considering

The increasing need for educators and their unions to cooperate across borders to work towards the global common good of high-quality public education;

The unprecedented opportunity presented by United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession recommendations and the Go Public: Fund Education! campaign to pursue and realise our policy objectives as they relate to elevating the status of the profession by better organising and mobilising the membership;

The Resolution entitled "Education Union Renewal: the New Imperative" adopted by the 8th World Congress (2019) urging us to adapt, renew and build capacity to be able to face actual and future challenges.

Recognising

1. That in order to successfully achieve the recommendations of the UN High Level Panel, the collective global effort of all education personnel from the workplace up to national union leadership will be needed;
2. That teacher agency is key in achieving quality education, democratic workplaces and education systems. As are democratic vibrant unions organised from the ground up. That teacher agency, now too often constricted to their own school or institution, is fostered and strengthened by broadening horizons of teachers. That a global perspective will allow teachers to see possible and different futures and be the cocreator of those futures;
3. The impact the COVID pandemic has had on the rapid advancement of online working and collaboration by education personnel and their unions. Which presents unique opportunities for enhancing global union organising and policy work on workplace representative level;
4. That individual member organisations within Education International are already undertaking significant and innovative work in various areas of education policy and practice, union organising, policy advocacy and strengthening the profession, but that these valuable efforts often remain underrecognised and underutilised yet beyond their immediate contexts;
5. That there is a pressing need to foster stronger bilateral, multilateral and international cooperation among education unions and their members worldwide to facilitate the exchange of those best practices on education and teacher policy, policy advocacy and organising teachers around professional and labour issues;
6. That a lot of work is already being done by EI and the regions on union renewal research, the development of union renewal toolkits and the further development of online collaboration and courses;
7. That several successful global ‘organising for power’ online courses organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and Jane McAlevey have taken place which brought together tens of thousands of trade union organisers and representatives, many of whom were members of the EI family.

Calls upon the Executive Board to:

8. Build upon the work of the last five years as laid out in the Education Union Renewal resolution;
9. Identify specific groups which will benefit from a global perspective and successful strategies and actions from other countries, such as

1. Teacher leaders in the education union space
2. Workplace representatives
3. Policy, organising and communications officers
4. Union leaders;

10. Identify specific themes for these specific groups, such as

1. National policy advocacy and lobbying
2. National legislation, collective agreements, frameworks and protocols
3. Organising members around labour issues
4. Organising members around professional issues
5. Organising members around social justice issues;

11. Identify relevant means, such as courses, research, reports, programmes, resource libraries which would benefit teachers and their unions globally;
12. Encourage member organisations to share best practices and open up a global perspective and space for their members and officers;
13. Explore the best way to collaborate for these groups on the global level and to share practices on different topics. Unlock national resources of those unions willing to share their best practices;
14. Consider creating a platform where member organisations can share, learn and collaborate so that we will collectively elevate the status of the profession and achieve quality education for all by better organising and mobilising the membership;
15. Invest the human and material resources needed to create this platform;
16. Strengthen support for linguistic groups that promote exchanges and strategic collaboration at an international level.