● As the biggest ed­u­ca­tion cri­sis in his­to­ry en­ters its third year, teach­ers call on gov­ern­ments to tru­ly pri­ori­tise ed­u­ca­tion, in­vest in the sec­tor, and sup­port the pro­fes­sion ●

BEL­GIUM (Jan­u­ary 24, 2022) – To­day, the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Ed­u­ca­tion, teach­ers from across the world are sound­ing the alarm to draw at­ten­tion to the deep­en­ing cri­sis in the sec­tor and the long-term con­se­quences for stu­dents every­where.

“Right now, keep­ing schools open and safe dur­ing re­lent­less waves of the pan­dem­ic is a pri­or­i­ty for gov­ern­ments, par­ents, and teach­ers every­where. How­ev­er, this pri­or­i­ty is not re­flect­ed in ed­u­ca­tion bud­gets. Since the start of the pan­dem­ic, ed­u­ca­tion bud­gets have fall­en in two-thirds of low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries, and in one third of up­per-mid­dle- and high-in­come coun­tries. This is dev­as­tat­ing, and every day teach­ers are asked to do much more, with much less”, stat­ed David Ed­wards, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion In­ter­na­tion­al, the glob­al voice of teach­ers and ed­u­ca­tion work­ers.

Even be­fore the pan­dem­ic, the Unit­ed Na­tions es­ti­mat­ed that 69 mil­lion more teach­ers were need­ed to achieve Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 4 and en­sure in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion for all. The heavy work­load, lack of re­sources to keep schools safe, and chron­ic un­der­staffing in ed­u­ca­tion means more and more teach­ers are leav­ing the pro­fes­sion. Un­less gov­ern­ments act now, the glob­al teacher short­age will be­come the next big cri­sis in ed­u­ca­tion, de­priv­ing mil­lions of stu­dents from ac­cess to a trained and qual­i­fied teacher.

Yet an­oth­er alarm­ing up­date comes from UN­ESCO’s In­sti­tute for Sta­tis­tics and the Glob­al Ed­u­ca­tion Mon­i­tor­ing Re­port. A new re­port re­leased to­day shows that coun­tries will not achieve Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 4 by 2030. Worse still, the bleak find­ings do not take in­to ac­count the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on ed­u­ca­tion.

If we are to re­verse the dam­age caused by the pan­dem­ic and ac­cel­er­ate progress to­wards Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 4, ur­gent ac­tion is es­sen­tial.

In a video state­ment, David Ed­wards called on gov­ern­ments every­where to tru­ly pri­ori­tise ed­u­ca­tion by:

●   Al­lo­cat­ing at least 6% of GDP or 20% of gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture to ed­u­ca­tion.

●   Fo­cussing on teacher train­ing, re­cruit­ment, and re­ten­tion. Crit­i­cal­ly, gov­ern­ments must set and achieve am­bi­tious na­tion­al bench­marks on the per­cent­age of teach­ers trained ac­cord­ing to na­tion­al stan­dards.

●   Sup­port­ing the teach­ing pro­fes­sion and work­ing with teach­ers and their unions to over­come this cri­sis.

David Ed­wards, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion In­ter­na­tion­al al­so un­der­scored:

"Keep­ing schools open and safe is a pri­or­i­ty every­where. We call on gov­ern­ments to in­vest in ed­u­ca­tion and to stand by the ed­u­ca­tors who are out front giv­ing their ALL to keep stu­dents en­gaged, safe, and learn­ing dur­ing this pan­dem­ic."

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About Ed­u­ca­tion In­ter­na­tion­al:

Ed­u­ca­tion In­ter­na­tion­al is the voice of the teach­ing pro­fes­sion world­wide. As the glob­al fed­er­a­tion of ed­u­ca­tion unions, it rep­re­sents more than 32 mil­lion teach­ers and ed­u­ca­tion work­ers across 383 or­ga­ni­za­tions in 178 coun­tries.