Bob Harris, EI's Senior Consultant to the General Secretary, shares information and commentary on the impact of the financial crisis on education funding, and how education can be part of the solution.
Statement by Bob Harris to the World Economic Forum,
Global Redesign Initiative Summit, Doha, 30-31 May 2010
Session on “Rebuild in Depth: Education”
If we are to rebuild in depth, we must start with people.
The premise of the Global Agenda Council on Education Systems is contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to education”.
Yet more than 60 years after that declaration was adopted at the United nations, and just 5 years before the new target date for achievement of Education for All, there are still 72 million children of primary school age out of school, and about the same number unable to go on to secondary school or to pursue relevant vocational education. The challenge was laid out clearly in the inspiring keynote address by Queen Rania yesterday.
The quantitative statistics for children and young people in school are actually significantly better than they were a decade ago. That is in itself a sign of hope. But today we face a challenge of quality in education, and linked with that, a challenge of relevance.
The issue of quality confronts us at 3 levels:
1. The statistics don’t tell the full story. Children registered for school may not all attend, and many drop out. This is of particular concern for girls.
2. When you have 100 children or more in a classroom, with a teacher who did a 3 week course after his/her secondary school, you do not have quality.
3. When schooling in such classes is limited to rote-learning, you do not have the quality of learning required for the 21st century.
The challenges of quality and relevance are there in all countries. But in the developing countries, the quality of education is a key factor in emerging from cycles of poverty and in achieving autonomous growth.
Desmond has spoken of the financing gap that has to be closed to achieve Education for All. I will speak of the people gap. We know from UNESCO that 10 million more qualified teachers will be required by 2015 to replace those who will retire and to meet the basic EFA goals.
In both cases, closing the financing gap, and closing the people gap, the approach we must take is essentially a bottom up approach. In addition to the report which you will find on your USB key, and copies are available here, we have produced side papers that make that clear. In the global community of the 21st century, we need a framework that creates opportunities for that bottom-up approach.
In both cases, we need leadership. We need political leadership. But also leadership from the international community, from the business community, from civil society, from the teaching profession, and from our universities. The engagement of all these actors is the key to an effective response to the challenge.
In Davos this year, when we presented our preliminary report, we heard many expressions of willingness to engage. There was consensus around the notion that people are the key, the people of education, and especially the teachers. In an age of unprecedented challenges, opportunities and risks, we need a new vision of teaching. It is a vision that recognizes that learning will be life-long, in school and out of school. It is a vision that will help children and young people to equip themselves for the skills they will need in the 21st century – to fulfill their potential, for themselves and for their communities. It is a vision that teachers will be able to apply the science of pedagogy, and the art of teaching to enable every child, every young person, to achieve his or her potential as a person and as a member of society.
But these teachers must themselves be equipped to fulfill this vision. There are 60 million teachers in the world today – internationally the largest professional group in the world, present in every community, and at least 10 million more needed within 5 years. This is a huge challenge. It engages the responsibility of all governments and it requires the engagement of all those groups I mentioned earlier.
The education and professional development of teachers is essential to systemic success. Our Global Agenda Council proposes a “Global Partnership for Teacher Education” to mobilize financial, human and intellectual resources in support of national initiatives to train qualified teachers.
We need a fresh approach to the mobilization of resources, and re-ordering of priorities. Investing in teacher education and professional development has often not happened yet it is precisely this investment that can have the biggest impact on quality. And it is not enough to recruit and train teachers. Frameworks for mentoring and professional development are needed 1) to assist these qualified teachers to improve their teaching skills, and 2) to enable teachers to develop throughout their careers, and 3) to motivate them.
Successful corporations know the importance of good human resource practices. Education Systems should do no less. Systemic failure to apply best practice translates into the loss of potentially good teachers, undercutting the effect of recruiting new teachers.
There is enormous potential to use the tools of the 21st century to support teachers. We recommend building on existing instruments to develop an Educators, Professional Development Portal and exchange capability. We recommend dissemination and localization of UNESCO’s framework on ICT competency for teachers, developed with three of the Forum’s leading constituents in the IT field. Multistakeholder support can be mobilized for the extension free broadband access for schools and teachers around the world.
The teaching profession is organized in much of the world through Education International and its national unions, bringing together teachers from pre-school to university. The profession is actively engaged in debates on issues of accountability, ethics, development of competency profiles, self and peer assessment. In all these questions the logical intergovernmental interface is UNESCO. Our GAC sees a leadership role for UNESCO. Responding to the challenges of rapidly changing world can be daunting. When Jacques Delors presented UNESCO’s report on education for the 21st century (Learning the Treasure Within) he described teaching as “the noblest of professions”. But the daily reality faced by 60 million teachers is often far from that aspiration.
Society expects much of its teachers, and those expectations are not diminishing. Global mobility means our societies are increasingly diverse, and even the most developed societies are increasingly unequal. It is an oversimplification to distinguish between the developing and the developed countries, for through migration the world comes into every community. In addition to their other tasks, teachers must encourage every child to take pride in his or her cultural identity, while respecting the cultural identity of others, and each school community must function according to that principle.
In another session yesterday, I heard Dennis Snower call for increased mobility of teachers facilitated by recognition of teacher education qualifications.
Even before the crisis there was the challenge of relevance for young people entering the job market for the fist time. Already, youth unemployment, whether in developing or so-called developed countries, is far too high. Now with fiscal consolidation in the OECD countries, there is a very real risk of a lost generation. G20 Labour and Employment Ministers met in Washington in March and presented their recommendations to President Obama for the G20 Leaders. They have stated clearly that a skills strategy is vital to sustainable recovery, and to a just transition toward green growth. And they also stated that quality basic education was the foundation. Again, if we are to expand VET, as we must, we should address the issue of training for VET teachers and instructors, which in turn raises questions of mobility between teaching and industry. Good work is being done on this at the ILO and the OECD. Importantly, this is an area where there is common ground between employers and trade unions, and scope for really practical work at the national and regional levels.
Like the Labour and Employment Ministerial , our GAC strongly supports the move to place education on the G20 agenda. Education and skills are factors in a smart strategy for sustainable recovery. We see the need for the active engagement of the emerging economies through the G20, and to go beyond the valuable declarations already made by the G8, to a more wholistic approach to education, as a factor of human development in the 21st century.
It means putting the emphasis back on people, investing in people through education. And that also means a renewed effort to put new emphasis on and mobilize support for the people of education – the teachers.
Global Redesign Initiative Summit, Doha, 30-31 May 2010
Session on “Rebuild in Depth: Education”
If we are to rebuild in depth, we must start with people.
The premise of the Global Agenda Council on Education Systems is contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to education”.
Yet more than 60 years after that declaration was adopted at the United nations, and just 5 years before the new target date for achievement of Education for All, there are still 72 million children of primary school age out of school, and about the same number unable to go on to secondary school or to pursue relevant vocational education. The challenge was laid out clearly in the inspiring keynote address by Queen Rania yesterday.
The quantitative statistics for children and young people in school are actually significantly better than they were a decade ago. That is in itself a sign of hope. But today we face a challenge of quality in education, and linked with that, a challenge of relevance.
The issue of quality confronts us at 3 levels:
1. The statistics don’t tell the full story. Children registered for school may not all attend, and many drop out. This is of particular concern for girls.
2. When you have 100 children or more in a classroom, with a teacher who did a 3 week course after his/her secondary school, you do not have quality.
3. When schooling in such classes is limited to rote-learning, you do not have the quality of learning required for the 21st century.
The challenges of quality and relevance are there in all countries. But in the developing countries, the quality of education is a key factor in emerging from cycles of poverty and in achieving autonomous growth.
Desmond has spoken of the financing gap that has to be closed to achieve Education for All. I will speak of the people gap. We know from UNESCO that 10 million more qualified teachers will be required by 2015 to replace those who will retire and to meet the basic EFA goals.
In both cases, closing the financing gap, and closing the people gap, the approach we must take is essentially a bottom up approach. In addition to the report which you will find on your USB key, and copies are available here, we have produced side papers that make that clear. In the global community of the 21st century, we need a framework that creates opportunities for that bottom-up approach.
In both cases, we need leadership. We need political leadership. But also leadership from the international community, from the business community, from civil society, from the teaching profession, and from our universities. The engagement of all these actors is the key to an effective response to the challenge.
In Davos this year, when we presented our preliminary report, we heard many expressions of willingness to engage. There was consensus around the notion that people are the key, the people of education, and especially the teachers. In an age of unprecedented challenges, opportunities and risks, we need a new vision of teaching. It is a vision that recognizes that learning will be life-long, in school and out of school. It is a vision that will help children and young people to equip themselves for the skills they will need in the 21st century – to fulfill their potential, for themselves and for their communities. It is a vision that teachers will be able to apply the science of pedagogy, and the art of teaching to enable every child, every young person, to achieve his or her potential as a person and as a member of society.
But these teachers must themselves be equipped to fulfill this vision. There are 60 million teachers in the world today – internationally the largest professional group in the world, present in every community, and at least 10 million more needed within 5 years. This is a huge challenge. It engages the responsibility of all governments and it requires the engagement of all those groups I mentioned earlier.
The education and professional development of teachers is essential to systemic success. Our Global Agenda Council proposes a “Global Partnership for Teacher Education” to mobilize financial, human and intellectual resources in support of national initiatives to train qualified teachers.
We need a fresh approach to the mobilization of resources, and re-ordering of priorities. Investing in teacher education and professional development has often not happened yet it is precisely this investment that can have the biggest impact on quality. And it is not enough to recruit and train teachers. Frameworks for mentoring and professional development are needed 1) to assist these qualified teachers to improve their teaching skills, and 2) to enable teachers to develop throughout their careers, and 3) to motivate them.
Successful corporations know the importance of good human resource practices. Education Systems should do no less. Systemic failure to apply best practice translates into the loss of potentially good teachers, undercutting the effect of recruiting new teachers.
There is enormous potential to use the tools of the 21st century to support teachers. We recommend building on existing instruments to develop an Educators, Professional Development Portal and exchange capability. We recommend dissemination and localization of UNESCO’s framework on ICT competency for teachers, developed with three of the Forum’s leading constituents in the IT field. Multistakeholder support can be mobilized for the extension free broadband access for schools and teachers around the world.
The teaching profession is organized in much of the world through Education International and its national unions, bringing together teachers from pre-school to university. The profession is actively engaged in debates on issues of accountability, ethics, development of competency profiles, self and peer assessment. In all these questions the logical intergovernmental interface is UNESCO. Our GAC sees a leadership role for UNESCO. Responding to the challenges of rapidly changing world can be daunting. When Jacques Delors presented UNESCO’s report on education for the 21st century (Learning the Treasure Within) he described teaching as “the noblest of professions”. But the daily reality faced by 60 million teachers is often far from that aspiration.
Society expects much of its teachers, and those expectations are not diminishing. Global mobility means our societies are increasingly diverse, and even the most developed societies are increasingly unequal. It is an oversimplification to distinguish between the developing and the developed countries, for through migration the world comes into every community. In addition to their other tasks, teachers must encourage every child to take pride in his or her cultural identity, while respecting the cultural identity of others, and each school community must function according to that principle.
In another session yesterday, I heard Dennis Snower call for increased mobility of teachers facilitated by recognition of teacher education qualifications.
Even before the crisis there was the challenge of relevance for young people entering the job market for the fist time. Already, youth unemployment, whether in developing or so-called developed countries, is far too high. Now with fiscal consolidation in the OECD countries, there is a very real risk of a lost generation. G20 Labour and Employment Ministers met in Washington in March and presented their recommendations to President Obama for the G20 Leaders. They have stated clearly that a skills strategy is vital to sustainable recovery, and to a just transition toward green growth. And they also stated that quality basic education was the foundation. Again, if we are to expand VET, as we must, we should address the issue of training for VET teachers and instructors, which in turn raises questions of mobility between teaching and industry. Good work is being done on this at the ILO and the OECD. Importantly, this is an area where there is common ground between employers and trade unions, and scope for really practical work at the national and regional levels.
Like the Labour and Employment Ministerial , our GAC strongly supports the move to place education on the G20 agenda. Education and skills are factors in a smart strategy for sustainable recovery. We see the need for the active engagement of the emerging economies through the G20, and to go beyond the valuable declarations already made by the G8, to a more wholistic approach to education, as a factor of human development in the 21st century.
It means putting the emphasis back on people, investing in people through education. And that also means a renewed effort to put new emphasis on and mobilize support for the people of education – the teachers.
Education International 2009