Education International Research
who work on the front lines of SDG implementation — to implement quality education systems, teachers must be involved in the development of education policies. To make progress on SDG 4, governments must prioritise education reforms that focus on teachers in order to achieve the rest of the agenda.
Key recommendations for governments: 1. Invest in teachers. Provide salaries comparable with those of similarly qualified professionals in other sectors and ensure that teachers are paid in a timely manner and can easily access their salaries. No teacher should live in poverty. 2. Ensure that every student is taught by a trained, qualified teacher. To this end, governments must increase the attractiveness and status of the profession and recruit adequate candidates for free, quality initial training. 3. Provide teachers with decent working conditions, ensuring that all educational institutions are safe and secure places to work. Reduce teacher workloads and support teachers’ wellbeing. 4.
Respect teachers’ professional expertise and autonomy.
5. Guarantee fair and transparent recruitment, employment and deployment processes, and provide adequate career progression opportunities. 6. Halt the use of contract teachers and ensure that no teachers are employed under precarious employment conditions, whether in the public or private sector. 7.
Guarantee educators’ right to unionise, strike and engage in collective bargaining.
8. Strengthen mechanisms for social dialogue with unions and ensure teachers’ meaningful involvement in policy and curricular decisions and reforms. 9. Ensure equal pay for work of equal value, and address the increase in insecure, fixed term and/ or short-term employment, which disproportionately affects female teachers and education support personnel. 10. Identify and define professional teaching standards in collaboration with educators and their unions. 11. Recognise the crucial role of education support personnel in providing quality education, ensuring they have decent working and employment conditions. 12. Provide free, quality professional development and training courses and confirm their relevance to teachers’ needs by consulting teachers through their unions. GRO.EI-IE
13. Fully implement the 1966 UNESCO-ILO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers and the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Personnel.
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