Worldwide Teacher Shortage Projected

A new UNESCO report, "Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015"  projects serious teacher shortages in the coming decade.  Some of the report's highlights:

• Countries across the world will need to recruit more than 18 million teachers over the next decade.  The greatest challenge lies in sub-Saharan Africa, which will need to expand its teaching force by 68% over this period.  By 2015, countries like Chad will need almost four times as many primary teachers, from 16,000 to 61,000, while Ethiopia must double its stock to achieve universal primary education.



• The Arab States will need to create 450,000 new teaching posts, mainly in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia.  Another 325,000 teachers will be needed in South and West Asia, primarily in Afghanistan, where the teaching force must grow by almost 9% a year over the next decade, according to UIS estimates.


• However, some countries with declining school-age populations will actually need fewer teachers.  China can expect to reduce its stock of teachers by 1.8 million in 2015, while a more moderate reduction is estimated for India (50,000).  This provides an opportunity to improve education quality by investing more resources per teacher and pupil.



• In general, the countries needing the most teachers have the least qualified personnel.  A lower secondary education is considered the absolute minimum qualification to teach.  Yet only 45% of teachers meet this standard in Lao PDR, for example, and 57% in the Congo.  The report clearly shows that policies must address both teacher quantity and quality.



• This concern for quality is found even in the most developed regions.  North America and Western Europe face a shortage in specialized teachers, particularly in math and science.  This is partly the result of changing demographic and labour conditions.  Older teachers are retiring while new recruits are less concerned with a long-term career in education, especially in Ireland, Spain, and the United States, which will need to recruit a total of 1.2 million teachers over the next decade, primarily to compensate for attrition.

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