At the World Education Forum in 2000, the international community defined the global Education for All (EFA) agenda as relating to six areas. Three quantifiable goals were set for 2015: halving the number of illiterates, universal primary education and gender equality, the latter two being reiterated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Teachers are a precondition to the achievement of all the EFA goals and the key to bridging both the qualitative and quantitative targets.  At the Oslo meeting in December 2008, the Education for All High Level Group (HLG) made recommendations to all EFA partners and national governments to identify their short and medium- term needs for recruitment, deployment, training and retention of teachers.

UNESCO implements the recommendations by calling upon development partners to support national efforts in this area and to identify and meet the needs specified and to provide predictable support in the following strategic areas through a range of activities and mechanisms:

•  Continuing professional development for teachers requires redesigning and upgrading current teacher education programmes, harmonisation and revitalisation of teacher education infrastructural provision and use of open and distance learning (ODL) for continuous professional development.

• Decentralization revitalising the existing national structures/institutions , building capacities of teachers for contextualization and the development of appropriate teaching/learning methodologies, developing strategies for mobilizing community participation.

•  Feminization of the teacher force women and the teaching profession is an area that is particularly pertinent to the education MDGs and EFA goals. UNESCO New Delhi encourages developing gender sensitive curriculum, increasing women participation in the teaching profession and scaling-up incentives to promote female participation in the teaching profession.

• Public-private partnerships to address the teacher gap: Innovative approaches of NGOs to address the teacher gaps, role of corporate foundations in addressing the teacher challenge and exploring new partnerships for advocacy for the teacher cause.

• Monitoring & Evaluation Designing instruments for assessment and evaluation, developing a scheme for comprehensive and continuous monitoring and evaluation, and innovations in monitoring and evaluation, strategies to reach the unreached.