UNESCO-KEDI Seminar 2005
"Challenges and Opportunities of Secondary Teachers"
Seminar details
Title – “Challenges and Opportunities of Secondary Teachers”
Dates – 13-16 December 2005
Location - Seoul Education and Culture Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Participants - The seminar brought together fourteen participants from six low- and middle-income countries in the region (Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam), for an exchange of information, knowledge and know-how regarding secondary teacher development and management. Participants were represented by senior technical MoE officials working on secondary education and/or on teacher training and management, and experts from national research institutions and/or teacher training institutions.
Background to the theme of the seminar
The 2005 seminar focused on secondary education. It reviewed and discussed trends and issues under each of the following sub-topics: (1) Teacher recruitment, posting, transfer; (2) Teacher development; (3) Status of secondary school teachers and working conditions; and (4) Teacher salaries and incentives. Four country expert papers (Nepal, Thailand, the Philippines, and Republic of Korea), prepared prior to the Seminar to have insights on specific country experiences, were presented and discussed, each focusing on different aspects of secondary teacher policies. In addition, Country Fact Sheets on Secondary Education were prepared and distributed by UNESCO Bangkok to provide overview of secondary education system in each participating country, based on quantitative data available from existing sources.
Education for All is not only about achieving primary education, although the international community tends to give priority to this sub-sector in the EFA framework. In many countries in Asia, especially for those that have successfully expanded UPE, development of good-quality secondary education accessible to all is high on policy agendas. Even in low income countries, where achieving UPE still remains a challenge, the importance of secondary education is increasingly well recognized; in these countries, especially in East and Southeast Asia, secondary education, at least at the lower secondary level, is often part of basic compulsory education and expanding and improving secondary education is one of the major targets in EFA National Action Plans.
It should also be noted that the expansion and improvement of secondary education serves to motivate students to pursue their primary studies to a successful conclusion by opening up opportunities for further study and better employment. Increasingly, the non-monetary returns to secondary education are valued by parents and governments and are given attention.
Since 2002, the theme of the annual joint KEDI – UNESCO Bangkok seminar has been focusing on EFA. In view of this, it was then proposed that the theme of this year’s seminar should be secondary education with a focus on teacher policies.
Teacher related issues lie at the heart of education reforms in many countries. If countries are to strengthen secondary education school systems, both in terms of quantity and quality, teacher development and management no doubt play a key role. While teachers are also crucial in primary education, policies related to secondary school teachers deserve special consideration as secondary education is more complex involving multiple functions, structures, programmes and institutions. Yet teacher related issues in developing countries in Asia have not always been covered extensively and in depth in the available literature and there is a need to fill in the information gap for countries willing to learn from other countries’ experiences and various policy options.
Objectives of the Seminar
- Disseminate the research findings on teacher policies in the OECD countries, with a focus on the Korean experience.
- Examine how such findings and conclusions apply to non-OECD countries.
- Share reform experiences concerning development and management of teachers in selected non-OECD countries in the Region.
- Identify and discuss the challenges countries face in managing teacher issues.
- Clarify how issues and responses are different according to different levels of the education system structure (primary, lower secondary, upper secondary).
- Contribute to defining future research priorities in this area.
Key documents
