Teachers

Empowering teachers and protecting their status

The Covid-19 crisis has caused unprecedented challenges for teachers around the world. An estimated 63 million primary and secondary teachers were affected by school closures. In many countries, teachers were not equipped to organise, deliver and assess distance learning. They lack digital skills and readiness for employing distance learning pedagogies. The pandemic juxtaposes with a global shortage of well-trained and qualified teachers to achieve universal primary and secondary education. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 64% teachers in primary schools and only 59% of teachers in secondary schools were trained to teach in 2018. In OECD countries, only 60% of teachers have had recent professional development on using ICT for teaching and learning purposes. Teachers are one of the most powerful influences on learning. Everywhere, together with school leaders, teachers have been rapidly mobilising and innovating to facilitate distance learning for students in confinement, with or without the use of digital technologies. They are playing a key role in communicating measures that prevent the spread of the virus and ensuring that children are safe and supported. They are engaging in the reopening of schools, providing remediation to account for learning lost as a result of school closures and overall working to ensure all learners have opportunities and none are left behind.

Flagship aims

This flagship aims to valorise the crucial work of teachers and offer them professional development opportunities to strengthen their digital and pedagogical skills. Through high quality and large-scale learning opportunities, the flagship will ensure that quality and equitable teaching can continue. The key objectives of the teacher flagship are:
  • Teacher capacity development programmes In coordination with national teacher training institutions, ministries and other national stakeholders, the flagship will provide training for 1 million teachers combining digital and pedagogical skills. The aim is to improve instruction through the use of digital technologies, including the development of resources in low- and no-tech environments. This will mobilize a large number of Global Coalition Members including MOOCs providers and ed-tech industry partners.
  • Provision of connectivity and devices The flagship will deliver to less privileged teachers devices and lower connectivity costs. Partners will be mobilised to broker both free connectivity as well as the necessary hardware and software to foster the development and deployment of distance learning solutions, with a focus on equity and gender equality.
  • Advocacy The flagship will celebrate the teaching profession as a whole and will include targeted communications campaigns as well as advocacy to policy-makers, supported by data and analysis.
  • Monitoring and Evaluation The flagship will mobilize partners to improve data and analysis to measure progress and inform practitioners and policy-makers on effective pedagogies for distance and blended learning approaches.
Global Coalition partners will be mobilised to build teacher capacity around distance education, deploy online platforms, curate teacher training resources and assess and certify digital and pedagogical skills. Through these targeted actions the Coalition will empower teachers and help them find solutions to reach students remotely, assist the return to school and build the resilience of education for the future.