ICDE joins UNESCO International Task Force on Teachers for EFA
The International Task Force on Teachers for Education for All (EFA) is the first dedicated international alliance of stakeholders, including national governments, intergovernmental organizations, NGOs, CSOs, international development agencies and private sector organizations working together to address the teacher shortage and to meet EFA goals.
The Oslo Declaration - an outcome of the Eighth Meeting of the High Level Group on Education for All (EFA) held in Oslo, Norway in December 2008 - endorsed the creation of an International Task Force on Teachers for Education for All (EFA). The Task Force is a voluntary global alliance and the only international platform of EFA partners working together to address the ‘teacher gap’, that is, the acute shortage of qualified teachers required to achieve Universal Primary Education (UPE) by 2015, as well as quality education for all.
A sufficient number of a qualified teaching force is one of the key factors to ensure the success of these international education-related initiatives. However, there is a dire shortage of teachers in the world today. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) estimates that between 2010 and 2015, 114 countries will need to create a total of at least 1.7 million new teacher posts to ensure quality primary education for all children. Almost six out of every ten additional teachers are needed in sub-Saharan Africa (993,000). Overall, 6.8 million teachers would have to be recruited by 2015 in order to supply the current needed workforce to replace those who are retiring or leaving classrooms.
Sponsorship
The work of the Task Force is directly supported by UNESCO, the European Commission and the national governments of France, Germany, Indonesia, and by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, which has also provided an annual grant to ICDE since 1988.
ICDE and teacher education
ICDE members Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, UOC, Spain, and the South African Institute for Distance Education, SAIDE have been contracted by ICDE to develop courseware for training teacher trainers in high quality open, distance and online learning. The resources are expected to be launched online in June 2014.