Improve Teacher Participation in Local Education Groups through social dialogue
- Improving support for teachers and their participation in Local Education Groups is a joint initiative of UNESCO and Education International that aims to strengthen the capacity of teachers and their organizations to participate in an effective way. More effective in social dialogue with national governments on policies aimed at increasing the effectiveness of teaching and the quality of education.
- With the support of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), the project was developed between 2014 and 2017 with ten beneficiary countries, in Africa, Asia and Latin America: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Gambia, Benin, Mali, Senegal, Uganda, Nepal and Haiti. The selection of the participating countries was carried out based on four criteria: fragility; have an allocation in effect from the GPE; the absence of teacher representatives in local education groups; and the political will to overcome conflicting relationships between ministries of education and teacher organizations.
- Teachers, teacher trainers, union representatives and government officials attended capacity-building workshops where they participated in discussions and knowledge-building activities in the following three thematic areas:
- Improvement of the technical and organizational capacities of teachers in order to facilitate their participation in a meaningful way in the planning of the education sector and in local education groups;
- Enhanced technical capacities of teacher organizations and national governments to analyze and discuss key human resource issues and barriers impacting the status and effectiveness of their teachers (i.e. issues such as level salary, working conditions and standards of professional practice);
- For the purpose of Identification, direction and application of innovative approaches in the mechanisms of continuous professional support of teachers, so that they can be involved in social dialogue through the development of professionalism and professionalization.
- The final project report (in English), released in December 2017, provides recommendations on: ways to encourage teachers to engage in social and political dialogue through targeted professional development programs; the knowledge and skills that they must develop; the main beneficiaries of the training; who should provide the training; and how to finance and implement training programs. The report contains a framework of guidelines to help countries prepare their leaders at the national level for the development of training programs at the country level.
- The project responds to Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) and its target 4.c on teacher issues, which calls on different countries and international partners to “substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers” by 2030. There The findings should be used by all stakeholders of UNESCO, International Education, the Global Partnership for Education, as well as by teachers, teachers’ unions and government institutions at the national and local levels, with a view to better understanding how the Teachers and governments can participate more effectively in the process of formulating educational policies related to their working conditions, their effectiveness and their profession in general.
