Teach-Secondary-14.1

T his summer, an old friend visiting from the US – possibly in an attempt to lure me across the pond – brought up the teacher shortages they were seeing in that country. At first, I was shocked, since I’d assumed it was only here in England where this crisis existed. As a teacher of English fromBelfast, I really enjoy our increasingly international staffroom and had, naively, assumed that there was still an abundance of teachers in other parts of the world. It turns out I was wrong. Beyond the UK It is, in fact, an international situation, and one that’s growing. Some would argue that it’s even dangerous. The countries most affected include Australia, Canada, Ireland, the USA and Japan, but shortages have also been observed in numerous other high income European countries, such as Italy, France and The Netherlands. Indeed, the European Commission’s 2023 Education and TrainingMonitor report (see tiny.cc/ts141-TR1 ) highlighted teacher shortages in nearly every EU country. An article published by the Irish broadcaster RTÉ in September 2023 asked, ‘ Where have all the teachers gone? ’ (see tiny.cc/ts141- TR2). In late 2022, Australian education ministers made the decision to launch a National Teacher Workforce Action Plan, specifically to address the country’s education workforce shortages. Beyond higher income countries Yet this is an issue that extends far beyond the borders of those high-income countries. A 2012 UN conference held in Rio de Janeiro established a series of universal goals intended to help meet global challenges, and thus were the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals born (see sdgs.un.org/goals) . Sustainable Development Goal 4, ‘Quality Education,’ has as one of its target outcomes, ‘ Universal, free primary and secondary education by 2030 ’. According to UNESCO’s 2024 Global Report on Teachers (tiny.cc/ts141- TR4), 44 million additional primary and secondary teachers are needed to fulfil this basic right to education. However, many countries, burdened as they are by international debt, are simply unable to invest in public services like education. We knowwhat impact teacher shortages can have. Unqualified teachers; bigger class sizes; increased workloads; reduced subject offers. Inevitably, our students’ learning is impacted, given teachers’ fundamental role in developing their knowledge, skills and understanding. In lower income countries – where qualified teacher-to- pupil ratios already vary dramatically – shortages can mean no learning at all. In displacement contexts, like refugee camps, ratios can exceed one teacher to 70 students. Picking up the pieces Last year we experienced a summer that saw racist rioting take place across Britain. I write these words soon after the re-election of Donald Trump as US president. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is ongoing. There are no signs of any meaningful de- escalation of events in the Middle East. At the same time, stories charting the rise of far-right politicians and leaders have become a regular feature of mainstreammedia. The climate crisis is exerting tangible effects on our lives, with above average temperatures and increasingly frequent episodes of severe flooding. And those are just some of the troubling headlines. We’re still picking up the pieces following the COVID 19 school closures. The pandemic visibly taught us just howmuch our students need their schools and teachers. Given our shifting geopolitical landscape, surely it’s of fundamental importance that children and young people throughout the world get to secure access to high quality teachers and schools? What we don’t yet know is who’ll be picking up the pieces when, or even if the international teacher recruitment and retention crisis ever gets resolved. Raising the prestige In June 2023, the United Nations Secretary General established a High Level Panel on The Teaching Profession to address the It’s not just here England isn’t alone in struggling to recruit teachers, observes Jennifer Hampton – other countries are too, so is there anything we can learn from how they’ve responded? “The conversationswe’re having inour staffrooms, classrooms and school offices aren’t just echoedacross the country,but throughout the widerworld” 48 teachwire.net/secondary