Ghana

A teacher in Ghana participates in the 2006 Global Education Action Week.

credit: VSO Ghana

In order to provide access to a quality education, there must be a sufficient number of well-trained teachers available. However, recent studies report teacher shortages and deterioration of teacher quality in many countries throughout the world.

To reduce the cost of providing education, many countries have started to hire untrained teachers for less money. This has resulted in declining levels of quality and student learning.

Teachers are also under pressure. Low salaries, unmanageable numbers of students in classrooms, lack of teaching materials and school infrastructure, and the serious complications arising from HIV/AIDS are just a few of the many challenges teachers must deal with.

Check out some stats about teachers…

• Countries around the world will need to recruit more than 18 million teachers over the next decade to achieve Universal Primary Education.

• Sub-Saharan Africa alone will need 1.6 million more teachers by 2015 in order to provide primary education for every child.

• The Arab States will need to increase the number of teachers by 26% in less than a decade to achieve universal primary education.

• Teacher absenteeism continues to be a serious problem in developing countries; this is compounded by low salaries, lack of payment and diseases such as HIV/AIDS.