Happy World Teachers’ Day 2023!
Brainfeed Magazine thanks all the teachers across the world for choosing to be a teacher and opting to transform the lives of countless students year-over-year.
Google celebrates World Teachers’ Day with a Doddle dedicated to Teacher’s across the world. Google said on its website “Today’s Doodle honours educators across the world who nurture students to become the best version of themselves. Thank you for all that you do to help your students grow by instilling a love for learning.”
Being a teacher provides the unique opportunity to make a transformative and lasting impact on the lives of others, contributing to shaping sustainable futures and offering personal fulfilment. However, the world faces an unprecedented global teacher shortage exacerbated by a decline in their working conditions and status.
With the theme “The teachers we need for the education we want: The global imperative to reverse the teacher shortage”, the 2023 celebrations will aim to put the importance of stopping the decline in the number of teachers and then starting to increase that number at the top of the global agenda. Through various activities, they will advocate for a dignified and valued teaching profession, analyse their challenges, and showcase inspiring practices to attract, retain and motivate teachers and educators. It will also examine the ways in which education systems, societies, communities, and families recognise, appreciate, and actively support teachers.
Ahead of Thursday’s World Teachers’ Day, UNESCO pointed to a gap of 44 million teachers without whom the world will not be able to provide primary and secondary education for all by 2030. The agency said that the problem lies not only in a lack of funding, but also in the “unattractiveness” of the profession.
UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay underscored that that while some regions of the world lack candidates for the job, other regions face a very high dropout rate during the first few years of work. “In both cases, the answer is the same: we must better value, better train and better support teachers,” she said.
Southern Asia is experiencing the largest lack of teachers worldwide – 7.8 million – while sub-Saharan Africa alone accounts for one in three of the current global shortfall. In the 79 countries studied by UNESCO to better understand the reasons for the shortage, the attrition rate among primary school teachers almost doubled from 4.6 per cent in 2015 to 9 per cent in 2022.
The UN agency said that three main factors stand out: poor working conditions, high levels of stress and low pay. UNESCO made a number of recommendations to countries to improve the status of teachers, including investment in competitive salaries and benefits, improved teacher education and mentorship programmes and access to mental health counselling.
World Teachers’ Day a day to celebrate how teachers are transforming education but also to reflect on the support they need to fully deploy their talent and vocation, and to rethink the way ahead for the profession globally.
