European Trade Union Committee for Education

ETUCE notes:

1.The teacher shortage is global in scope with 44 million additional teachers required by 2030 to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for education.

2.Teacher shortages are reported in nearly all of the county reports of the 2023 Education and Training Monitor.

3.That teacher shortages in Europe often compound problems globally as governments and organisations try to fill gaps by recruiting from already overstretched education systems in other parts of the world, particularly the Global South.

4.While the most significant factor varies dependent on an individual country’s context, improvements in pay, workload, professional status and professional autonomy are needed across borders to address the recruitment and retention crisis affecting all parts of the globe.

5.That inadequate funding along with privatisation need to be addressed as underlying problems.

6.That education trade unions have a key role to play in winning these changes and that by winning improvements in terms and conditions for teachers, children’s educational experience and outcomes will benefit.

7.That it is only by being organised in the workplace that education unions can build the power needed to push governments to act on teacher recruitment and retention.

8.That to attract people to become teachers, good working conditions are essential, as education working implies multiple risk factors such as mental health troubles, for instance.

ETUCE Resolves:

a)To support ETUCE affiliates to lobby governments to:

i.Strengthen publicly provided education systems and cease all investments in for-profit schooling including through intermediated investments, recognising this as the only equitable and sustainable route to strengthen the teacher workforce and achieve education for all.

ii.Accept responsibility, as influential international players, for the global teacher shortage and put in place measurestostrengthen local public education systems, improve working conditions and to prevent the active recruitmentof the teachers needed in the global south to fix the crisis in Europe.

iii.Implement in full the recommendations of the High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession and the Global Report on Teachers.

iv.Support the recruitment, retention and training of gender-balanced numbers of qualified teachers, through increased development cooperation and long-term and flexible funding partnerships, prioritising countries with the highest number of out-of-school children and where shortages of qualified teachers are greatest.

v.Recognise the importance of teacher qualifications.

vi.Support leadership progression for female teachers and teachers from minority groups.

vii.Be led by the expertise and experiences of teachers and their unions, and the communities most affected by the shortage of qualified teachers.

viii.Recognise teacher trade unions as development partners and global partners in the recruitment and retention of teachers, in policymaking and in enhancing the status of the teaching profession.

ix.Work with the international community to establish and resource a Global Fund for Teachers’ Salaries.

x.Support international reforms that enable countries to increase financing on public education through progressive taxation, domestic resource mobilisation, and debt relief and cancellation; and remove loan conditionalities and imposed austerity measures that undermine countries’ ability to fund education.

xi.Meet international benchmarks for spending at least 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) on official development assistance (ODA) and a minimum of 15% of ODA on education.

xii.Make employers implement safety plans to prevent specific psychosocial risks for educational staff.

b)To support affiliates to:

i.Learn from each other and increase workplace organisation levels.

ii.Facilitate workplace-based representatives to be able to learn from each other across borders.

iii.Share and publicise examples of ETUCE affiliates taking collective and campaigning action over issues that result from, or seek to address, the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

iv.Promote and learn from successful strategies for addressing teacher shortages domestically and internationally.