The growing worldwide teacher shortage creates a serious challenge to ensuring access to quality public education for all, leaders of Education International told delegates at EI's World Congress meeting in Berlin July 22-26. Speaking before more than 2,000 representatives of teacher and education sector organizations, EI general secretary Fred van Leeuwen said that 18 million more educators—5 million in the industrial economies and 13 million in low-income countries—are needed to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015, one of eight "millennium development goals" set by world leaders at a United Nations summit in 2000.

"This will further increase the pressure on governments to loosen quality standards," warned Van Leeuwen. "A teacher shortage on this scale could not only become the most serious challenge our profession has ever faced. It could also pose a serious threat to the survival of our public school systems worldwide."

The concern about teacher quality, as well as pay and working conditions for education workers, was part of a wide range of issues considered by the Congress. AFT president Edward J. McElroy led a delegation of AFT officers and leaders at the gathering, which passed resolutions on topics ranging from trade union and human rights violations to fostering democratic teacher unionism in Central Asia and the Middle East. McElroy was also reelected to EI's executive board. Education International is a federation representing more than 30 million education workers in 169 countries and territories (full coverage of the Congress is available at the EI Web site).

"We came together united by our shared concern for children, and for the future of democratic quality public education as a fundamental right for all," said Education International president Thulas Nxesi.

Also at the meeting, delegates honored Ernestine Akouavi Akakpo-Gbofu of Togo with the Albert Shanker Award and Colombian teacher activists Samuel Morales and Raquel Castro with the Mary Hatwood Futrell Award for Human and Trade Union Rights (see story). [EI Web site, Joseph Davis, Trish Gorman]

August 2, 2007