This report gathers together learning from primary research undertaken by CfBT Education Trust and VSO in thirteen developing countries and from other available national level research and international synthesis reports concerning the human resource aspects of quality education and in particular the role of teachers. The headline message of the report is that:
‘The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.’
Chapter 1 presents the argument that improvements to teacher management systems are central to the achievement of the 2015Education For All goals. Good management by effective school leaders has been shown to improve teaching and learning outcomes for children indirectly and most powerfully through its influence on staff motivation, performance and working conditions (VSO, 2002; GCE, 2006; Bennell and Akyeampong, 2007).
Governments and donors that are supporting education in developing countries cannot afford the detrimental effects of poor management on the financing and quality of education systems. Yet as Chapter 2 outlines, teachers’ rights have not been consistently applied across developing countries. The 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendations Concerning the Status of Teachers were reiterated in 2006, 40 years after they were agreed: a sign that whilst significant progress has been made, the Recommendations have not been effectively implemented in all countries. This chapter makes some observations on the
following areas:
• teachers’ salaries
• teachers’ choice of workplace
• academic freedom
• teachers’ responsibilities
• rights of all teachers
• professional dialogue between teachers and policymakers.
In chapter 3, the constraints and consequences of poor teacher management are outlined. In particular constraints include the following:
• overly tight fiscal management policies
• weak management of skills
• weak education systems where headteachers do not have the responsibility for recruitment and deployment of teachers
• weak management systems for the recruitment and deployment of teachers and administrators
• the lack or poor quality of training of all types – pre-service, in-service and continuing professional development (CPD) – for teachers, headteachers and administrative staff
• inconsistent appraisals for all these levels of education staff.
Some of the consequences of poor teacher management are then explored:
• regional, gender, and disability related imbalances in teacher deployment mechanisms
• inadequate teacher terms and conditions
• poor living and working conditions for teachers and school leaders
• inadequate or absent administrative support
• weak capacity and quality of teacher training institutions (TTIs)
• high levels of teacher attrition
• low motivation and morale of teachers and school leaders
The chapter concludes by discussing the economic and quality costs of poor management.
Chapter 4 provides examples and case studies from VSO’s Valuing Teachers and other research into how education managers, governments and donors are approaching teacher management in developing countries.
The approaches cited have yielded positive results where they have been applied and the authors recommend that, with appropriate adaptation to the context and culture, they could be applied in other countries, and yield
similar positive improvements in the quality of education children experience. The case studies cover:
• effective decentralised teacher development
• teachers’ voice in school management
• teacher allocation and deployment: rural – urban, gender and disability related imbalances
• management reforms related to teachers’ salaries and working conditions (including reforms relating to equal pay, conditions and opportunities for female and disabled teachers)
• the use of para-teachers and contract teachers and the controversy around quality and costs
• pre-service training
• in-service training
• cluster approaches to Continuing
Professional Development
• integrated approaches to school-based management.
In conclusion, the authors argue that quality discussions that only focus on learner achievements and outcomes, without discussing education management, are incomplete. They maintain that although pre- and in-service
training of education managers can be costly, the cost to the quality of education where such training is absent is much higher.
They also maintain that while many types of exclusion are context specific, gender and disability related inequality cuts across all countries. All governments and donors should therefore ensure that gender and disability are addressed comprehensively in their teacher training and management systems. The need to recruit and train 18 million new teachers (for primary education alone) presents an unprecedented opportunity to address long-standing imbalances in class sizes and teaching quality between schools in urban and rural areas and between male and female teachers. The opportunity should also be used to address the under representation of teachers with disabilities, teachers from linguistic minorities and other context specific excluded
groups, in order to provide valuable role models for girls, children with disabilities and other currently excluded children, and importantly to encourage their parents not only to send their children to school, but to keep them there until they have completed their education.
Chapter 5 provides a summary of concluding recommendations.
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