We have much to learn from October 5 which was the United Nations World Teachers’ Day with the theme for this year being Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status– highlighting the importance of the teaching profession for global development and the need for urgent action to address the shortage of teachers.
“Teachers not only help shape the individual futures of millions of children; they also help shape a better world for all,” said the United Nations Education, scientific and cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Director-General Irina Bokova, International Labour Organization (ILO) Director-General Guy Ryder, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark, and Education International General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen, in a joint message to mark this important occasion. In another statement, UNESCO also reveals some disturbing statistics. It says about 69 million new teachers are needed to provide quality universal primary and secondary education by 2030, the deadline of the new UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Entire education systems are gearing up for the big push to achieve (SDG 4) by 2030,” said Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), the primary global source for statistics on education. According to the UIS data, sub-Saharan Africa has the largest teacher gap and the region will need about 17 million primary and secondary teachers by 2030. Southern Asia, including Sri Lanka has the second-largest pupil-teacher gap, especially at the secondary level. Only 65% of youth across the region are enrolled in secondary education and the pupil-teacher ratio is estimated at 29:1 based on 2014 estimates – far higher than the global average of 18:1.
In Sri Lanka World Teachers’ Day was celebrated yesterday with children bringing flowers or other gifts to show how much they value their teachers. Religious services and cultural events were also held.
While the National Government has doubled the allocation and said there would be a revolutionary transformation in the education process with the emphasis more on training for professional jobs rather than only passing examinations, the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) has raised questions as to whether gender discrimination was a part of teacher education in Sri Lanka. In a report, it says Sri Lanka’s Colleges of Education are highly important as teacher training centres. They read for a three-year Diploma in Teaching including one-year internship in a government school. The report says the vast majority of the teachers are females and the gender ratio is around 1:10 in some colleges, according to official sources.
According to 2015 statistics of the Ministry of Education, for 4,129,534 students in 10,144 schools, Sri Lanka had a cadre of 236,998 teachers. About 73% of these teachers were females and the Colleges of Education trainees reflect that ratio. There is no other single profession in public service of Sri Lanka in which 172,536 women are employed.
The UNPF says its recent discussions with lecturers, trainees, past students and other staffers of the Colleges of Education led it to learn a very disheartening practice. Unlike the other higher educational institutes, the ‘politics’ in those Colleges appears to be consolidating masculine superiority. Ragging is not much prevalent but the senior male students impress the junior male students to maintain the dominance of the minority males over the majority female population. This is a grave situation because gender-based violence becomes part of career training of the female teachers though it is not an accepted norm. Ultimately, the female teachers who pass out from the Colleges go before the students lacking something which is highly important in their future career of teaching. Education authorities must be vigilant about this issue which has been rooted in the system of these Colleges since decades without adequate attention, the report warns.
The Daily Mirror has found there is another major problem. Trained teachers who pass out, mostly females, are sent to remote areas for six to seven years. This means that if a young woman passes out, she is sent to a remote area hundreds of miles away and in many cases this has caused serious problems regarding marriage and other key issues. During the Rajapaska regime, Eastern Province Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan is known to have insisted that hundreds of trained English teachers from the Western Province be sent to the Eastern Province during the height of the war. The new Education Minister Akila Viraj Kariyawasam has assured he would address this crisis in a just manner and we hope he would do so soon to raise the value and dignity, specially of female teachers.
