Developing a high-quality education workforce to improve national education systems

Governments in the US, UK and Middle East are working with Etio in innovative ways to address the three bid challenges of education workforce  development; recruitment and retention; educator quality; and the ability to adapt to emerging changes in the education landscape.

The current global educator talent shortage is one of the most pressing issues in global
education systems⁽¹⁾, profoundly impacting both underdeveloped and high-income regions
(seemingly regardless of the level of resources and infrastructure available), stifling national
education ambitions and negatively impacting labour markets, economic development
ambitions, and broader policy concerns such as immigration and national security.

Many education systems have not succeeded in attracting and developing enough people to
work in education at the required levels of quality, despite over 20 years of increasingly urgent
warnings (from global bodies such the UN) that the growth rates of children attending school
outweigh the recruitment of new teachers.⁽²⁾

Indeed, many education systems are currently experiencing a worse teacher shortage than these projections have anticipated, with a projected need for 44 million new teachers by 2030⁽³⁾ and a widespread lack of credible strategies to deliver this.

Education workforce shortages can undermine the success of national education reform
even where it is a major government policy priority; in one global study, only 20% of
surveyed school systems achieved their national reform objectives, with ‘educator talent
shortages’ cited by half of those which failed to do so.

Our analysis, based on evidence from our Education Workforce Development work on
behalf of government education agencies in the US, UK and Middle East, shows that this
shortage is characterised by three big challenges;

• Recruitment and retention failures – insufficient numbers of individuals entering and
  staying in the profession, exacerbated by aging educator workforces⁽⁴⁾
• Lack of workforce effectiveness – educator performance inhibited by lack of training
  and professional development
• Inability to adapt to change in response to the constant emergence of new technologies,
  and new evidence of ‘what works’ in education

In this new paper, we explore some of the ways Etio has supported governments with initiatives to licence teachers, offer professional development, improve the delivery of specific subjects and evaluate the quality of teaching to improve national education systems. With our global education expertise, we bring together evidence based-best practice to ensure that government education agencies can develop a sustainable, high-quality, adaptable and modern educator workforce.

Feature articles:

• Education workforce quality: a national development priority
• Insights from Etio’s Workforce Development projects
• Supporting teacher development in North America
• Overcoming Education Challenges in the UK
• Ensuring educator workforce quality in the GCC

Case studies:

• The Massachusetts Performance Review Program for Initial Licensure (PRPIL)
• Etio’s Support for excellence in mathematics
• Increasing the retention of maths teachers through enhanced professional development
• Developing the education workforce through Quality Assurance training
• Subject-specific teacher training online content

Download a copy of the full report by clicking below.

References:

1. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4
2. https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/more-children-fewer-teachersnew-unesco-ilo-study-sees-global-teacher
3. UNESCO Global Report on Teachers, 2024. Retrieved from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000388832
4. OECD (2024), Teachers by age (indicator). doi: 10.1787/93af1f9d-en (Accessed on 06 May 2024)