Education issues shouldn’t be blamed on teachers, says UNESCO

With 260 million children worldwide lack access to basic education according to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the education gap is rapidly deteriorating the world’s success rate—and blaming the teachers could just result to negative side effects.

UNESCO’s report entitled “Accountability in education: meeting our commitments” published last October 24 stressed on stronger accountability for education in developing countries which will require them to report on their education responsibilities as outlined in the SDGs.

“Education is a shared responsibility between us all – governments, schools, teachers, parents and private actors,” said Irina Bokova, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

The report which also marks the second Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report from the United Nations (UN) agency stated that blaming teachers for poor test scores and absenteeism is often both unjust and unconstructive.

The education crisis often brought back to the teachers, citing their lack of experience and absenteeism as the cause—with an average rate was 19 percent, according to a 2012 six-country study in Africa. Reports further revealed, however that many cases are due to school management issues rather than teacher choice.

In Senegal, a country in West Africa, schools were closed for 50 out of 188 official school days resulting to teachers not to attend to their classes. In Indonesia on the other hand, nearly half of absences were down to teachers being granted study leave without replacements being arranged.