UN Reports: India Must Recruit 11mn Teachers to Achieve 2030 Educational Goals

According to a recent report submitted by UN, in the next 14 years, India will have to recruit about three million teachers for primary classes and over eight million teachers for the secondary classes in order to make sure that education is made available to all. The target given to India is ¾ of the entire southern Asia target.

In a report made by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) on World Teachers’ Day, the exact number of teachers required by India to meet the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) was estimated. According to the sustainable development goals, the international education community pledged to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030.

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Till now the goal seems tough as according to stats from the UIS report, 263 million children and youth are out of school. It was further pointed out that 25 million children of primary school age are out of schools and won’t go to schools. In the case of low-income countries, only 14% of youth complete upper secondary education.

According to the report, the total number of teachers to be recruited by the world in the next 14 years in order to meet the sustainable development goals is 69 million.

They are further divided into different categories on the basis of the level of classes:

• 24.4 million - primary teachers
• 44.4 million - secondary school teachers

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The region with the lowest number of teachers at present is the sub-Sahara region.

The sub-Sahara region will need to recruit over 17 million more teachers to meet the (SDG 4). Following it is the southern Asia region which needs a total of 15 million.

The global progress could depend on three main things:

• If there are enough number of teachers and classrooms
• Is the teacher trained and has resources required by her to teach the students
• Number of children in each class should be manageable

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Some of the other findings of the report include:

• The Syrian war has affected education system of Syria to a great extent. Also, the neighbouring countries are finding it hard to cope as they have to take in the refugees. According to the reports, the number of teachers has been reduced to half in Syria.
• Though the population of the sub-Sahara region is the fastest growing school-age population, but its teacher gap is by far the largest
• Similarly, the teacher gap in the southern Asia is the second-largest