At the 74th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) today, the Education Commission’s Report “Transforming the Education Workforce: Learning Teams for a Learning Generation” was launched. Margo O’Sullivan, one of EADS directors was involved in the devising of this report in her role as a member of advisory committee, which she was invited to join almost two years ago.
The Education Commission is a global initiative focused on supporting realisation of Sustainable Development Goal 4 – “ensuring inclusive and quality education and promoting lifelong learning for all”, through advocacy for increased investment in education by mobilizing strong evidence and analysis while engaging with world leaders, policymakers, and researchers. The Education Commission Chair, and the UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown highlighted at the launch that “We don’t just have a climate emergency, we have an education emergency. Today 260 million children are not in school and more than 600 million children in school are not learning the basics. Unless we take drastic measures, half of the world’s children – 800 million – will not be on track to learn the skills needed to thrive in 2030. To address this learning crisis, we urgently need to recruit 69 million teachers and provide them with the training and support they need.”
We are not on track to reach SDG4 by 2030 without urgent and focused attention and support to education and specifically, improving learning. Teachers are key to learning. It is also becoming increasingly evident that teachers cannot work alone. As the African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The report highlights the need “to tap the potential of the broader education workforce – school and district leaders, specialists, learning assistants, community experts, entrepreneurs, health and welfare professionals, parents, volunteers, and many others – to create a responsive, evolving system that keeps pace with today’s changing world and equips young people with the new skills, knowledge, values, and competences they need to succeed”.