Standing together for teachers

The most effective interventions to improve student learning rely upon teachers. But their work goes far beyond the instruction of subject knowledge.

Teachers can transform the way we think about the world and ourselves, be role models, and inspire and equip us to be engaged in our communities and resilient in the face of change. As we celebrate World Teachers Day on October 5, we recognize the tremendous work and impact of every teacher on their students and their communities.

We are also reminded that the work of teaching is not easy. Enabling learning — in academic subjects and beyond — and fostering students’ social and emotional development are challenging, dynamic mandates. For teachers to fulfill these roles, they need to be supported and valued as the critical, highly skilled professionals they are. We know far too well that many teachers are not being prepared, recognized, and assisted in the ways they should be, contributing to high rates of teacher burnout, attrition, and major teacher shortages around the world.

Supporting teachers at every career stage

Education systems need to support and value teachers at every stage of their career, from the time student teachers are attracted and selected into initial teacher education programs, to their deployment, induction, and career-long professional development as leaders of learning.

With this in mind, the World Bank has developed a framework for strengthening and supporting a pipeline of teachers for improved student learning, as shown in the figure below. This framework helps ensure that World Bank projects and counterpart countries’ teacher policy efforts approach the teaching career holistically, building systems in which teachers are prepared, supported, motivated, and recognized as they deserve to be. 

Reforms that support the teaching profession

An example of this holistic approach comes from the Dominican Republic. With support from the World Bank and other partners, the Dominican Republic has enacted a wide-reaching reform to strengthen the teaching profession, beginning with the development of professional and performance standards for teachers. These standards help inform teacher selection, education and professional development, induction, and evaluation. Regulations for teacher training were also developed; these regulations lay out key teacher competencies to help to guide the work of teacher training institutions. With this grounding, initial teacher education was significantly reformed. Admissions requirements for initial teacher education rose, making entry into the profession more selective. This reform of initial teacher education was situated within a broader system reform, including updated hiring practices for public schools and boosts to teacher salaries.

In Tanzania, the World Bank has been supporting the government’s efforts to improve teachers’ continuous professional development (CPD), including the design and rollout of the national Teacher Continuous Professional Development framework, Mafunzo Endelevu ya Walimu Kazini (MEWAKA). MEWAKA includes school- and group-based CPD for teachers, largely through peer facilitators and teachers’ communities of learning. Since its inception in 2021, MEWAKA is now implemented in more than half of Tanzania’s 184 districts. The proportion of teachers in those districts regularly participating in collaborative lesson planning, classroom observation, peer learning and mentoring, and reporting higher job satisfaction and efficacy has doubled from around 40 percent at baseline to 80 percent.

To complement the rollout of MEWAKA, Tanzania built a multiyear partnership with the UNESCO Teacher Education Center in Shanghai for Tanzanian policymakers and mathematics tutors to engage with teachers and experts in Shanghai, which has a rich history of school- and group-based CPD. The partnership has provided resources and learning opportunities to Tanzanian policymakers and tutors and helped to strengthen Tanzania’s approach to CPD.

In Ghana, where teacher attrition and absenteeism are significant and about one in five teachers are placed in schools where they are not fully proficient in the local language (which is encouraged as the medium of instruction at the foundational level), the World Bank has supported the government to strengthen support and resources for teachers and build district education management capacity. The Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project supports policy reform areas related to teacher recruitment, deployment, incentives, and transfers, while giving attention to teacher capacity-building and school-based support through learning grants. These efforts highlight the need to attend to all facets of the teacher career pipeline and progression.

As we celebrate World Teachers Day on October 5, 2024, we are reminded that honoring, valuing, and supporting teachers around the world requires education systems and policies that approach the teaching profession holistically, ensuring that teachers have the opportunities and resources they need at every stage of their career.  

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