‘Quality teachers fuel quality education’: UNESCO Bangkok World Teachers’ Day Forum

5 OCTOBER 2016 – “The quality of education cannot exceed the quality of teachers,” said Gwang-Jo Kim, Director of UNESCO Bangkok, the Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, in his welcoming remarks today at opening of the World Teachers’ Day Forum in Bangkok Thailand.

Mr Kim added that with “education being key to attaining the Sustainable Development Goals and teachers key to achieving quality education”, there is an urgent need to improve teacher status and working conditions, address the challenges they face and create innovative policies that support their welfare and professional development.

UNESCO Bangkok is hosting the two-day World Teachers’ Day Forum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ILO/UNESCO Recommendations concerning the Status of Teachers.

The forum aims to answer some pressing questions concerning those landmark  recommendations: Where do Asia-Pacific countries stand in adopting and implementing them? What are the gaps and challenges in promoting teacher status and improving their working conditions?

UNESCO Bangkok launched the new publication, “Teachers in the Asia Pacific: Career Progression and Professional Development” at the forum. The nine country study offers recommendations that aim to ensure teachers receive the professional recognition and development opportunities they need to be effective and feel appropriately rewarded, as well as to encourage others to enter and remain in the profession.

 The forum also celebrated the contributions made by teachers throughout the region with a special pictorial display telling their stories. Teachers’ narratives from across Asia-Pacific were collected for this display, giving participants the opportunity to learn more about the valuable work these educators are doing and the challenges they face on the ground.

About 70 participants are taking part in the two-day event, including Ministry of Education officials and policy-makers from Asia-Pacific member states, experts and specialists in teacher education, representatives from regional and sub-regional/organization/networks and UNESCO partners.

This year’s World Teachers’ Day theme, “Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status,” aligns with this fundamental principle emphasized in the Education 2030 Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action: “Teacher policies and regulations should be in place to ensure that teachers and educators are empowered, adequately recruited and remunerated, well-trained, professionally qualified, motivated, equitably and efficiently deployed across the whole education system, and supported within well-resourced, efficient and effectively governed systems”.

For more information, please contact Lay Cheng Tan [lc.tan@unesco.org] at the Section for Educational Innovation and Skills Development.

Written by: Amalia Miranda Serrano [am.serrano@unesco.org]