Today is World Teachers’ Day. Celebrated every year in recognition of the enormous contribution teachers make to the development of society and future generations.

However, it is hard to improve the status of teachers or to achieve quality education for all without adequate funding. And in times of crisis this is even harder.

Latest data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) shows that half of all countries spend between 3.4 percent and 5.7 percent of GDP on education, which works out as a global median of 4.7 percent.

However, figures vary greatly from region to region.

According to the Global Monitoring Report, “although low income countries have increased the share of national income spent on education from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent since 1999, some regions and countries have continued to neglect education. Central Asia and South and West Asia invest the least in education.”

Cuba for example invests 13.38 percent of its GDP on education while the United Arab Emirates spends just 0.99 percent.

That is why Education International (EI) is calling upon governments to invest at least 6 per cent of their countries’ GDP in teachers and education.

The theme for this year’s World Day is “Take a stand for teachers” which acts as a clarion call to all those who value education to value teachers and to take a stand for them.

The date of the World Teachers’ Day has its origins in the ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, adopted on 5 October 1966 and which serves as a charter on the rights of teachers worldwide.

This year’s call is beyond sympathy.

It is a call for audible, visible, concrete and immediate action to address the challenges facing teachers and education systems around the world.

It is a call to challenge and reverse the austerity measures adopted by many governments, in Europe and beyond, in response to the financial and economic crisis.

And it is a call to challenge the rampant violation of the human, professional and labour rights of educators in those countries that continue to undermine them.

Development partners must also meet their side of the bargain by supporting national governments to meet their responsibility to provide and fund quality education for all.

This, they can do, by ensuring that at least 10% of Official Development Assistance given to developing countries goes to education.

Is it not an intolerable injustice that less than three years before 2015, the target date for achieving Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 61 million children of primary school going age are still out of school?

Projections made by the UIS indicate that more than two million new teachers are still needed to achieve the goal of universal primary education, and many more to achieve all the six EFA goals. More than half of these teachers (55%) will need to be recruited in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The challenge

The teacher challenge is not just that of numbers, but of quality as well.

Many countries continue to recruit unqualified or under-qualified teachers, with few or no professional qualifications.

The deprofessionalisation and casualisation of teaching – demonstrated by the recruitment of contract teachers, quite often paid less than regular teachers and without full benefits such as social security or pension benefits – continues to rear its ugly head around the globe.

The privatisation of public education is another global challenge threatening to undermine EFA progress, by excluding those without the financial means to pay for private education.

Transferring funding from public schools to bolster private initiatives such as charter schools in the United States and academies in the United Kingdom is not a panacea to the educational quality and equity challenge.

The answer lies in strengthening public education and schools.

Public education is more equitable and sustainable so authorities should ensure that schools are equipped with adequate numbers of highly trained and qualified teachers.

Governments and development partners ought to in invest in high quality teacher education, including pre-service and in-service training, on-going professional development and support.

In order to make teaching an attractive profession and to improve retention, public authorities ought to invest in the improvement of conditions of service and salaries for teachers and all education personnel.

Just as every child has the right to an education, every learner deserves to be taught by a qualified, well-supported and motivated teacher.

Dennis Sinyolo is the Education and Employment Coordinator for Education International