Latin America: Teachers at centre of post-2015 education agenda | WPN World People News

Ministers and high education officials attended the Ministerial Regional Meeting on Education for All last week in Lima, Peru. An EI delegation attended in an observer capacity together with other representatives from civil society, bringing the voice of teachers to this forum.

David Edwards, Deputy General Secretary of EI, and UNESCO representativers at the meeting

The plenary discussion on Education for All in Latin American region was followed by the approval of a declaration with the regional vision and priorities on the post-2015 education agenda.

And, while Qian Tang, assistant director general for education at UNESCO, lauded the major educational achievements in Latin America in recent decades, it was noted that the “voice of the region is weak in the global educational debate”. Tang called on governments and the civil society in Latin America to get involved more actively in the process of the post-2015 agenda and to contribute their regional perspective.

Teacher development policies

The Ministers and officials also discussed the need to chart educational policies that meet the real needs of society. Teachers must be at the centre of these policies, said Professor José Weinstein. “It is necessary to support this impetus over time through alliances and allegiances that maintain and sustain the determination to build a strong teaching profession, irrespective of the party that is in power,” he stated.

For Gonzalo Muñoz, Head of the General Education Division of Chile, conferring dignity on the teaching profession is one of the great challenges in the region.

Expanding on this point, Beatriz Luce, Secretary for Basic Education in Brazil, spoke about the importance of policies to enhance the teaching profession, which considers the social standing, career and remuneration, and working conditions of teachers. Luce also highlighted the importance of involving the education community when devising a curricular policy.

Central importance of the State

Fairness and inclusion were identified as significant educational challenges for the region. Furthermore, “pursuing a more contextualised and more enlarged vision of education and learning that recognises and values the multicultural and multilingual diversity of the region” was one of the fundamental contributions of Latin America and the Caribbean to the post-2015 agenda.

The ministerial representatives agreed that the State must play a central role in guaranteeing the human right to education and that this is a responsibility of the public sector. To foster inclusion, quality public education must be improved until it is turned into something central for all the social segments and not only for the most disadvantaged, said Luis Garibaldi, Director of Education in Uruguay.

In his speech, EI Deputy General Secretary David Edwards stressed the need to work not only on teachers but above all with them. He reiterated that including a specific objective on teachers in the future post-2015 action framework is vital to being able to achieve the rest of the educational objectives.

Source: Education International