Privatisation of education under scrutiny at ILO Conference | WPN World People News

The threat represented by the lack of public investment in education, the trend toward privatisation and the erosion of the fundamental labour rights of educators was put on the table at the annual ILO Conference in Geneva.

In his address to the Committee of Experts on the Application of the Recommendation concerning Teaching Personnel (CEART) at the ILO Committee on the Application of Standards, Wilson Sossion, General Secretary of the Kenyan National Union of Teachers (KNUT) and Chair of the African Regional Committee of Education International (EI) said that "We are facing a strategic attack on education today, as the business incursion into education and the outsourcing of State responsibility to private companies is a threat to equity, inclusion, development and peace,". He spoke in his capacity as Workers' spokesperson at the discussion on the report of the joint ILO and UNESCO Committee of Experts on the Application of the Recommendation concerning Teaching Personnel. To strong applause from the workers' group he gave a hard-hitting account of main current threats faced by education.

The discussion was opened by the Deputy Director of the ILO Sectoral Activities Department, Mr Akira Isawa, who recalled that 2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 Recommendation on Teachers, which remained the only professional standard for the teaching profession at global level. He considered the 1966 Recommendation and its counterpart 1997 Recommendation for the Higher Education Sector as still valid today and reminded that both could be used to promote quality education for all.

In his statement to the Committee, Sossion noted that neither governments, unions nor employers were well acquainted with the two Recommendations and that the ILO could usefully carry out dissemination and awareness programmes about their contents. He described EI’s campaign for a stand alone Sustainable Development Goal on access to education and gave account of various menacing trends for the sector, including a lack of adequate funding, the use of precarious contracts, the growing de-professionalization, and the increasing use of performance and control systems.

He said that over 30 countries were now regularly recruiting unqualified teaching personnel and in many more around the world teachers were denied the fundamental right of freedom of association and collective bargaining. He called for the ILO to consider adopting a new binding Convention based on the Recommendations.

Other interventions from the workers' group included José Antonio Zepeda (CGTEN-ANDEN Nicaragua), Amanda Brown, (NUT-UK), Mikyung Ryu (KCTU Korea), Lalia Djaddour (SNAPAP-Algeria) and Marcelo Di Stefano (CONTUA). The interventions focused on the negative impact of privatization and the violations of freedom of association and expression.

Source: Education International