Building Sustainable Education Systems
UNESCO offers to national education authorities technical cooperation in education policy analysis, the design of education sector development plans and donor mobilization in support of national educational priorities, such as curriculum reform, teacher policies, and ICTs in education. In addition, it supports national institutional capacity-building in policy formulation, sector analysis, educational planning, policy simulation and dialogue, resource projections, sector management, programme monitoring and evaluation, development cooperation, and donor coordination.
The cooperation activities involve participation to elaborate the guidelines and the instruments of execution and implementation of goals, as well as to construct the instruments of elaboration of action plans and of diagnoses of the situation of the education at the national, state and municipal levels.
UNESCO supports national education efforts in developing robust and coherent education policies and strategies and in managing their effective implementation all within the context of “ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.
Solid, coherent policies and plans are the bedrock on which to build sustainable education systems, achieve educational development goals and contribute effectively to lifelong learning.
Qualifying and Training Teachers in Brazil
Improving the professional training of teachers is critical to any effort aimed at improving the quality of education in Brazil.
Teacher status and education are considered fundamental to the improvement of educational quality. This was the commitment of UNESCO State Members, including Brazil, in two of the six Education for All Goals (goal 2 and 6), during the World Forum of Educational for All (Dakar, 2000).
It is of fundamental importance to establish the links between learning evaluation results and pre-service and in-service teacher education and training, in order to effectively renovate the learning process in the classrooms. Equally important is the establishment of career development plans for teachers and other professionals in the education sector.
Study results still show that:
- there are low rates of educational achievement in Mathematics and Portuguese Language of students taking the first years of basic education;
- insufficient or even worse results were found in the last grades of primary and secondary education.
In order to improve the quality of education, as registered in the UNESCO report of the International Commission of Education for the 21st Century, Learning: the treasure within: it is necessary, above all, to improve the teachers' recruitment, education, social status, and their working conditions. The teachers can only respond to what is expected of them if they can have knowledge and competencies, as well as personal qualities, professional possibilities, and required motivation.
In accordance with the Education 2030: Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4, UNESCO Member States will ensure that teachers and educators are empowered, adequately recruited, well-trained, professionally qualified, motivated and supported within well-resourced, efficient and effectively governed systems.
The same Framework states that teachers also have socio-economic and political rights, including the right to seek decent working conditions and adequate remuneration. Governments should make teaching an attractive, first-choice profession with continuing training and development by improving teachers’ professional status, working conditions, and support, and should strengthen policy dialogue mechanisms with teacher organizations.
Coleção Educadores
The purpose of organizing a collection of books on educators and educational thinkers arose from the need to put available to teachers and education administrators from around the country quality works to show what some of the leading exponents of educational history thought and did in terms of national and international plans.
Followed by public debates, the dissemination of knowledge in this area means an important step for the maturation of ideas and options with a view to the federal goal of improving the quality of schools and pedagogical practice in our country.
To achieve this purpose, the Ministry of Education established a Technical Committee in 2006, composed of representatives of MEC, educational institutions, universities, and UNESCO to select thirty Brazilians and thirty international educators, known for their historical recognition and the scope of their reflections and contributions to the advancement of Education.
Video collection:
Watch the 17 videos on the educators on
Book collection:
The book collection comprises 63 volumes, each about one remarkable educator: there are 30 internationally renowned names and 33 Brazilian notable personalities. The book collection can be found at: