Improving coordination for stronger teacher policies

A multi-partner collaboration

Increasing the supply of quality teachers plays a central role in improving the quality of learning in many developing countries. To this end, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) is supporting an initiative called “Strengthening Multi-Partner Cooperation to Support Teacher Policy and Improve Learning” which aims to facilitate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 and its target 4.c.

Coordinated by UNESCO, as the lead agency for the Education 2030 Agenda, and the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, the multi-partner initiative brings together key education players with considerable experience in implementing teacher related activities: Education International, the Global Partnership for Education, the International Labour Organization, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Bank.

The diversity of partners involved under one umbrella will support governments to develop holistic teacher policies addressing such topics as recruitment, deployment, motivation, training and development, remuneration and social participation.

Objectives

Various initiatives worldwide support developing countries to enhance teacher policies and practices. However, many of those initiatives are developed and implemented in somewhat different ways, and more often than not, they stand alone, even in the same country. Consequently, although well-intentioned, these initiatives lack synergies and coordination limiting their potential impact.

This project addresses this issue by reinforcing the coordination among key international organizations and national actors working on teacher policies by bringing more coordinated support to countries.

Equally important, the project supports education authorities at country level to elaborate strategies that will strengthen national teacher policies and the teaching and learning components of national education sector plans. 

A pilot phase in four countries

Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda are the four countries targeted during the initial two-year pilot phase.  They were chosen as they are each in the process of, or will soon be, developing teacher policies as part of their national education sector plans and have expressed strong commitment to implementing them.

Coordination at global and country levels

To achieve its objective of harmonization, the project will interlink existing national and international coordination mechanisms related to teacher policies such as the Local Education Group or the network of focal points of the International Task Force on Teachers. In addition, regular coordination meetings at the technical and strategic level involving all project partners will allow for effective coordination. Based on the comparative advantage of each partner and jointly defined roles and responsibilities, project partners will take the lead on specific thematic areas and geographic zones.

As a first step, inception meetings will be held in the four pilot countries gathering all international project partners and key national stakeholders to kick-off the initiative at national level. These will be followed by country assessments to be conducted based on a methodology jointly defined by all partners. Their objective is to analyse existing teacher policies, identify gaps and map other on-going teacher-related initiatives, and identify relevant key stakeholders at national level. The findings of the country assessments will inform the formulation of national priorities for the development of new, or the strengthening of existing, teacher policies and will identify areas for collaboration among the project partners and other key players thus ensuring an inclusive and coordinated country-level process.