The Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel was adopted in 1997 to complement the 1966 Recommendation by covering teaching personnel in higher education. World Teachers’ Day has been celebrated since 1994.
World Teachers’ Day is co-convened in partnership with the International Labour Organization (ILO), UNICEF and Education International (EI).
Teachers are one of the most influential and powerful forces for equity, access and quality in education and key to sustainable global development. However, their training, recruitment, retention, status and working conditions remain preoccupying.
Moreover, there is a worldwide shortage of well-trained teachers. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), 69 million teachers must be recruited to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030.
UNESCO has made the supply of well-trained, supported and qualified teachers one of its top priorities. This focus has been reinforced by Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education through the Education 2030 Framework for Action, which has a target calling for a substantial increase in qualified teachers through the betterment of their training, recruitment, retention, status, working conditions and motivation (target 4.c).
2021 Theme
The 2021 World Teachers’ Day will focus on the support teachers need to fully contribute to the recovery process under the theme “Teachers at the heart of education recovery”.
One and a half years into the COVID-19 crisis, World Teachers’ Day will focus on the support teachers need to fully contribute to the recovery process. Owing to the global context and following the spirit of the international benchmarks on the status of teaching personnel, this year’s observation of World Teachers’ Day will focus on the effect that the pandemic has had on education and on teachers, as well as the steps that need to be taken to ensure that teaching personnel develop their full potential to play the role expected of them in recovering from the pandemic and achieving the 2030 global education goal (SDG 4).
This global advocacy day will be observed around the world with the main objective of calling on governments and the international community to focus on the situation of teachers around the world and the challenges facing the teaching profession, and to share effective and promising policy responses.
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