Brussels (BE)/Paris (F), December 2015 - A new UNESCO campaign is calling on teachers eager to become advocates for education to help lobby for progress toward achieving the new sustainable-development agenda.
This campaign starts following the United Nations adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), each with specific targets to be achieved over the next fifteen years, including a standalone target on education. In Paris the Framework for Action for Education 2030, which sets the roadmap toward achieving the global education goal, has also been adopted.
For these goals to be reached, UNESCO is stressing that individuals and institutions everywhere are needed to do their part: governments, donors, civil society, and teachers.
Teachers are indeed central to the success of the new goals, not only because how they teach is essential to providing a quality education, but also because what they teach is of utmost importance to being able to ensure systems of governance and to promoting global citizenship, gender equality, dignity, and justice for all.
By joining the sign-up campaign launched on World Teachers’ Day 2015, 05 October, by UNESCO, the Education For All Global Monitoring Report (EFA GMR), and Education International (EI), teachers can advocate for inclusive and quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all, without which the overall aims to end poverty, promote prosperity and well-being for all, protect the environment, and address climate change will never be achieved.
Teachers signing up receive advocacy toolkits and country-specific information to help them lobby for change in their country.
One of the key advocacy toolkits is the "Advocacy toolkit for teachers to provide a quality education", produced jointly by the EFA GMR, the International Task Force on Teachers for EFA, and EI, helps teachers use evidence-based recommendations for their advocacy. Alongside figures and key messages, it also provides examples of best practices from around the world, as well as evidence that these practices have resulted in positive outcomes. A special chapter on practical steps to advocate for change closes the report.
This toolkit is going to be updated by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report team in 2016, so teachers are warmly invited to give their opinion on the toolkit and on how teachers advocating for change in their country can be better supported.
