Together with UNESCO, UNDP, UNICEF, and ILO, Education International has reminded national governments that "in order to achieve Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the gender dimension of teaching must receive particular attention, beginning with girls' access to schools."
Highlighting the 2011 World Teachers’ Day theme, "Teachers for Gender equality", in a joint message the global organisations' leaders added: ‘"If we want to give equal opportunities to our daughters and sons to realise their full potential and claim their rights, we must devise policies and strategies that attract and motivate capable women and men to teach, while also enabling them to create gender-equal learning environments. More and better education for all requires good teachers and incentives to encourage male and female teachers into all areas and levels of teaching. This will ensure that boys and girls have appropriate role models throughout their schooling."
The joint message issued on 5 October also notes that "if teachers are to be good role models for gender equality for boys and girls in all areas and at all levels of schooling, inequities within the teaching profession must be addressed. We must promote equal opportunities for women to be school leaders, institutional managers and decision-makers within ministries of education, for more women to become science, mathematics and technology teachers, and for more men to be recruited as early childhood and primary school educators."
The message further acknowledges that "opportunities for teachers to shape education decisions through social dialogue, must be addressed if decent work for teachers - and quality education for children - is to become a reality. We call on all partners in education to work towards full respect for the rights and responsibilities set out in the 1966 ILO-UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers and the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel – the starting points for this special day."
To read the full joint statement, please click here.
To see your activities featured in EI’s report on World Teachers’ Day, please send photos, articles, videos or links to: 5oct@ei-ie.org. You can also tweet about your World Teachers’ Day activity using the hashtag #wtd2011
To watch videos thanking teachers at the occasion of World Teachers’ Day in different languages, please go to our YouTube channel.
To watch the EI Latin America's video on the project on equality with a gender perspective, please click here.