Quality education, fighting the privatisation of education, and deepening development cooperation work – these were the issues under the spotlight at EI’s Asia-Pacific (EIAP) Regional Committee meeting on 2-3 March in New Delhi, India.
The committee explained that it would continue to work towards ensuring quality public education for all by guaranteeing that there are enough quality teachers for quality education and even the poorest of the poor will have access to quality education, including at the early childhood stage.
It will also keep on highlighting the three pillars of quality education – quality teachers, quality tools, and quality environment – and take all necessary action to ensure that EI’s affiliates in the region participate in the EI “ Unite for Quality Education” (Unite) campaign.
This campaign, committee members underlined, is an enabling campaign that is helpful in uniting teacher organisations around quality education, resources, and environment.
They also congratulated the All India Primary Teachers Federation on successfully holding “yatras” (marches) in February 2014 to promote quality education.
Attacks on public education
According to the Committee, governments seem to follow a fixed strategy in their approach and mode of attack on public education.
Members identified areas where action is necessary:
- Inadequate allocation of resources, resulting in poor quality in every related area.
- Casualisation and deprofessionalisation of education, leading to the employment of underqualified and untrained teachers. This lowers the status of teachers and reduces its attractiveness as a profession of choice.
- Commercialisation of education. In many of the region’s countries, education has become an industry and is owned by businessmen motivated primarily by profit rather than the ideals of education.
- Performance-based evaluation. This lowers the status of teachers, with teachers expected to meet school parents’ demands without security of tenure.
Importance of development cooperation
“Development cooperation (DC) is of the highest importance,” said the EIAP Regional Committee Chairperson, Yasunaga Okamoto from Japan Teachers’ Union. “It helps organisations learn from each other and assist each other. The cooperation builds solidarity among teachers.”
Okamoto urged EI regional affiliates to get involved in all global issues, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and promote decent work, International Labour Organisation (ILO)/UNESCO Recommendations, and ILO Conventions 87 and 98. He expressed his confidence that EI DC work unites teachers towards building a just society.
EIAP Committee members also discussed specific challenges encountered by education unionists in Fiji, Iraq, and Korea in terms of seeing their human and trade union rights respected by their respective governments.
Among other resolutions, the EIAP Committee decided to:
· Adopt the EIAP regional activity report and continue working on the areas identified by the EI World Congresses including the priorities set by the EI World Congress in Cape Town and the areas identified by the resolutions of the EIAP Regional Conferences.
· Explore opportunities to develop contact with teacher organisations in China, including the All China Teachers’ Union.
· Encourage member organisations to attend the EI Women’s Conference, the “Unite” Conference in Montreal, EI’s Higher Education Conference in Accra, and the EI World Congress in Ottawa, Canada, in 2015.
· Commission the EIAP regional office to explore the participation of EI in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Services Employees’ Trade Union Council and take necessary action.
EI: Equal access to quality education crucial for regional development
“The deteriorating economic circumstances in many countries in this region is jeopardising the capacity of national governments to maintain and increase public investment in education, social services, and public infrastructure,” said EIAP Chief Regional Coordinator Shashi Bala Singh. “Deregulation and privatisation of public services, and, especially of education, reduces access and increases inequalities in society, and the economic circumstances of many countries in our region are being used to justify attacks on trade union rights and to reduce salaries and pensions.”
She emphasised that the EIAP Regional Committee has reiterated its call on all countries in the region to prioritise investment in public education as the most effective way to stimulate economic growth, social stability, and cohesion.
Bala Singh added that national governments must recognise the value of entering into partnership with trade union organisations in planning and implementing programmes for economic recovery and development.
She also urged national governments and the international financial institutions to cease undermining the already inadequate terms and conditions of employment of many education and other public service workers in the Asia-Pacific region as a means of restoring national economies.