Global Gaps in Education

UNESCO warns of an impending shortage of millions of teachers across the world.

At least 2 million new teachers will be needed to achieve the second of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals, namely, universal primary education by 2015. The UNESCO Institute for Statistic' forecast is based on the staff required to maintain the present student-teacher ratio keeping in mind the growing number of student.

Another 6.2 million teachers will be needed to replace those who will retire or will give up the profession for other reason. About 1.12 million new vacancies for primary teachers will come up by 2015 in Africa alone, south of the Sahara. Other than Serbia and Palestine, only two non-African countries rank amongst the 23 nations with the greatest increase in demand for teachers.

At the same time, some countries like Nepal, Ecuador and Mongolia have substantially cut down on their teaching staff in places because of a drop in population figures per se or in the number of school-going children - a chance to redistribute budgets and focus on qualitative education instead of on quantitative efforts.