By Professor Bob Moon

In many parts of the world, the supply, retention, education and training of teachers is verging on crisis. This is true almost everywhere. In the USA, around half of all high school subjects are taught by non-specialists (in Mathematics and Science the figures are even higher). California has had to introduce special programmes for unqualified elementary teachers. In the developing world, the crisis is more acute. In Sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that around half of all primary, basic education teachers are unqualified or significantly underqualified. Thousands of schools are staffed by volunteer, contract teachers. The situation is so desperate that some countries have made teaching an alternative to military service. The description “teacher” now has a very wide meaning.

The crisis around the supply and retention of teachers is complex; equally so their training. But one thing is clear: there is absolutely no way the “bricks and mortar” institutions of teacher training created in the last century will be adequate for 21st century needs. In making that assertion, let me be very clear on one point. I am not suggesting there is no place for campus institutions. I am merely making the mathematical observation that the training needs of new and existing teachers far outstrip the capacity of existing institutions.

It follows therefore that new models of training will be needed. And for teachers, this means that their upgrading and continuing professional needs must be met by school-based programmes. It also means the urgent necessity of a radical shift in policy to embrace a significantly more diversified framework for education and training.

Yet this policy shift is so slow in coming. In country after country, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of resources are going to campus, residential training programmes extending for up to three or four years, whilst unqualified teachers flood into the classrooms and existing teachers have little or no opportunities for professional development. Successive UNESCO Education for All Monitoring Reports have commented critically on such an imbalance.

The logic of this situation points to the systematic development of school-based programmes using a variety of open and distance teaching and learning methodologies. And this we are beginning to see. CalState’s Teach in California is a response to the crisis in elementary schools. The U.K. Open University’s flexible postgraduate teacher training programme offers opportunities for mature entrant mathematicians, scientists and modern linguists to train as teachers. The Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme (in which COL, under the energetic leadership of Dr. Abdurrahman Umar, is playing a key role) seeks to ambitiously harness international co-operation around open educational resources to provide a high level support system across the continent. UNESCO and the World Bank are recognising the need. The latter has recently published a handbook for the myriad of new course developers (http://tinyurl.com/ODLforTeacherEdAfrica).

Despite these initiatives, more needs to be done. I suggest six key strategies:

• Fully integrate school-based, distance approaches into national training policies: not “bolt-on projects” to deal with crises but fully integrated strategic thinking.
• Establishing a new, practical, classroom focussed, curriculum for upgrading courses, and for continuing professional development: the biggest problems for distance education courses is when planners try to replicate the organisation of campus-based credit courses.
• Adapt more formative portfolio assessment systems giving primacy to classroom practice: the dead hand of timed examinations still weighs heavily on many programmes.
• Model costs in programme design in advance of implementation: problems of sustainability almost always arise when this is not done.
• Plan for the progressive adaptation of information and communication technology (ICT), especially mobile technologies: too many distance programmes continue to ignore the potential of this.
• Use media, especially radio, to make training more interesting and stimulating: too much teacher education, quite frankly, is plain boring.

Education and training should be an entitlement for all teachers at all stages of their careers. The research evidence shows that when this entitlement is honoured, learners achieve more and schools improve. Sir John Daniel in his new book, Mega-Schools, Technology and Teachers: Achieving Education for All makes many similar points. We all need to turn up the advocacy volume control.

Professor Bob Moon is Professor of Education at The Open University (UK) and founding Director of the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme.