We are excited to celebrate World Teachers’ Day on the 5th of October 2021 under the theme: "Teachers at the heart of education recovery". Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are struggling to train quality professional school teachers to meet its demands.
Humana People to People remains committed to training primary school teachers for sub-Saharan Africa and India. Our 49 teacher training colleges present in sub-Saharan Africa and India shows our resoluteness to investing in people through supporting development of education.
According to UNESCO, 258 million children and young people were entirely excluded from education world wide in 2020, poverty was their main barrier to access. As in other areas of life, the crises of 2020 have exacerbated both exclusion and the inequalities that cause it.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics data point to continuing teacher gaps in primary and secondary education. It is estimated that, in order to reach SDG 4 by 2030, sub-Saharan African countries will need to recruit for 8.7 million new teaching posts and replace another 6.3 million teachers who have left the profession.
Since 1993, Humana People to People has trained more than 53 000 dedicated teachers to work in public primary schools across Mozambique, Angola, Malawi, Guinea Bissau, Zambia, D. R. Congo and India. Training lasts between one and three years and schools are mainly boarding schools, with the exception of those in India.
We believe that the most important thing that our teachers can give their students is a zest for life and learning that leads to progress. Our pedagogical approach is to create a space for students of all ages to be the drivers and navigators of their own training, in a collective setting where studying both together and individually go hand-in-hand.
While evidence is scarce, the COVID-19 pandemic will likely increase the demands for teachers. Teachers require additional capacity building, particularly related to distance education and teaching.
The shocks to education the world over caused by Covid-19 pandemic have called for teachers to be creative, innovative and compassionate. Teachers are key in unearthing every possible - and impossible - solution to uninterrupted teaching and learning without being in the classroom and without losing students. We are proud that our teachers have shown themselves to be well equipped to overcome these challenges – they are a thriving example of this.
The Covid-19 pandemic brought a new challenge to the school-going children of India – how to learn when schools are closed. While children from families with sufficient resources could move the learning online, millions of children do not have access to technology.
Our member member, Humana People to People India, is running KADAM programme targeting out of school children in India. Kadam methodology has proven a good solution for the affected children in India. It offers simple workbooks and logical step system of learning, ideal for self-learning and peer learning. So while the schools were closed under COVID-19 lockdowns the children continued learning in smaller groups with a teacher visit 2-3 times per week. From 2016 to July 2021, the Kadam centers have worked with 85,000 children, whereof 59,000 have been successfully transitioned into their age-appropriate primary school grades.
We call for interested entities to engage us and create partnerships to tackle teacher shortages and ensure a sufficient number of qualified teachers to reach all learners, in particular those among marginalized and disadvantaged populations in Africa and Asia.
