Scarcity of teachers termed main obstacle in achieving targets

The goal of providing quality education to all children by 2015 could not be materialised without an additional 18 million new teachers world wide. "The growing shortage of qualified teachers is the main challenge to the realisation of international education targets, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)", head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) said.
In his messing on the occasion of World Teacher Day, received here on Saturday, Director-General UNESCO Koichiro Matsuura said, "The quality of teachers and teaching is also essential to good learning outcomes'. He noted that in many countries all children were not able to go to school or learn basic skills since there were simply not enough teachers.
"This has negative outcomes not only for the future of individual children, but also for the development of whole societies," he added. To address the shortage of qualified teachers in Afghanistan, UNICEF is supporting the Ministry of Education in training personnel, developing curriculum and establishing teachers training colleges.
"These colleges are designed to help redress years of under investment in teachers training, which has led to a marked decline in number of teachers and teaching standards", he said. UNICEF's efforts in the war-torn nation include strategies for increasing the number of female teachers, who were barred during the Taliban's rule from practising their profession.
"The drive to improve the numbers of female teachers and improve standards of teaching is important step in ensuring that girls continue to return to the classroom, and to reduce risk of drop-out amongst pupils already enrolled," said Catherine Mbengue, UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, on World Teacher's Day, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has released a new study which finds that violence, occupation, closures and poverty have a dire affect on the schooling of Palestinian refugee children.
The agency's education programme serves over half a million students in three countries and the occupied Palestinian territory. The study shows that in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, the performance of children in UNRWA schools compares favourably with that of their peers in Government-run schools, in spite of limited resources.