Md Bayazid Khan :
Teachers are the central to learning and the precondition to achieving inclusive and equitable quality education for all. Quality education can never be achieved without quality teachers.
But recent survey and research reports show that a significant number of primary school children from grade three to five have poor quality performance in foundational literacy and numeracy skills and these are the essential skills to transition to the next stages of education as well as keeping in the lifelong learning process.
Students’ performance regards to quality learning is also the same in the secondary tier of education. Nonetheless the government with the support of development partners have been spending huge amounts of money in the education sector with a view to providing quality learning to entire students.
Obviously investment in education is the best long-term investment as it lies at the sustainable development, economic growth and social cohesion. Moreover, tomorrow’s challenging and very competitive labor markets are transforming to technology and AI driven.
Therefore, tomorrow’s workforces have to be skilled, innovative and need to be kept themselves in the lifelong learning process. Regarding this pivotal issue to be addressed satisfactorily each and every student needs to provide inclusive quality learning at primary and secondary tiers of education.
It never can be possible without ensuring the existence of quality teachers in the classrooms. So, transformation of education towards providing quality learning to students is necessarily demand transforming the teaching profession.
But what is happening in the teaching profession nowadays? Teacher shortages, teacher attrition, absence of qualified teachers, poor performance with commitment, less teaching in the classrooms etc are the common phenomenon in the teaching profession at primary and secondary tiers of education like global challenges.
To remove teacher shortages teacher attrition must be stopped by any means and appointed teachers need to be retained. Regarding this there should be the regular and short time bound system of appointing teachers. But the most important issue is ensuring appointment of qualified teachers and retaining them in the profession by any means.
Moreover, need based transformation to the teaching profession might not be confined only to appointing best quality teachers and retaining them but also ensuring Initial Teacher Education (ITE) or Basic Teacher Education (BTE) training and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) training.
Existing teaching profession prevails the challenges like teacher shortages, teacher attrition, absence of qualified teacher etc due to factors like low pay and benefits, limited career development, challenging working conditions, poor quality of basic teacher education training, limited spaces for professional development and last but not the least poor level of dignity and social status compared to other professions.
Transforming the teaching profession crucially needs to break the cycle full with aforementioned challenges and innovative approaches to attract, recruit and retain brilliant qualified graduates in teaching.
This includes ensuring of attractive salaries and benefits, providing comfortable working conditions, enhancing teacher’s motivation, ensuring good quality basic teacher education& regular basis professional development training with providing latest digital devices/materials and comfortable accommodation facilities at training venues, leveraging technology, restoring dignity and social status and transforming the process of policy level decision making with ensuring teachers’ and stakeholders’ significant involvement in policy making and curriculum & materials development.
Investment and transformation in the teaching profession is not just a priority but an urgent imperative for country’s progress as well as developing workforces compatible to modern day’s technology and AI dependent labor markets. Transforming the teaching profession is the key to ensure equitable access to quality education shaping a brighter future for generations to come.
The writer is working for primary education.
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