Global teacher shortage threatens progress on education

The UN estimates 8 million extra teachers are needed worldwide by 2015. But how do countries compare? Get the full data here

Leonora Jusay gives a lesson to her 59 students in Quezon city, the Philippines.

The world urgently needs to recruit more than 8 million extra teachers, according to UN estimates, warning that a looming shortage of primary school teachers threatens to undermine global efforts to ensure universal access to primary education by 2015.

At least 2m new teaching positions will need to be created by 2015, the UN said in a report published this week. An additional 6.2 million teachers will need to be recruited to maintain current workforces and replace those expected to retire or leave classrooms due to career changes, illnesses, or death.

Burkina Faso, Eritrea, and Central African Republic (CAR) top the list of countries that will need to mount aggressive recruitment campaigns over the next four years. Burkina Faso will need to increase its teaching workforce by almost 14% each year until 2015 to plug the country's shortage of teachers, while workforces in Eritrea and CAR will have to grow by 18% and 21% respectively.

How do countries compare? Fullscreen version

"An acute shortage of primary teachers represents one of the biggest hurdles to achieving the goal of universal primary education," said the report, which stressed: "Policies that effectively address teacher training and retention should be at the core of national education policies."

The estimated figures, prepared by Unesco's Montreal-based Institute for Statistics, aim to help countries identify recruitment challenges and adjust their budgets accordingly.

Unesco's projections are based on estimates of the numbers of teachers needed to maintain current pupil-teacher ratios and try to account for "attrition" by estimating that 5% of teachers leave each year.

According to Unesco's projections, the greatest challenges lie in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 1m teaching posts will need to be created by 2015 to meet the needs of a growing number of primary students. Population growth and the push to get all children into school by 2015 has led enrolment rates to soar in many countries, but quality of education will remain a prime concern if countries fail to get enough teachers into classrooms. A total of 350,000 teachers should be hired in sub-Saharan Africa each year until 2015 to fill new posts and compensate for teachers expected to leave the workforce, said the report.

A major challenge facing many countries is the shortage of secondary school graduates. In Mozambique, teacher recruitment needs are expected to dramatically outpace the number of graduates, as in 2009 just 9.5% of young people of secondary school age were enrolled in class. Similar situations threaten teacher recruitment efforts in Burkina Faso, CAR, Chad, Niger, Uganda and Tanzania.

Unesco called for a focus on women and greater gender balance among staff in the drive to hire more teachers.

"In many regions a low proportion of female teachers will mean fewer girls at school and consequently even fewer women teachers in the future," said Unesco's director general, Irina Bokova, in a statement on Wednesday, co-signed by the heads of three other UN agencies and the director of Education International, the international federation of education trade unions. "Adequate provisions for maternity protection and parental leave, as well as effective protection from sexual violence and abuse, are essential. If qualified female teachers avoid postings in disadvantaged and rural areas, how can we convince reluctant parents to send their children to school?"

Between 1990 and 2009, the global proportion of female primary school teachers grew from 56% to 62%. But most of this growth happened in Asia, where proportions of female teachers rose from 32% to 45% in south and west Asia and from 48% to 61% in east Asia and the pacific. In sub-Saharan Africa, which already had the lowest proportion of female teachers, growth was minimal – from 40% to 42%.

We've pulled out the data from Unesco's report, focusing on the figures for teacher shortages around the world. You can also download the full data which includes regional estimates of recruitment needs. We've also added in figures on the proportion of women in teaching posts for 2007-09.

What can you do with the data?

Data summary