18m Teachers Needed To Reach World Education Goals
By P Marilyn

Bandar Seri Begawan - "Eighteen million teachers are needed worldwide if we are to achieve the education Millennium Development Goals by 2015," said the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education, Dato Paduka Haji Sheikh Adnan bin Sheikh Mohamad.

"The two Millennium Development Goals which Commonwealth Education strongly supports are the goal to achieve Universal Primary Education by 2015 and the goal to achieve gender equality in education by 2015.

"The issue of teacher overseas recruitment and migration contributing to the loss of teaching personnel from the education systems of Commonwealth countries was the subject of discussions in several conferences," he told the opening of the Meeting of Teaching/Public Service Commissions of Commonwealth Asian Members Countries yesterday.

Touching on the educational system in Brunei, "Quality and Professionalism are at the heart of our Ministry of Education's Strategic Planfor 2007 to 2011," said Dato Paduka Haji Sheikh Adnan.

"The Ministry of Education has also embarked on a major review of Brunei's education system and will be implementing a new education system in 2009,

"However, it is important that we prepare our teachers' capacity so that they are ready to make that change to a new system. In any one year, there are teachers who leave the system for a variety of reasons and we would like to attract and retain the best.

"There are several ways this can be achieved, like by giving attractive and competitive remunerations in the labour market and continuous staff development along clear career pathways.

"We are developing a new scheme of service for our teachers, which we hope will be enforced very soon.

"In the past decade, we have accelerated the development of education including the establishment of a second university and the building of more schools.

"With more schools, our teacher training institutions have to keep up with training more teachers to ensure an adequate supply.

"However, it is also critical that we develop a high quality teaching force as part of a plan to create a conducive environment for teaching and learning.

"Two meetings of the Teaching Service Commissions of Asian Commonwealth members, have been held since the 16th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in December 2006 in South Africa..

"The meetings are being conducted throughout the Commonwealth by the Education Section of the Commonwealth Secretariat to identify issues and concerns with teacher mobility, retention, supply and demand in member countries of the Commonwealth including its Asian members.

"The meetings also facilitate sharing among member countries, positive strategies for improving the quality and status of teachers and to expand and deepen the information about the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol and ascertain how member countries may best use it in their teacher retention efforts.

"Since the early 1990s, the Secretariat has coordinated the Working Group on the Teaching profession in Africa.

"In 2002, following requests from Ministers of Education of Small States to address the loss of teachers to the education system of their countries through overseas recruitment, a Working Group on Teacher Recruitment was established to look into this issue.

"By September 2004, the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol was adopted and has since formed part of the African Union's Plan of Action for the decade of Education in Africa, endorsed by the 35 member countries of the Organisation of American States.

"The Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol has put forward a resolution to the UNESCO General Assembly as a standard of best practices in Member States and has been cited by the International Labour Organisation as a best practice in migration and development, and by the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta in 2005." -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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