Capacity Building Workshop for the development of teacher policies in LAC

12 November 2021
Panelists
Credit: KIX LAC

The workshop on "Capacity building for teacher policy development in Central America and the Caribbean" was organized by SUMMA, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), IDRC, and co-organized by KIX LAC and UNESCO.

The objective of the meeting was to strengthen knowledge and understanding of the process of teacher policy development, dimensions and implementation presented in the "Guide for the elaboration of teacher policies", a tool developed by the International Task Force on Teachers that seeks to contribute to the elaboration of policies informed by evidence specific to each national context and based on the experience of good practices from a wide range of countries and organizations.

According to data from the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report (UNESCO/SUMMA), teachers need more support to meet the challenge of diversity and are often not offered continuing professional development opportunities. Despite the fact that 70% of the countries in the region have laws or policies that provide for teacher training on inclusion, more than 50% reported that they lacked professional training to teach students with special needs.

Likewise, the main challenges for teacher training include the lack of professional qualifications, the lack of teachers in rural schools, the low number of teachers in certain disciplines and few requirements for entering the teaching career.