[child-rights] Every child needs a teacher

Press Release Education International
February 24, 2006

Global Action Week 2006 (24-30 April)

Education International and its teachers' unions worldwide are playing a
leading role in the Global Action Week to increase the pressure on
governments to demonstrate greater leadership to ensure that all children
get the chance to be taught by qualified teachers.

Global Action Week aims at mobilising public opinion to exert pressure on
governments and intergovernmental agencies to provide free quality public
education for all. Global Action Week is organised in April each year, to
recall the commitment made by 180 governments at the World Education Forum
in April 2000 to provide Education For All by the year 2015. This
commitment was renewed in September 2000 in the context of the UN
Millennium Development Goals.

This year will see the 7th annual Global Action Week in which EI, together
with its partner organisation the Global Campaign for Education, will
demand the right to education of millions of children currently excluded
from education.

Global Action Week is one of the many advocacy activities undertaken by EI
to remind governments and donor agencies of their responsibility to
provide quality public education to all children.

To get over 100 million more children to school, countries need better
infrastructure, teachers, and materials. This year, Global Action Week
activities will make the case for teachers. Over 15 million new teachers
are needed to attain universal education. Qualified teachers are the key
to quality education. They need to be fully trained, and to have status,
respect, decent wages and adequate working conditions.

To this end, teachers worldwide will mobilise with their unions as well as
NGOs working on education issues. Teachers' unions affiliated to EI in 46
countries (Australia, India, Kenya and United Kingdom to name but a few)
will organise a range of local and national events in support of the
Global Action Week. In Haiti, the teachers' union CNEH has drawn up a map
pinpointing all of the schools which are run by a single teacher to
present to political leaders; in Canada, the teachers' federation CTF has
invited members of parliament to a breakfast session to discuss the
education millennium development goals; in Brazil, the teachers' union
CNTE is mobilising support for its proposal to convert the external debt
of Brazil into funds for education.

Contact your local GCE coalition or teachers' union to find out more about
GAW activities in your country.