Expert Meeting on Costing Teacher Policy

المبادرات الإقليمية في التعليم

2022 - 09 - 19

On 29 August 2022, the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in the Arab States organized a focus group with several experts on teacher policies and education financing, with a view to review a draft “Module on Costing Teacher Policy” from Arab region perspective. The Module has been developed under the coordination of the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 (TTF) as a stand-alone document for now. However, it might be included into UNESCO’s Teacher Policy Development Guide (2019) at a later stage, along with a new module on crisis and emergencies.

The new draft Module follows closely the nine key dimensions laid out in UNESCO’s Teacher Policy Development Guide (TPDG), including its basic principles that teacher policies should be holistic and comprehensive, thus well aligned with the overall national education sector policies.

The exchanges among the participating experts to the focus group have led to several important comments and recommendations on how to best approach costing teacher policies as part of comprehensive national exercises in costing education policies, planning and implementation. The main outcomes of the expert meeting (focus group) are summarized as follows:

Developing such a draft Module on costing teacher policies is a significant and timely initiative.
Costing teacher policies should be embedded in national education sector plans and approached as an intra-governmental exercise. Teacher policies require that different ministerial teams work in synergy to make sure that different teacher needs are met, including teacher status, salaries, and working conditions, and all the different direct and indirect costs are considered. Concrete examples of cross-sectoral costing, including from countries experiencing difficulties, would be also extremely beneficial.
The draft module is quite comprehensive, however it should emphasize more the important policy levers in translating teacher policies into real life. One of such levers are teacher contracts. The way teacher contracts are designed reflects the main expectations to them, as well as the way they will be supported to perform better. The different items included in teacher contracts need all to be considered in costing teacher policies, including capacity development, medical coverage and housing. Very often costs for consultations with teachers are not considered, though involving teachers in different types of consultative and participatory processes is essential in ensuring education quality, ownership, and sustainability.
The Module should also clarify the resources and finances relationship. One missing component of the present Module is cost-efficiency. In the end, the purpose of costing exercises is to use resources wisely. The module needs to be enriched with some key indicators that would show that resources have been used in a cost-effective manner.
There is also a need of more emphasis on conceptual clarity, for instance that teacher policies (and their costing) should not be confused with budgeting; or that spending on teachers is not the same with cost-effectiveness; or that “costing” needs to be approached as “investment” in teachers (and education more broadly); and/or that costing and ensuring cost-effectiveness are implying related, yet different processes.
The Module should also address new/emerging needs and priorities, such as those brought forward in the context of the Covid-19 crisis on teacher wellbeing and psychosocial support; and on supporting teachers for remote/online and hybrid/blended teaching and learning.
The Module should equally emphasize the pre-requisites of using such costing models, for instance a very robust data collection system in countries. It may also benefit from considering different scenarios in approaching education quality and teacher performances.
The module needs to also link costing of pre-service teacher education and training with the costing of continuous professional development, i.e. costing of HED systems should be equally factored in.
It would be advisable that the Module addresses education in crisis/emergencies more in-depth, especially because many countries around the World and in the Arab region are experiencing protracted crises of different natures.
The philosophy underlining the Module on Costing Teacher Policy needs to consider attracting talents to the teaching professions (i.e. how to make the profession attractive) and what is needed to make teachers stay.
Several concrete examples/cases from the Arab Region could be integrated in the Module in order to enhance evidence from the Arab Region perspective, such as Palestine (National Teacher Education Policy, including enhancing teacher status through teacher licensing in accordance to different performance/experience levels); Lebanon (excellent models from private schools on making clear expectations to teachers, i.e. expected competencies, behaviors and outcomes based on specific support teachers receive and incentives on performance); Gulf countries (teacher licensing and motivating career structure in U.A.E. and KSA); Egypt (initiative on establishing a larger policy consultation on how to better support teachers).

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