{"id":1699,"date":"2011-02-08T10:27:53","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T14:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2012-09-27T10:39:04","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T14:39:04","slug":"we-cannot-train-more-teachers-we-must-empower-them-with-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/teacher-training\/we-cannot-train-more-teachers-we-must-empower-them-with-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"We Cannot Train More Teachers, We Must Empower Them with Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The most popular answer to the question of how to improve the quality of schools and education in developing countries is: Invest in more teachers and more schools.<\/p>\n

Let there be more teachers<\/b><\/p>\n

I think there are few people who would contest that having one full time, fully qualified teacher in front of every class of 25 children would bring education of the highest standards to any country.
\nBut could this really be the solution to the educational problems in poor countries? I sincerely doubt whether this solution is feasible. I even fear it is completely impossible to solve the plight of education in the developing world by this route alone. <\/p>\n

Here is a statistic that paints a bleak picture, indeed:<\/p>\n

India has one of the lowest ratio of teachers. In the US, it’s 3,200 teachers per million people, in the Caribbean it’s 1,500, in the Arab countries it’s 800 and in India it’s 456 teachers per million people. The Times of India (2009)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The US might not be the best example, but even to get at the level of the Caribbean, the Arab countries must double their number of teachers, and India must more than triple its number. And that would be just the number of teachers needed to get at the level of the Caribbean. If the teacher pupil ratio should get close to that of the US, double the number of new teachers would be needed.<\/p>\n

Obviously, if the aim would be to decrease the number of pupils per teacher in all developing countries to the level of the developed countries, enormous numbers of teacher would have to be recruited and trained. For many countries in the developing world the number of teachers would have to double, like in the Arab world, in others it would have to triple, like in India and many African countries.<\/p>\n

A lot of numbers<\/b><\/p>\n

How many teachers would have to be recruited, trained, and send to schools? Below, a lot of statistics will be presented. If you are already convinced, you can skip the arithmetic and go to the next section.<\/p>\n

Let us look at the numbers, some of which are collected in the table. For OECD countries there are around 16 students per teacher in primary education (CESifo DICE Report). Looking at the numbers, we can take a national average of 15 pupils\/teacher as the norm for primary education in developed countries and 13 for secondary education. But note that these are just very global statistics on education. And keep in mind that worldwide, approximately 100 million children that should be in school are not.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, as these statistics are global, they do not tell us how the available teachers are distributed. The developed countries are able to organize education in such a way that all children have comparable access to education. The difficult situations in the developing world make that the already low number of teachers are also distributed unequally. The pupil\/teacher ratio can be much higher in rural areas than in urban areas. So for many children, the situation is even worse than these averages indicate. <\/p>\n

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Teaching staff in millions, pupil\/teacher ration (P\/T), and enrolment ratios in percent (net- NER and gross- GER) in primary and secondary education. Data for 2008 unless indicated otherwise. Source: Unesco<\/a> <\/p>\n

Just to get the average number of teachers in the developing world to the level of that of the developed world would mean that the number of teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South- and West-Asia must more than double. In other regions increases of over 50% would be required. <\/p>\n

To get these numbers in a global perspective, there are currently some 58 million teachers in the world, 28 million in primary education and 30 million in secondary education (see table). If the worldwide average ratio of pupils to teachers should be reduced from 25 to 15 for primary and from 18 to 13 for secondary education, an extra 30 million new teachers would be needed (19 million in primary, 11 million in secondary education). <\/p>\n

Even a more modest aim to get the pupil to teacher ratio to 20 in primary education and 15 in secondary would require some 13 million new teachers, world wide. And that is without<\/i> increasing the enrolment ratios in primary and secondary education to 100%. That alone could require another 20 million teachers.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, any attempt to improve education in the world by increasing the number of teachers must prepare to recruit, train, and deploy well over 10 million new teachers, and maybe even up to 50 million new teachers. Trainers are needed to train these new teachers. If we are in a hurry, we would have to train them in, say, 6 years for a 3 year teacher training program, that would make 4-13 million new teachers a year entering training. This training program would require anywhere from 130,000 – 400,000 trainers for these teachers.<\/p>\n

Round numbers:<\/u>
\n13-35 million new teachers: Recruit, Train, Deploy
\n40 million teachers: Retrain
\n150,000 – 250,000 trainers for these teachers<\/p>\n

Can we really rely on training more teachers alone?<\/b><\/p>\n

Obviously, the numbers given above are rough ballpark estimates. But it is clear that \u201cinvest in teachers and schools\u201d often means \u201cdouble or triple the number of your teachers\u201d. A truly gargantuan task. <\/p>\n

There is an important question that has to be answered before such an effort is undertaken. <\/p>\n

Why is it that there are not enough teachers in the first place?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is not that training teachers is an unknown art. Teachers have been trained for a century now. Why is the world short of tens of millions of teachers?<\/p>\n

It is not for a lack of trying. Ever since development aid became into existence somewhere after WWII, it has been known that more teachers are needed. But somehow, the developing countries have been unable to supply them. There are many reasons for this shortage, underfunding, bad working conditions, labor migration away from rural areas, competition from other employers, low social status, bad organization etc. These are social problems. And we know that social problems are the hard problems. And there are as yet no convincing ideas on how to solve these very hard problems.<\/p>\n

So, that is why I think any plan to “invest in teachers, not technology” is bound to fail. There is simply no known policy that can solve the problems that plague teacher recruitment and training in less than a generation, if they can be solved at all. Trying to recruit and train millions of new teachers is simply going to fail. Any attempt to just throw money at the problem will fail just as badly as all the other cases where a solution was dropped on the developing countries.<\/p>\n

I like the idea of supplying every child with a well trained teacher in a class with only 30 pupils. My sole objection is, it cannot be done. And even if it could be done, what should be done for the children that enter and leave school in the meantime? <\/p>\n

Technology to the rescue<\/b><\/p>\n

Compare the problems of supplying children with teachers to supplying them with technology. If we would supply the roughly 900 million children in dire need of education with OLPC laptops over a period of 5 years continuously, this would cost around $40B a year, worldwide. (200 million laptops a year at $200). I can write a small encyclopedia with all the objections to spending $40B\/year on OLPC laptops. But we all know that it is actually possible to produce and distribute 200 million laptops per year. It costs money, but it can be done. This is technology, and technology is easy.<\/p>\n

As education will have to rely on the existing workforce for the foreseeable future, their work, and that of their pupils, should be made as easy and productive as possible. In a service industry like education this means using technology, i.e., ICT. But we should not forget that a lot can be done using less glamorous technology. For instance, in many regions in the world, a bicycle may improve mobility of children and teachers alike and enable children to continue further education (Indian Times, 2009). <\/p>\n

Without light and heating, education would have to be curtailed severely during the winter in my own country. But such measures, e.g., electrification or increased mobility, have obvious positive impacts on economic development. Such measures do not have to be argued. Here I would like to concentrate on ICT4E, the advantages of which are much more contentious.<\/p>\n

ICT4E has the same problems as ICT4D(evelopment). It is inconceivable that a solution to every local problem could be devised by a person sitting behind a keyboard in Western-Europe. People on the ground, locals, know what is needed and what is available. Bicycles can help some children get to school in the Netherlands or regions of India, but it would be a complete waste to send bicycles into other areas, e.g., the Andes or Himalaya. However, there are many \u201csimple\u201d problems that crop up everywhere in the world, and might be solved by a single tool or technology. Just like the blackboard solved a problem experienced in every classroom in the world, there might be technologies that are valuable everywhere. <\/p>\n

In our quest to look for eligible technology, I would like to stick to ICT solutions that avoid the \u201cTop 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D FAILS<\/a>\u201d (Rogers, 2010, a nice YouTube movie). The video explains it all so I will not repeat them here.<\/p>\n