By Hilton Mwabili
New data from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s Teacher Task Force indicates that 2.7 million, representing 42 per cent of all primary and secondary teachers impacted by covid-19 crisis in sub-Saharan Africa are untrained.
Data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the International Telecommunication Union, the UNESCO’s Teacher Task Force, also established that 706 million of the world’s 1.75 billion learners lack internet access.
The data emerged from the Teachers of the World Unite – a virtual summit held by the Varkey Foundation, a member of UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition that gives thousands of teachers across the world a platform to voice their concerns.
The revelation does not augur well to the teaching fraternity in the region as it only exacerbates the impact of the crisis as they struggle to adapt to remote learning methods.
Sub-Saharan Africa has a total of 6.4 million teachers who have so far been greatly affected by closure of schools since the pandemic hit the continent.
World Health Organisation (WHO) African Region reported the first case in the region on February 25, in Algeria. Since then Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have now been recorded in all the 47 Member States in the WHO African Region
Globally, 9.1 million teachers across the world have been impacted by the pandemic as a result of school closures and out of those, 63 million are untrained.
The summit which was opened by Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation and the Global Teacher Prize saw the launch of nine teacher task forces on Corona virus and the future of education to be coordinated in collaboration with UNESCO’s Teacher Task Force.
Among those in attendance was UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education Stefania Giannini.
Global Teacher Prize 2019 winner Peter Tabichi from Kenya also addressed the summit and said: “The Covid-19 pandemic is a serious challenge to education globally, especially in parts of the world like Africa where there is a large digital divide.
“We urgently need to expand internet access and find remote learning solutions where there is none. To do so it is vital that the voices of African teachers, who are shaping the future of the continent every day, are heard at the top table.”
UNESCO’s Teacher Task Force presented teachers at the summit a draft toolkit with practical tips and checklists for school leaders to ensure they are supported and protected as schools re-open.
Participants were able to discuss the toolkit and provide feedback to help improve this important international tool before it is released.
Governments were also called on to ensure that they look to find solutions to help children continue their education at home where internet is not available in the current crisis.
The above, the summit noted should prioritize quality content focused on building basic literacy and numeracy, and using the mass media broadly used by the general population.
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