UAE needs to hire 75,000 more teachers by 2015

The Arab World’s growing teacher shortage threatens to overshadow the region’s educational gains and, therefore, needs to be addressed quickly and effectively, says a new report by Pearson, a learning company.

Highlighting the problem areas, the report highlights the findings of Deloitte, according to which, if the teacher gap is to be eradicated, 75,000 new educators will need to be hired by 2015 in the UAE alone. And the outlook is even more worrying for the region as a whole.

Projections undertaken in 2013 by Unesco’s Institute for Statistics indicate that 1.6 million new teaching posts will need to be created by 2015 in the Arab World if universal education is to be achieved – and that figure is likely to increase to 3.3 million by 2030 if drastic measures are not taken.

Teacher shortages are a global problem compounded by a growing number of retirement-age teachers and a record number of children entering education. But it is a problem that is felt particularly deeply in the Arab World, where there is a rapidly growing school age population, expected to soon reach 9.5 million.

Demand for secondary teachers in this region is greater than primary teachers, due to more subject-specific instruction and longer teaching hours.

Reducing the teacher shortage will be critical to improving the region’s performance in educational rankings such as the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessments (Pisa).

Moving upwards on globally recognised educational tables is a key priority for the UAE and some other governments in the region. Achieving education targets set by governments in the Arab World will be in large part dependent on those countries’ education systems attracting and retaining sufficient teaching talent.

In 2013, Pearson conducted a global study and one of the key findings of the study was that there is no substitute for good teachers. Teachers have a profound influence – and having a better one is statistically linked to not only a higher income later on in life, but a range of improved social results.

The world’s most successful systems have a number of things in common, including the ability to find ways to attract the best people to the teaching profession and the ability to provide relevant, ongoing training to teachers throughout their careers.

According to the study, retaining great teachers is not only a question of high pay. Rather, teachers need to be treated as valuable professionals that they are, and not as technicians in a huge, educational machine.

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