RAWALPINDI, Oct 3: Meagre salaries, overcrowded classrooms, job insecurity and inadequate training are some of the challenges facing the Pakistani teachers as the world prepares to pay tributes to this community for its role in grooming professionals.

The World Teachers’ Day falling on Sunday this year will focus on effective policymaking, the foundation for ensuring sustainable and high-quality recruitment of teachers.

Shortage of qualified teachers remains a crucial problem, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) estimates that 18 million more teachers are needed to reach the goal of Universal Primary Education by 2015.

Pakistan is still far from achieving the Education for All (EFA) goal set by Unesco with Education for All Development Index (EDI) scores lower than 0.8.

Pakistan has been included in the low EDI category due to low primary school participation, adult illiteracy, gender disparities and inequalities in education in addition to poor quality of education, according to a Unesco report.

The situation indicated the need for significant improvement across the EFA spectrum, the report said.

Good-quality teaching and learning remains a major challenge for all countries in South and West Asia. Despite a 14 per cent increase in the number of primary school teachers since 1999, to 4.9 million in 2005, the region was struggling with an average of 39 primary pupils per teacher in 2005 – considerably higher than the average of 28 for all developing countries.

The Global Monitoring Report 2008 of Unesco says the situation in Pakistan is particularly challenging where pre-primary pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) remains at 41:1 – one teacher available for 41 students.

Pakistan together with India accounted for about three quarters of the region’s out-of-school children. Approximately 59 per cent of the children have never been in school and may never enroll without additional incentives.

Governments, the report shows, are also neglecting adult literacy as worldwide 774 million adults – nearly 1 in 5 – lack basic literacy skills. More than three quarters live in only 15 countries.

Women’s literacy in particular has a strong influence on a child’s education and health. Yet they still account for 64 per cent of adults who are not literate worldwide. On current trends, 72 out of 101 countries for which projections were calculated will not succeed in halving adult illiteracy rates by 2015.

The World Teachers’ Day underlines the importance of the 1966 ILO/Unesco Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. Another Unesco recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel was adopted in 1997.

Both recommendations lay down the guidelines on issues such as training and employment conditions for teachers; participation of teachers and their representatives in educational decisions; and measures that should be taken in each country to promote quality teachers and learning environments. They are the only comprehensive international standards for the teaching profession in existence.

Unesco and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in a joint message on the World Teachers’ Day, stated that the teaching profession faced the challenge of providing a quality education to meet the new demands of the 21st century.“Economic, social, scientific and technological needs, the issues of sustainable development, poverty reduction and related questions of decent work for all, the Aids epidemic and school violence are increasingly impacting on the profession.”