Interview with Fred van Leeuwen, General Secretary of Education International
On the occasion of World Teachers Day*, Fred Van Leewen, the General Secretary of Education International(EI) gives his views about challenges facing by teachers unions to improve education quality. In this interview, he explains also the role of teachers with regard to issues of job creation and skills and the EI expectations vis-à-vis the ILO.
ACTRAV INFO: On the occasion of World Teachers’ Day, E.I launches this year, a campaign with the topic Unite for Quality Education - better education for a better world. What are your expectations from this campaign?
World organisations led by the United Nations and including EI are redoubling our efforts to provide universal access to primary school by 2015. That’s the global goal established by the U.N. There’s been tremendous progress, but we still have some 60 million children not in school. Even as we continue work toward 2015, we need to look beyond, to continue to promote education as a key factor in development worldwide.
Public spending on education is also under attack in many developed countries. We want to emphasise that every child has a right to a high quality education no matter what their personal circumstances or where they live. As teachers, we know that access to schooling is vital. But we also know access is not sufficient. Students must have access to a quality education. That means quality teachers with quality tools working in safe and supportive environments for teaching and learning. We are mobilising to emphasise the concern and the critical role of teachers in the debates ahead. No one will be advocating more strongly for quality education than the teachers of the world. This is why we will be leading our one-year initiative, Unite for Quality Education, to be launched jointly in Paris, France, and New York, USA, on 4 October.
ACTRAV INFO: In the current context of crisis, what should be the role of Teachers’ Unions with regard to issues of job creation and skills?
Education has an important role in helping individual students to achieve their full potential. The objective of a quality education is to teach student to be a well-rounded individual with the basic skills and knowledge which will enable the student to be an active and successful member of society. Teacher unions advocate quality education for all students which will provide them with the skills and knowledge to make them employable.
However, we also believe that it is not simply by providing training and skills for students that there will be more jobs and job opportunities. Most governments today seem more focused on fiscal austerity than on dealing with the human catastrophe that is youth unemployment. They need to match the skills and training to real job opportunities for young people. This requires a systematic approach in each country where governments should seek to develop employment opportunities matched to the skills and talents of the young people and the needs of their communities. Look at Spain or Greece for example: you have many highly educated, unemployed young people. You have young people who are leaving university with great qualifications and skills, but they have no job prospects.Teacher unions seek to hold governments and employers to account and keep the pressure up to make sure that their students have access to the relevant quality education and, in particular, that vocational education and training (VET) is targeted towards employment opportunities in the students’ communities.
ACTRAV INFO: What does the EI expect from the ILO with regard to issues of standards?
A well-functioning social dialogue is crucial to decent work, but it is also crucial to achieving quality education for all. Educators should be key actors in both designing and implementing educational reform. That will only happen where there is respect and formal social dialogue, where education unions are acknowledged as full partners and the voice of educators.
Quality education depends on qualified teachers. Decent working conditions and salaries for those teachers is fundamental to creating a working environment which will attract and retain high calibre candidates into teaching. The ILO standards setting strategy has an enormous contribution to make to ensuring that those decent working conditions are available.
EI therefore firmly supports the ILO’s strong supervisory mechanisms. Teachers and education workers, whether employed in the public or private sector, should enjoy freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. However, a number of States are denying these fundamental rights to the workers they employ. Through submissions to the Committee of Experts and complaints to the Committee on Freedom of Association, EI has supported teachers and their unions efforts to reclaim rights to registration, check off fees, or reinstatement of dismissed union leaders, among many other issues.
