The two principal aims of Education International (EI) are to advocate for the right to quality education for all people and to fight for the improvement of the welfare and status of teachers and other education employees through the effective application of their human and trade union rights. In that respect, EI fully supports the achievement of Education for All (EFA) targets and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). EI also promotes the application of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers and the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation on the Status of Higher Education Teaching Personnel. The achievement of the EFA targets and MDGs cannot be realised without adequate numbers of properly trained, qualified and motivated teachers. According to the UIS Report (2006),1 more than 18 million teachers would be needed (between 2004 and 2015) worldwide to meet the Universal Primary Education (UPE) goal alone. Sub-Saharan Africa alone would need to train and recruit close to 4 million primary school teachers to replace those who leave and to deliver quality education to children of the countries with 100% enrolment. Today, we are only left with less than eight years before 2015 and many countries are nowhere near their required teacher stocks.
It was in view of the apparent insufficient recruitment of qualified teachers and the prevalent employment of unqualified, volunteer, contract or para teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa, that EI decided to carry out this survey. The overall goal of the survey was to investigate various issues that affect the recruitment, supply and retention of teachers in Anglophone African countries. The survey focused on five major teacher issues: Teacher Supply, Teacher Attrition, Teacher Remuneration and Motivation, Teacher Absenteeism and Union Involvement in Policy Development. The survey was carried out in the following Anglophone African countries: The Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
