It is a day to celebrate how teachers are transforming education but also to reflect on the support they need to fully deploy their talent and vocation, and to rethink the way ahead for the profession globally
The theme chosen to celebrate the World Teachers' Day 2024 on October 5th is ''Valuing teacher voices: Towards a new social contract for Education.'' By empowering teachers to contribute to decision-making and policy-making, we can strengthen the profession and build a new social contract for education.
Thank you, teachers, for the stories we can’t fully express.
As we celebrate World Teachers’ Day 2024, we find ourselves reflecting on the immeasurable contributions of educators around the globe. Observed annually on October 5, World Teachers’ Day is a UNESCO initiative that honors the teaching profession and recognizes the pivotal role teachers play in shaping the future. This special day brings together students, parents, and communities to express their gratitude for the dedication and hard work of educators.
At Microsoft Education, we believe that there aren’t enough words to truly capture the essence of what teachers do every day. From the attention paid to each student’s unique needs, to the impact made on their academic and personal growth, educators are the unsung heroes of our society. Join us as we express our gratitude for the dedication of educators everywhere by watching our special video.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/w9fAPNbW6Gw?feature=oembedThere aren’t enough words to describe all the amazing things teachers do—but we tried anyway.
Honoring all educators for World Teachers’ Day 2024
For this occasion and always, we celebrate the diverse and vibrant community of educators across the world. Every role, from classroom instructors, special education teachers, paraeducators, librarians, coaches, counselors, and more, plays a crucial part in creating an enriching environment for students. Your efforts—individually and collectively—profoundly impact the lives of students.
The attention paid
We know that you often go above and beyond your job descriptions. You spend countless hours preparing lessons, grading assignments, and finding new ways to inspire your students. You are mentors, counselors, and role models, providing guidance and support both inside and outside the classroom. The attention that you give to each student is a testament to your passion for education and your belief in the potential of every child.
You shape the future by shaping the minds of the next generation. We see you and know that you inspire curiosity, foster critical thinking, and encourage creativity. You help students develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in life. Your success can be seen in the careers your students pursue and in the contributions they make to society.
The lives changed
It’s no wonder that you often become lifelong mentors and friends to your students. You provide a safe and supportive environment where students can grow and thrive. You help them navigate the challenges of adolescence and prepare them for the future. The relationships you build with your students are based on trust, respect, and mutual understanding. These relationships can have a lasting impact on a student’s life, providing them with the confidence and support they need to achieve their goals.
Thank you, teachers
Thank you, teachers, for the stories we can’t fully express. Your dedication, passion, and unwavering commitment to your students is truly remarkable. At Microsoft Education, we’re grateful for the incredible work you do every day. We’re committed to supporting you with the tools and resources you need to continue making a difference in the lives of your students.
As we celebrate World Teachers’ Day 2024, let’s take a moment to recognize and appreciate the invaluable contributions of teachers everywhere. There may not be enough words to fully express our gratitude—but we tried anyway
Join us for World Teachers' Day 2024 by watching a special video from Microsoft Education. Thank you, teachers, for your dedication.
Global event to mark the World Teachers' Day 2024 and Eighth edition of the awarding of the UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development.
In 2024, World Teachers' Day will focus on the theme "Valuing teacher voices: Towards a new social contract for education." This year's celebrations will emphasize the pivotal role that teachers play in shaping the future of education and the urgent need to incorporate their perspectives into educational policy and decision-making processes.
The day will begin with an opening ceremony led by UNESCO’s Director-General, featuring messages from the co-convening agencies: the International Labour Organization (ILO), UNICEF and Education International. This will set the stage for a series of discussions and activities centered around enhancing the role of teachers and recognizing their contributions to education.
The event will include the awarding ceremony of the Eighth edition of the UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development and a panel where teachers will share their insights and experiences. The discussions will emphasize the importance of teachers' participation in decision-making processes and the need to create a dignified and respected teaching profession.
Concluding the day’s celebrations, UNESCO will host the avant-première of the film Apprendre, previously shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
Interpretation will be available in French, English, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese. Watch the livestream!
To Participate in the event in person Register by 2 October 2024.
Programme
Morning session (CET), Room I
8:45 - 9:15
Registration, coffee and networking in the Foyer of Room I
9:30 - 10:00
Official opening ceremony
10:00 - 10:20
Keynote address
Valuing Teacher voices: a new social contract for education by Prof. Lis Lange, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development eighth edition, 2023/2024.
Every two years, UNESCO and the Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Foundation for Medical and Educational Sciences award three
exceptional projects aimed at improving teacher development
worldwide. The purpose of the Prize is to support and encourage innovations in teaching towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals and in particular SDG 4.c, to “substantially increase by 2030 the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States“.
Awarded every two years, the Prize honors three exceptional projects, which aim at improving the performance and effectiveness of teachers worldwide. It also serves to facilitate the global dissemination of innovative practices related to teachers. The Prize amounts to US $300,000, equally divided between the three winners
This brochure presents the Top Ten Finalists of the Prize’s
Eighth Edition.
Highlighting the need to value the knowledge, voice, and participation of teachers in decision-making processes in education.
On October 4th, the UNESCO will celebrate World Teachers’ Day to commemorate the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO
Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers and the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation concerning the status of higher education teaching personnel. These instruments set forth the rights and responsibilities of teachers, as well as international standards for the most important professional, social, ethical, and material concerns of teachers.
This year, the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession published a set of Recommendations
that seek to strengthen the role of teachers in the transformation of education and to advance SDG 4. The recommendations highlight the need to review and enhance these normative instruments, and to transform teaching, through social dialogue, for a new social contract for education. This year’s celebration thus highlights the need to value the knowledge, voice, and participation of teachers in decision-making processes in education.
World Teachers’ Day is organized by UNESCO in collaboration with ILO, UNICEF and Education International. It will feature an opening ceremony in the presence of high-ranking officials from the convening partners, a panel where teachers will have their say regarding their avenues for participation and the awarding ceremony of the UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development.
Examining the multifaceted dimensions of education governance
Viewpoints in the volume "Renewing the social contract for education" address this conversation from 5 entry-points:
Part I: Reorienting Educational Purpose
At the heart of a new social contract for education is a shared sense of education’s purpose. Think-pieces in this section take positions on ways that educational purpose can be reoriented away from narrow market-based assumptions towards shared purposes of wellbeing.
Part II: Regulating Diverse Educational Actors, Interests, and Motivations
In many contexts, the range of public, private, and other non-state actors involved in the design, delivery, and monitoring of education has grown in scope and complexity. Think-pieces in this section consider what regulatory, normative, and legal considerations are needed to coordinate diverging motivations towards education as a common good.
Part III: Reconceptualizing Educational Leadership and Participation
Crumbling trust in authority, leadership, and legitimacy has frayed every modern social contract. Think-pieces in this section describe ways that new models of leadership can be imagined and cultivated to forge a new social contract for education.
Part IV: Steering the Evolving Knowledge Commons
Knowledge and learning play vital roles in shaping the future of humanity and the planet, yet it has been prone to harmful biases, enclosures, and divisions. Think pieces in this section consider how a new social contract for education can address power asymmetries in the global knowledge commons while strengthening capabilities to generate and apply knowledge through education.
Part V: Transforming the Future
A growing number of perspectives and tools can help education stakeholder develop foresight literacy to anticipate the impacts of emerging trends and steer their impacts on education. Papers in this section consider the role of futures thinking, scenarios, and a diversity of knowledge sources in reimagining and building new futures of education
Forge a new social contract for education that can shape the future, meeting the needs of humanity and the planet.
The core of UNESCO’s work on renewing education is steering reflection to forge a new social contract for education that can shape the future, meeting the needs of humanity and the planet. This is the key conclusion of the 2021 UNESCO report, “Reimaging Our Futures Together: a new social contract for education”. A new social contract for education consists of the implicit agreements and principles that enable and inspire social cohesion around education, and that give rise to corresponding educational arrangements.
This new social contract should be grounded in two foundational principles: an expanded vision of the right to education throughout life, and the strengthening of education as a public and a common good. It is not an abandonment of all that we have collectively learned and experienced about education so far, but neither is it a mere course correction on a path already defined and set. Educators, communities, youth and children, families have long identified the limitations of existing educational systems and pioneered new approaches to overcoming them. Yet, without collective moments of structured dialogue about renewal of education, efforts often occur in isolation or with limited impact to large institutional machinery.
It is by actively engaging in the dialogue and practice to build a new social contract for education that we can renew education to make just, equitable and sustainable futures possible. UNESCO aims to provoke reflection and catalyse public dialogue with the aim of exploring new avenues for policy development and innovative action to renew education so that it truly prepares all learners to invent a better future. “Reimaging Our Futures Together: a new social contract for education” is therefore a milestone on a road stretching into the future. It is a living document proposing a framework, principles, and recommendations to be further explored, shared, and enriched by people around the world.
The report has already prompted global debate, and dialogue at international and national levels.
International advocacy
National & local dialogues
Principles
The reflection on a new social contract for education must be guided by some key principles for dialogue and action, regarding certain aspects of teaching and learning.
Interconnectedness and interdependencies should frame pedagogy. The relationships that exist between teachers, students and knowledge are located in a wider world. All learners are connected to the world and all learning takes place in and with the world. Students need to learn how others’ actions affect them and how their actions affect others and, for this reason, classrooms and schools should bring students in contact with others who are different from them.
Cooperation and collaboration must be taught and practiced in appropriate ways at different levels and ages. Education builds the capacities of individuals to work together to transform themselves and the world when cooperation and collaboration are defining characteristics of learning communities. This can be as true for adult education and learning as it is for early childhood education.
Solidarity, compassion, ethics, and empathy should be ingrained in how we learn. We should welcome the full diversity of humanity’s cultural resources into education and extend from valuing diversity and pluralism to supporting and sustaining them. Teaching should focus on unlearning bias, prejudice and divisiveness. Empathy – the ability to attend to others and feel with them – is essential for building pedagogies of solidarity.
Assessment should be aligned to these aims and be meaningful for student growth and learning. Exams, tests, and other assessment instruments should harmonize with educational purposes and intents. A great deal of important learning cannot be easily measured or counted. Teacher-driven formative assessments that promote student learning should be prioritized. We must reduce the importance of competitive, high-stakes standardized assessment.
Interdisciplinary, intercultural and ecological curricula.
Curricula should enhance learners abilities to access and contribute to the knowledge commons. The collective knowledge resources of humanity accumulated over generations should form the backbone of educational curricula. The knowledge commons should be widely accessible to draw from and add to. We should teach students (of all ages) to engage with knowledge creatively and critically, questioning its assumptions and interests. Education should empower people to correct omissions and exclusions in the knowledge commons and ensure that it is a lasting, open resource that reflects the diversity of ways of knowing and being in the world.
The ecological crisis requires curricula that fundamentally reorient the place of humans in the world. Effective and relevant climate change education should be prioritized. Across the curriculum we must teach the art of living respectfully and responsibly on a planet that has been damaged by human activity.
The spread of misinformation must be countered through scientific, digital and humanistic literacies. Curricula should emphasize scientific inquiry and the ability to distinguish between rigorous research and falsehoods. We should develop digital skills that empower learners to make meaningful use of technology. Curricula should ensure that students also gain an ability to ‘act on’ science and technology by taking a role in determining how they are used and for what purposes.
Human rights and democratic participation should be key building blocks for learning that transform people and the world. We should prioritize human rights education that supports learners’ agency and offers an entry point into a moral universe committed to the recognition and thriving of all. Gender equality should be addressed across all curricula and oppressive gender stereotypes removed. Students should also learn how to directly confront racism and discrimination of all forms.
Collaboration and teamwork should characterize the work of teachers. We should support teachers to work in common as the master convenors of educational environments, relationships, spaces, and times. Quality teaching is produced by teams and enabling environments which ensure that students’ physical, social, and emotional needs are provided for.
Producing knowledge, reflection and research should become integral to teaching. Teachers should be supported and recognized as intellectually engaged learners themselves who identify new areas of inquiry and innovation, define research questions, and generate new pedagogical practices.
The autonomy and freedom of teachers should be supported. A strong professional identity for teachers should be encouraged. This includes proper induction and ongoing professional development that ensures teachers are able to effectively use their judgment and expertise in designing and leading student learning.
Teachers should participate in public debate and dialogue on the futures of education. We should ensure the presence of teachers in the social dialogues and participatory decision-making mechanisms needed to collectively reimagine education together.
Schools should be protected as spaces where students encounter challenges and possibilities not available to them elsewhere. If schools did not exist we would need to invent them. We should ensure that schools bring diverse groups of people together to learn from and with one another.
Building collective capacity should guide the redesign of schools. School architectures, spaces, times/timetables, and student groupings should be designed to build the capacities of individuals to work together. Cultures of collaboration should pervade the administration and management of schools, as well as relations among schools.
Digital technologies should aim to support – and not replace – schools. We should leverage digital tools to enhance student creativity and communication. When AI and digital algorithms are brought into schools we must ensure they do not simply reproduce existing stereotypes and systems of exclusion.
Schools should model the futures we aspire to by ensuring human rights and becoming exemplars of sustainability and carbon neutrality. Students should be trusted and tasked with leading the way in greening the education sector. We should ensure that all education policies sustain and advance human rights.
At all times of life people should have meaningful quality educational opportunities. Learning should be lifelong, life-wide, with weight and recognition given to adult education. We should employ inclusive design principles and begin any planning with a focus on serving those most marginalized and those settings that are most fragile.
Healthy educational ecosystems connect natural, built and virtual sites of learning. We should better appreciate the biosphere as a learning space. Digital learning spaces are now integral to educational ecosystems and should be developed to support the public, inclusive and common purposes of education. Open access and open-source platforms, with strong protections for student and teacher data, should be prioritized.
Government capacity for the public financing and regulation of education should be strengthened. We should build the capacity of states to set and enforce standards and norms for educational provisions that are responsive, equitable and uphold human rights.
The right to education should be broadened. We are no longer well served by framing the right to education simply around schooling. Everyone everywhere should have a right to lifelong learning. We should support the right to information and the right to culture as necessary enabling components of the right to education. A right to connectivity must be built in.
What will it take for governments, schools, and society at large to renew the social contract for education? In an era of rapid change and shifting societal needs, it is imperative to re-evaluate the principles and foundations that underpin education.
This foresight-oriented project delves into this question in a volume of think-pieces that focus on the governance implications of education. This new collection of 25 short papers published in the journal Prospects brings together diverse perspectives and profound insights into the future of education. By examining the multifaceted dimensions of education governance, this project aspires towards a future where education becomes a catalyst for positive global transformation.
This publication advances constructive conversations and inspiring innovative approaches in response to the invitation of the International Commission on the Futures of Education in its report, Reimagining Our Futures Together: A new social contract for education.
Join these authors to reimagine education governance, inspire change, and create a brighter future for generations to come. Together, we strive to renew social contract for education—one that embodies justice, cooperation, and the transformative power of knowledge.
Remarks of theSecretary-General of the United Nations on the High-Level Panel Report on Teaching Profession.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres launches the report of the High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession — a key follow-up to the United Nations’s Transforming Education Summit in 2022. The Panel has developed key recommendations to ensure that every learner has access to a professionally trained, qualified, and well-supported teacher.
"I urge all countries, teachers unions, and partners to consider these recommendations carefully and find ways to bring them to life in their countries. Just as teachers support us all, it’s time to support teachers," he stated.
Addressing global teacher shortages: Dignifying, diversifying and valorizing the profession.
This year’s theme is timely and important as teacher shortages remain a complex and persistent obstacle to achieving global education objectives. The Forum will bring together international education stakeholders in person and on-line, to exchange ideas and explore policy options and recommendations for ministries, civil society organizations, international organizations, and donors that support teachers, school leaders, teacher educators, and policy-makers.
14th Policy Dialogue Forum: Addressing global teacher shortages: Dignifying, diversifying and valorizing the profession.
From 26 February 2024 to 28 February 2024
Starting at 9:00 am - 6:00 pm.
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa.
Type : Cat VIII - Symposium
Arrangement type : Hybrid event
44 Million teachers are still needed to reach quality education for all by 2030.
The world needs more teachers. 44 Million additional teachers are still needed worldwide to achieve quality Education For All. Ongoing Policy Dialogue Forum is addressing global teacher shortages and presenting highlights of the first Global Report on Teachers.