Teach for America and similar programmes in other countries are playing a key role in getting good teachers to disadvantaged areas, while underlining the need in such areas for the best possible teachers. However, they cannot be seen as the solution to improve learning outcomes for all. Not only is there a high attrition rate among these teachers – sometimes 80% or more by their third or fourth year of teaching – but they make up only about 0.2% of the 3.5 million teachers in the United States (UNESCO, 2014: 253).

While in many countries teacher allocation officially depends directly on student enrolment numbers, with minimum and maximum class sizes per school, actual teacher deployment often does not match student numbers (UNESCO, 2014: 249).

UNESCO. 2014.Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality for All; EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2013-2014. Paris: UNESCO.

IIEP advocates a systematic and professional approach to managing human resources in education, which it considers crucial to the success of an education system. Countries have to devise mechanisms to develop and implement a  comprehensive,  forward-looking, and genuine HRM approach in the education sector. Attention also needs to be given to the everyday routine management activities that continue to be characterized by delays, lack of transparency, favouritism, etc., and thus constitute a major source of teacher dissatisfaction and disengagement. Attempts to improve teacher management need to start with a careful diagnosis of the main current problems that a  country is facing in this area.  Some  problems  require new management policy choices concerning, for instance, the training, career structure, or utilization of teachers and other staff (IIEP-UNESCO, 2012: 92).

IIEP-UNESCO; OECD; CELE. 2012. Guidelines for Capacity Development in Education Policy Planning and Resource Management. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO. 

Both recruiting and source countries should manage teacher supply and demand within the context of organized recruitment which includes effective strategies to improve the attractiveness of teaching as a profession and to ensure the recruitment and retention of teachers in areas of strategic importance (ILO, 2012:14).

ILO. 2012. Handbook of good human resource practices in the teaching profession. Geneva, International Labour Organization.

Teacher transfers have not been common in Indonesia, so the adoption of effective transfer systems at district level would be crucial. For instance, the Education Office in the district of Gorontalo identified 634 of its 5,000 teachers who could be redeployed, and implemented measures such as merging small schools, introducing multigrade teaching in schools with fewer than 90 students and providing incentives for teachers to move to remote schools (UNESCO, 2014: 253).

Drawing upon the results of relevant studies and reports on several developing countries, the monograph explores, in particular, two central aspects of efficient teacher utilization: the first relates to optimal staff allocation i.e. how to make sure that teachers, especially qualified and experienced, are deployed to where they are most needed, at the same time, taking into account their individual characteristics and preferences; the second crucial aspect of optimizing the utilization of teachers concerns the enhancing of teacher's commitment to quality-seeking and self-development through appropriate career patterns, promotion systems and other incentives (Thompson, 1995: vii).

Opportunities for access to higher levels of education are often insufficient, particularly in least developed countries, resulting in a knowledge gap with serious consequences for social and economic development. Therefore, it is imperative to reduce barriers to skills development and technical and vocational education and training (TVET), starting from the secondary level, as well as to tertiary education, including university, and to provide lifelong learning opportunities for youth and adults. (UNESCO, 2016: 40)

UNESCO. 2016. Education 2030: Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4. Paris: UNESCO

Tertiary education opportunities for refugees are not a luxury. They provide young refugees and their families with an opportunity for increased self-reliance through gainful employment. The prospect of participation in tertiary education contributes to greater primary and secondary enrolment and retention (UNHCR, 2015a). Tertiary education has ‘a greater potential than other levels of education to ... enhance the strategic choices that refugees make’ (Dryden-Peterson and Giles, 2010, p. 4) and to nurture a generation of change-makers who can take the lead in identifying sustainable solutions to refugee situations. (UNESCO, 2019: 150).

UNESCO 2018. Global education monitoring report, 2019: Migration, displacement, and education: building bridges, not walls. Paris: UNESCO

Employers want assurances that young people applying for jobs have at least strong foundation skills and can deploy their knowledge to solve problems, take the initiative and communicate with team members, rather than just follow prescribed routines. These ‘transferable skills’ are not taught from a textbook but can be acquired through good quality education. Yet employers often indicate that these skills are lacking in new recruits to the labour market ( UNESCO 2012:27).

UNESCO. 2012. EFA global monitoring report, 2012. Youth and skills putting education to work, summary. Paris: UNESCO

In the Republic of Korea, all pupils make the transition from primary to lower secondary education, while this is the case for fewer than three out of four pupils (74%) in Myanmar. A similar trend is found in South and West Asia, with Bhutan reaching a transition rate of 98% while Pakistan stands at 75%.

UNESCO. 2011. Global education digest 2011: comparing education statistics across the world. Paris: UNESCO