Teacher Management with Barbara Tournier

01 March 2019

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GPE/Alexandra Humme
GPE/Alexandra Humme
Teacher’s College, Zambia. Credit: GPE/Alexandra Humme
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GPE/Alexandra Humme
Title Text: 
GPE/Alexandra Humme

This April, interested applicants can register for a two-week course on teacher management. Barbara Tournier, project coordinator of IIEP’s research on teacher management, tells us more about the course.

What is this course about?

The course aims to equip participants with the tools to better participate in policy dialogue around teachers and to learn from international best practice. It seeks to familiarize participants with key policy options in the areas of teacher recruitment and training, allocation and utilization, career design, and information systems, as well as understanding the technical work involved in projecting teacher supply and demand and in calculating key indicators.

Why is this course especially relevant today?

Teachers make up the bulk of a country’s civil servants and represent the lion’s share of education budgets. Their management is of paramount importance. Right now, many countries do not know how many teachers they have at a given point in time, nor where they are posted. This has significant implications both financially and in terms of equity and quality of education. Furthermore, effective teacher management is more important than ever before as countries engage in meeting the Sustainable Development Goal of universal education at secondary level. Many more teachers will need to be recruited at a time when the profession is losing its appeal. Now is the time for governments to be thinking strategically about teacher issues.

Can you describe what a typical day in the course will look like? 

The course is structured around keynote speakers, practical exercises, and a set of training modules. It alternates between debates on policy options and more technical, practical, and hands-on exercises. Participants are invited to manipulate data from real countries and are even encouraged to come with their own. For the discussion of policy options, some sessions build directly on IIEP’s research work and others rely on external speakers invited especially for the course.

Interested in this course? Read more about it and apply here!