With the theme ‘Quality Teachers for Quality Education’, World Teachers’ Day on October 5 will be an opportunity to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1966 UNESCO/ILO Recommendation on the Status of Teachers. Education International invites its affiliates to use this year’s campaign to review the progress made by their governments in implementing the 1966 Recommendation, as well as the 1997 Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher Education Personnel.

In order to assist affiliated organisations with their campaigns, EI has distributed a range of materials including a special World Teachers’ Day Statement, details of the 1966 and 1997 Recommendations and campaign materials. All of these resources can be downloaded from the official website. In addition a weekly bulletin is being sent out to explain the specific demands being made by Education International this year on World Teachers’ Day and in light of the 1966 Recommendation. For more information please contact us.

An important piece of legislation is soon to be put before the Indian Parliament. The Right to Education Bill represents a change in the Indian Constitution which will bring into being the Fundamental Right to Education Act and provide free and compulsory education to all children aged 6-14. In the January edition of this newsletter we reported on the efforts of AIPTF to positively influence the legislative process with regard to the Right to Education Bill. These efforts have been ongoing since.

In June the union, with the support of EI, held a conference to further discuss the Bill, in particular, the provisions perceived to be against the interests of teachers and pupils. The main aim of the event was to pinpoint these provisions and to put together a plan of action to lobby the Government of India to amend the relevant sections.

As a result, an Action Committee was set up to plan a host of activities such as press conferences and Dharna, or sit-in demonstrations against the unjust provisions in the Bill. For more information, please contact us.

The NANTU EFAIDS Programme has gotten off to a positive start this year. The national ‘Trainer of Trainers’ workshop was conducted from 21-22 July 2006. Twenty-one national trainers from all regions, eight males and thirteen females, attended the workshop.

Organised under the theme "Quality education: the best ‘social vaccine’ to fight HIV and AIDS", the workshop focused on the impact of HIV on the achievement of EFA goals. Topics covered included: learning activities to help teachers to avoid infections, to help teachers and learners advocate for effective HIV prevention in schools, to help young learners acquire skills to prevent HIV infection, discrimination and many others.

At the end of the workshop all participants drew up their plans of action for their regions to be implemented from August to November 2006.

For more information, please contact us.

For over a decade, the Confederation of Education Workers of Argentina (CTERA), an affiliate of EI, has fought to defend public education. Since the beginnings of the neoliberal Government of Menem, the union has constantly lobbied for the maintenance of quality education in the country. The ‘Marcha Blanca’ or ‘White March’ became a means of mobilisation involving all of society, from all provinces, which joined together in calling for better funding for a better quality public education for all.

Today, thanks to the efforts of CTERA and other teachers’ unions, Argentina has a Law on the Financing of Education. Simultaneously the new general Education Law is being publicly debated and is to be passed before the end of this year in Congress. The Confederation of Argentine Education Workers (CEA) is also participating actively in this debate.

At an EI event last July in Buenos Aires the actions of the Argentine Government to promote quality public education via explicit legislation were recognised. At the same time EI noted that this is a concrete step towards the Dakar Goals on behalf of the Argentine State.

If you would like more information on this, please contact us.

The 15th International AIDS Conference was held in Toronto, Canada from August 14-18. Over 20,000 scientists, politicians and activists participated in the event. In particular, the labour movement was well represented, highlighting the impact of HIV and AIDS on the workplace and outlining the role of workers in fighting the pandemic.

At the conference, EI held a special session at which representatives of affiliates from South Africa (SADTU), Guyana (GTU) and Haiti (CNEH) made presentations on the programmes they are currently implementing through their unions.

They all emphasised the importance of putting good workplace policies in place and ensuring that unions are consulted on them. Likewise, they underscored the need to have well-structured training programmes so as to maximise the potential of teachers in helping the vulnerable to prevent infection.

Prior to the Conference, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) organised a two-day meeting under the banner “Labour fights AIDS”. The meeting convened union representatives from all over the world who expressed their support for intensifying the involvement of unionists and unions and the need to build strong coalitions with civil society organisations.

To view a report on the event, please click here.

‘Girl Power’, a new report from Action Aid, shows that, as the pandemic has evolved, the relationship between girls’ education and HIV has also changed. In the past, more highly educated women were more vulnerable to HIV, because of better economic prospects, which influenced their lifestyle choice, mobility etc. However nowadays, more highly educated girls and women are better able to negotiate safer sex and reduce HIV rates. The more education the better.

Across all the countries reviewed in this report, girls who had completed secondary education had a lower risk of HIV infection and practised safer sex than girls who had only finished primary education. Put simply, education is key to building “girl power”!

But despite the power of girls’ education and numerous international commitments to education, the reality is that the vast majority of girls in Africa will not complete primary education, let alone manage to get to secondary school. A key obstacle is the rising cost of education.

Most families in Africa have to pay to go to primary school which excludes many children from education, especially girls. If we are to see the real benefits of educating girls, then fees need to be removed, and governments and donors need to invest more in primary and secondary education. To download the report, please click here.

In Sub-Saharan Africa: A highly successful national workshop to accelerate the education sector response to HIV and AIDS” in Tanzania was held in Arusha in March 2006. A follow up mission in August 2006 highlighted significant progress in the responses since the workshop.

In Asia: The Inter-Agency Task Team carried out a mini-stocktaking exercise in the Greater Mekong sub-Region (GMSR), including Cambodia, Lao PDR and Viet Nam in July.

In Latin America and the Caribbean: An impact assessment of HIV and AIDS on education supply in the Caribbean region was carried out in April 2006. Results of this assessment were presented at the Caribbean Community Special meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) on Education and HIV and AIDS held in Port of Spain, Trinidad, 9th-10th June 2006.

Future activities planned for Sub-Saharan Africa:

• Tanzania: meeting to develop the coordination of Eastern Africa’s education sector response to HIV and AIDS, 14-15 September 2006
• The Gambia: National workshop in Banjul, 2-6 October 2006
• Sub-regional workshop for the Central African Region (Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo) October 2006
• Eastern African Ministries of Education HIV & AIDS focal point meeting, December 2006

The US-based National Academy of Public Administration has just published a conference report entitled ‘Mitigating HIV/AIDS Impacts on Teachers and Administrators in Sub-Saharan Africa’.

The conference brought together policy makers and researchers from Africa and the US who discussed the consequences of the pandemic for the education system and its administration in Sub-Saharan Africa. A number of proposals were made on how to respond to this challenge: via the collection and management of reliable data; training and capacity building; constructive cross-sectoral partnerships; and new management methods.

The report highlights the need to fill information gaps. Although it can be reasonably assumed that HIV and AIDS have a considerable impact on education ‘given reports of teacher and student absenteeism and attrition’, the true extent of the damage to the sector is unknown due to a lack of reliable data. Thus in future much greater effort is needed in the area of research. You can download the report here.

“ Working in partnership on the project “Common Threads From Canada to South Africa: Combatting HIV/AIDS Together”, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation and the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) have created an educational resource to be used in secondary schools.

Consisting of a 30-minute DVD and lesson plans, which conform to the official Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum expectations, this resource aims to educate students about the challenges faced by developing countries in combatting the pandemic.”

“ Topics discussed in the lesson plans include a history of apartheid in South Africa; preconceptions and the science of HIV/AIDS; the impact of AIDS on society; factors driving the epidemic and the response of citizens in South Africa and Canada. The materials also include classroom-ready, high quality activity sheet masters for easy reproduction and evaluation rubrics. They have so far been distributed to more than 800 secondary schools in Ontario, Canada with the assistance of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA.)”

“ Members of both unions have used the resource in their educational work with students and in regional workshops. The response has been very positive and reinforces our belief that teachers' unions can and should be producing more progressive curriculum for use by their members.

We’re pleased that the learning resource has won awards from the Canadian Association of Labour Media and the Canadian Educational Press Association. We will be re-issuing media releases to promote the resource once again on World Aids Day, December 1. Common threads is the name of the OSSTF International Solidarity program and the material can be ordered online at www.osstf.on.ca ”