EI General Secretary tells Summit 'nations are built on public schools'
At the International Summit on the Teaching Profession, EI General Secretary, Fred van Leeuwen, has told participants of a "global consensus that the teaching profession is the most crucial in-school factor to achieving high quality education."
At the major two-day event, co-organised by EI, the OECD and U.S. Education Department, from 16-17 March in New York City, Mr. van Leeuwen told the audience which included EI President, Susan Hopgood; OECD Secretary General, Angel Gurria; U.S. Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, and education ministers and national union representatives from 16 of the best-performing countries, including Brazil, China, Finland, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and the UK, that: "teachers are not against testing. We invented it. However, we consider testing as a teachers’ diagnostic tool, not a political device.”
Van Leeuwen added: “We also believe that all teachers are entitled to appraisal that leads to positive advice and high quality professional development. But where compensation is based on student results, it becomes high stakes, as there is no evidence that individual performance pay raises standards. What it does raise is anxiety and turmoil in teachers’ staff rooms.”
He argued for the need to “rely on evidence-based strategies that strengthen the system as a whole, not experiment with competitive programs designed to create a few winners and many losers.”
He went on to note that the host country to the summit, the U.S., as well as “other nations around the table, were built on the back of strong public schools" and reaffirmed the commitment of teachers and their unions for “a great profession serving children in all schools,” and stressed “the need to work with governments on building great public schools as the foundation of democracies.”
Mr. van Leeuwen reminded Summit attendees that teachers “know the reality in many countries. At a time of cutbacks, it is all the more important to focus on teacher retention and support.”
He argued that “at the very time when education unions and union leaders must join voices to insist that investment in education is the key to sustainable recovery, there are too many cases where the response to limited public resources has been the opposite – massive lay-offs, challenging teachers’ tenure, and attacking their unions.”
“These issues should be the focus of our joint efforts, not the denigration of a great profession.”
He welcomed the fact that both Secretary Duncan and President Obama had “made a clear choice for dialogue, and for working together with teacher unions to build a great profession that will serve our children and young people in the best possible way”
He concluded by saying that the objective of teachers’ unions was to build “a confident and positive teaching profession, engaged as equals in necessary reforms.”
