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Mobilising the teaching profession, and communities as a whole. For two and a half years, education unions around the world have been engaged in the global Go Public! Fund Education campaign launched by Education International (EI). A number of them have shared best practices and examples of successful trade union initiatives on the ground.

Cameroon: a three-phase awareness campaign

Thobie Mbassi, national executive secretary of Cameroon’s FECASE education unions’ federation, explained: “We divided our campaign into three stages. The first was to build the capacity of trade unionists, the second to raise awareness among all stakeholders in the education community, and the third to run the campaign on social media.” This methodical approach has enabled it to reach a wide audience, from parents to parliamentarians and civil society organisations. “We needed to get everyone on board, to make it clear that this is a civic issue and that education is everyone’s concern.”

Roger Kaffo, deputy general secretary of the FESER education and research unions’ federation, stressed the importance of the media: “ We placed special emphasis on the media, all forms of media, because we genuinely believe that this was the best way to reach a sufficiently wide audience.” He added: “The campaign is not only focused on funding education but also on transforming education and the 59 recommendations that specifically address the situation of teachers.”

Senegal: exemplary social mobilisation

Abdourahmane Gueye, national general secretary of the UDEN (Democratic Union of Teachers of Senegal) and coordinator of the USEQ (Union for Quality Education), underlines the importance of social mobilisation: “We felt that the issue of education was of interest to the whole community. We had to work to ensure that the whole community took ownership of it.” This strategy has enabled the unions to forge a national alliance to combat the privatisation of education, bringing together a wide range of actors, from NGOs to parents’ associations.

The trade unions within USEQ, which brings together EI’s affiliates in Senegal, met with the office of the association of mayors, “because Senegal has a policy of decentralising education, and mayors now play a key role. So it’s important that we meet them too, to tell them about our concerns and what we’ve done in terms of research.”

The UDEN and USEQ leader also underlined the “need to move towards endogenous funding” of public education. He added that after analysing the budget, “we noted that efforts had been made, because if one compares national funding with international criteria, Senegal exceeds the 6% of GDP allocated to education. We are at 7.23%. And if you look at the percentage of public spending allocated to education, where international criteria require us to spend 20%, we are at 26%. Despite these efforts, we, the trade unions, have nonetheless noted that problems remain. More than a million children of school age are unable to go to school. This is a concern that we have to address.”

Ibrahima Gueye, national general secretary of the SUDES teachers’ union, added: “Given the sharp increase in population, it is absolutely essential that more teachers be recruited. And all this costs money.”

DR Congo: developing budgetary expertise

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Jacques Taty, national coordinator in charge of research and development at FENECO-UNTC (National Teachers’ Federation of Congo), explained: “We organised a trade union café to hold discussions between us, the unions, and invite experts to talk about budgetary matters.” This initiative gave us access to data and helped us raise national MPs’ awareness of the importance of increasing the education budget. The meeting with the MPs had a ripple effect: “That’s how we, the group of EI-affiliated unions, came to be invited to take part in the Parliament’s Economic and Financial Committee, where the real decisions on our country’s annual budget are taken. We spent two weeks there, discussing these issues and showing that the plan presented for 2025 was a very minimal plan, and that something had to be done to increase the indicators, to be able to achieve much more.”

As decisions on educational issues in the DR Congo are not only taken at national but also at provincial and sub-provincial level, “the three unions felt that this was an activity that also needed to be developed within the study circles”.

Valéry Nsumpi Kamunga, general secretary of CSC-Enseignement (National Education and Scientific Research Union), pointed out: “The campaign is a tool for unionising. Because when teachers see that active unions are working hard to find a solution to a problem, they’ll say: ‘Listen, we’re going where the people and the unions are standing up and fighting for us. They are meeting with the authorities, so we need to be with them’.”

Haiti: communication, an essential advocacy tool

Kensone Delice of the UNNOEH education workers’ union insisted on the importance of communication: “We need to raise public awareness, because the battle for quality public education is a battle for society as a whole.” By using social media and organising rallies across the country, Haitian unions are looking to mobilise a broad front to put pressure on the government. “We have also used WhatsApp groups. And we have gone in person to the various public schools around the country.”

“The main argument that the government always puts forward, especially in recent years, is the security issue in Haiti,” he explained. “The prime minister told us that funds had to be mobilised to fight insecurity now, not for education. And the government had in fact approved what it calls a war budget. In that budget, much more money was allocated to buying weapons, and very little was set aside to tackle the problems the education system is facing.”

Hubermane Clermont, national general secretary of FENATEC (National Federation of Education and Culture Workers), added: “This campaign is of vital importance to us because it will help us raise the profile of children’s right to education.”

“The campaign is a way for us to grow stronger as a union, in that it is an opportunity for society in general to realise that union organisations are demanding real qualitative improvements in education,” he insisted. “In this instance, unions will not be seen calling for pay adjustments or other benefits for teachers but for measures that benefit society at large. Because any improvement in the state of education will have a really positive impact on society as a whole.”

Global campaign, local action

Rebeca Logan, director of Campaigns and Communications at EI, welcomed the exchange of experiences and summed up the spirit of this campaign, saying: “It is a campaign designed for trade unionists and by trade unionists. It is up to you to adapt it to your country and your context. And it is you, as teachers, who have the knowledge, experience and wisdom to know what students need, what schools need and what the education system needs.”

She adds: “When I speak about the campaign, I always talk about the goal. The campaign’s goal is fully funded public education systems. Fully funded doesn’t mean three more books in the library, or a few new classrooms, or a small pay increase. It means every student has everything they need to learn and grow, and every teacher is paid a decent wage.”

Logan explains that the money to fund education is there, as multimillionaires and billionaires hide their money abroad. She goes on to say that “the campaign also calls for the decolonisation of education funding at international level”.

The Go Public! Fund Education campaign clearly shows how education unions are adapting global strategies to their local contexts. The diversity of approaches used should not, however, obscure the shared resolve of trade unions to improve the funding and quality of public education.