Commemorate World Teachers Day, prods ZNUT’s Joe Kasaka

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By Favourite Jenala Kalando in Lusaka

ZAMBIA National Union of Teachers (ZNUT) Spokesperson Joe Kasaka is urging teachers to embrace quality education services as enshrined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UNSDG) number four: dubbed – “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

Perhaps making reference to a view by Irina Bokova, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), that “Education can, and must, contribute to a new vision of sustainable global development’, Mr. Kasaka wants teachers to act as perfect role models by being disciplined and continue offering quality education to students.

Mr. Kasaka says it is important that qualified teachers must are encouraged to execute their individual and collective duties diligently by ensuring that they provide quality education to learners, throughout Zambia’s ten provinces.

The ZNUT Spokesperson implored all ‘Teachers’ in Central, Copperbelt, Eastern, Luapula, Lusaka, Muchinga, Northern, North-Western, Southern and Western provinces to commemorate World Teachers Day on Friday 5^th October 2018 being commemorated under the theme: ““The right to education means the right to a qualified teacher.”

 

“The right to education means the right to a qualified teacher” has been chosen to remind the global community that the right to education cannot be achieved without the right to trained and qualified teachers.

Mr. Kasaka says the annual Teachers Day commemoration is an opportunity on which to reaffirm a collective resolve toward provision of quality education.

UNESCO proclaimed October 5 to be World Teachers’ Day in 1994, celebrating the great step made for teachers on October 5, 1966, when a special intergovernmental conference convened by UNESCO in Paris, France adopted the UNESCO/ILO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, in cooperation with the International Labour Organization (ILO).

For 2017 the theme was “Teaching in Freedom, Empowering Teachers”, echoing the 2015 theme that followed the adoption of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) in September 2015, when teacher empowerment was reaffirmed as a top priority in all education and development strategies.

Education transforms lives and is at the heart of UNESCO’s mission to build peace, eradicate poverty and drive sustainable development.

UNESCO believes that education is a human right for all throughout life and that access must be matched by quality and as the only United Nations agency with a mandate to cover all aspects of education, is entrusted to lead the Global Education 2030 Agenda through Sustainable Development Goal 4, a roadmap to achieving this goal through the Education 2030 Framework for Action (FFA).

The World Teachers’ Day 2018 will mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that recognizes education as a key fundamental right and establishes an entitlement to free compulsory education, ensuring inclusive and equitable access for all children.

This year’s theme, “The right to education means the right to a qualified teacher,” has been chosen to remind the global community that the right to education cannot be achieved without the right to trained and qualified teachers.

Even today, a continuing challenge worldwide is the shortage of teachers for an estimated 264 million children and youth still out of school globally.

To reach the 2030 Education Goals of universal primary and secondary education, the world needs to recruit almost 69 million new teachers, thus this global ‘teacher gap’ is more pronounced among vulnerable populations, such as girls, children with disabilities, refugee and migrant children, or poor children living in rural or remote areas.