Queen’s Speech

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I shall address my remarks to the issue of the development assistance programme. Earlier, my noble friend Lady Northover talked about taking the long view. Taking the long view is important, because then you can reach your objectives. I want to make the case for targeting resource at education and raising the official development budget allocation for education to 15%.

As we wait for the restoration of the 0.7% of GNI for official development assistance, we have to recognise that the budget is being squeezed even more than just the reduction to 0.5%, as our GNI shrinks in real terms. This will make setting priorities difficult. Globally, even before the pandemic, 258 million children received no schooling at all, and hundreds of millions more were in school but experiencing conditions that prevented their learning. Education is every child’s right. Education has the power to protect and transform lives, and it is the foundation for sustainable development.

Last year, as G7 president, the UK hosted the replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education and made improving access in low and middle-income countries a priority, but as we emerge from the global pandemic, this laudable priority is under threat because of the huge shortage of qualified teachers. Globally, there are too few qualified teachers, and this is one of the greatest barriers to education in poor countries. UNESCO estimates that 69 million new qualified teachers must be recruited by 2030 to enable all children to have a decent education. In countries such as Djibouti, Malawi, Namibia, Senegal, South Sudan, Togo and Zimbabwe, 95% or more of the national education budget is spent on teachers’ salaries—yet teacher pay is low, and often below the poverty line.

In Zimbabwe, for example, teachers’ salaries are about $335 per month—less than the amount needed to buy food and other items to support a family of five. One deeply concerned teacher from Zimbabwe said:

“teachers feel as if they have become beggars. Morale is at its lowest. … We go to work in tattered clothes, and we are living in squalid conditions.”

Recruiting more teachers at these pay levels is going to be a very difficult task indeed.

Some 38% of primary school teachers and 55% of secondary school teachers in sub–Saharan Africa are untrained, and many are teaching classes of 70 and more pupils. I have seen two classes of 70 sitting back to back, with a teacher facing them and then moving round to the other side of the room to continue teaching the other half of a class of well over 140 children. If you believe that education is the way out of poverty and the foundation for sustainable development, providing qualified teachers must be a top priority. We have to help build a better future, and that starts with education delivered by a qualified teacher.

I would be grateful if the Minister in replying could tell the House what assessment the Government have made of the global teacher shortage, so that the global targets they set in 2021 as president of the G7 will be met. One of these targets is to get 40 million more girls into education—and that alone would mean recruiting and training 1.8 million more teachers. Do the Government recognise that teachers are one of the greatest levers in delivering global education ambitions? If so, does the Minister agree that to help tackle the teacher shortage, there is a need for an overarching UK government policy on recruiting more teachers globally? Improving and providing decent education is the route out of poverty and the pathway to prosperity.