"On 8-9 June 2011, UNESCO-IICBA hosted the 6th Commonwealth Research Symposium in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The symposium, titled “Next Steps in Teacher Mobility, Recruitment and Migration” convened a variety of key stakeholders from Commonwealth Member States and the African continent to share their experiences as well as brainstorm the way forward in addressing teacher migration and recruitment."
(Participants of the 6th Commonwealth Research Symposium on Teacher Mobility, Recruitment and Migration at the Red Cross Training Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
June 14, 2011
IICBA hosts the 6th Commonwealth Research Symposium
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On 8-9 June 2011, UNESCO-IICBA hosted the 6th Commonwealth Research Symposium in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The symposium, titled “Next Steps in Teacher Mobility, Recruitment and Migration” convened a variety of key stakeholders from Commonwealth Member States and the African continent, including the African Union (AU), International Organization for Migration (IOM), Education International, and the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), to share their experiences as well as brainstorm the way forward in addressing teacher migration and recruitment.
IICBA serves as a leader in capacity building in Africa, a region containing the greatest number of conflict-affected countries worldwide. The forced migration of teachers as a result of a conflict can be detrimental to education systems by contributing to “brain drain.”
In 2004, Commonwealth member countries adopted the “Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol” which outlined ways to mitigate “brain drain” and enhance “brain gain,” the influx of highly trained professionals and experts into a country. Its purpose was to “balance the rights of teachers to migrate internationally against the need to protect the integrity of national education systems.”
During a workshop Dr. Sadhana Manik, lecturer at University of KwaZulu-Natal, presents book on global teacher migration.
By hosting this symposium, IICBA sought to provide a platform for African countries to learn from Commonwealth Member States and explore how to create a similar protocol that is adapted to the African context.
Non-Commonwealth participants such as Save the Children-Somaliland, UNESCO Programme of Education for Emergencies and Reconstruction (PEER) and other emergency education experts identified the impact of conflict as a marked difference between non-Commonwealth African countries and the Commonwealth countries in general. Dr. James Keevy of SAQA also addressed the important role of context and even questioned the creation of an African teacher recruitment protocol, suggesting that doing so may simply be “policy borrowing” rather than the ideal “policy learning”. As such, it was recommended that the African protocol address issues of culture and context, including forced migration resulting from conflict in further detail.
In his paper presented at the symposium and titled, Teacher Migration and Education in Conflict and Post-conflict Countries: Experience from Somalia Christopher Mononye of UNESCO PEER writes, “countries in conflict have not been able to gain as much as they could have from their investment in education [because of] migration.” Mononye states that while immediate disaster response services receive large pools of funding “rehabilitation and reconstruction [relief], including education, are long-drawn-out processes and do not get adequately supported beyond a limited timeframe. This is a factor affects [...] teacher retention, management and compensation structures.”
Similarly, Barry Sesnan, Adviser for Echo Bravo, an East African consultancy for education in difficult circumstances presented his paper titled, Where have all the teachers gone? Why there are never any teachers in Africa’s refugee camps and what we can do about it. Sesnan writes, “refugees like anyone else are rationally motivated by the availability of income. Thus the inability or unwillingness to pay teachers a competitive wage in [a refugee] camp or to give them contracts is seen as a deciding factor.”
Participants included international organizations, government officials, civil society, academia and other relevant education experts based throughout the Commonwealth and the African continent.
Ms. Shirley Anne Steenekamp, Deputy Director of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), reviews symposium materials alongside Mr. Ibrahim Hussein, Chairman, Teacher Service Commission, Nairobi.
The two-day conference was filled with workshops, presentations and opportunities for small group discussion. Some participants presented case studies on policies addressing teacher migration in their respective country.
For instance, Dr. Roderick Rudder, Senior Education Officer of Planning, Research and International Relations for Barbados’ Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development highlighted the successes and pitfalls of policies enacted by the Barbados government to facilitate and mitigate the negative impact of teacher migration.
Overall, many participants applauded IICBA for hosting such a forum and expressed a desire to continue collaboration throughout the development process of an African teacher mobility protocol.
Related:
Penson, J., Yonemura, A., Sesnan, B, Ochs, K. and Chanda, C . 2011. Beyond the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol: Next steps in managing teacher migration in difficult circumstances.
Presentation Files of the 6th IICBA-Commonwealth Research Symposium.