Today marks World Teachers’ Day and is the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. It is also the first world Teachers’ Day (WTD) to be celebrated within the new Global Education 2030 Agenda adopted by the world community one year ago.

This year’s theme, “Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status”, embodies the fundamental principles of the fifty-year-old Recommendation while shining a light on the need to support teachers as reflected in the agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A specific education goal, SDG4, pledges to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

Teachers are not only pivotal to the right to education, they also play roles that they not even paid for. There are at least  20 extra jobs all teachers do but rarely get thanks for

The roadmap for the new agenda, the Education 2030 Framework for Action, highlights the fact that teachers are fundamental for equitable and quality education and, as such, must be “adequately trained, recruited and remunerated, motivated and supported within well-resourced, efficient and effectively governed systems”.

However, in order to achieve this goal, it is necessary not only to substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers but to motivate them by valuing their work. By 2030, 3.2 million more teachers will be required to achieve universal primary education and 5.1 million more in order to achieve universal lower secondary education.

UNESCO with the WTD convening agencies (ILO, UNICEF, UNDP, and EI) and the International Task Force on Teachers, dedicates this day to celebrating a unique intergovernmental commitment – the only international standard-setting instrument on teachers – and reaffirms its commitment to the value of the profession.

Education is under pressure in South Africa like never before.  What are your memories of your favourite teachers and how did they impact on your life?