Putting partnerships at the centre of efforts to address the global teacher shortage

In its 2024 election manifesto, the Labour Party pledged to, ‘...rebuild Britain’s reputation on international development with a new approach based on genuine respect and partnership with the Global South’.


The National Education Union (NEU) warmly welcomed this new approach and the opportunities it presented to tackle the global teacher shortage. Just as thousands of additional teachers are required in the UK, millions more teachers are needed globally. 44 million additional teachers must be recruited by 2030 to meet the Sustainable Development Goals for education, including 15 million in sub-Saharan Africa alone.


A promise in peril

Just over a year into office, the Labour government’s commitment to rebuilding trust and relationships with the Global South is in jeopardy.


Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to reduce the UK aid budget to 0.3% of gross national income by 2027 — to fund increased defence spending — has been condemned by humanitarian organisations as, ‘...cruel and shameful.’ Governments across the Global South, including a group of African education ministers, have also urged the UK to rethink its cuts.


The consequences of UK aid spending retreating to its lowest level in almost thirty years are already being felt. Schools are closing, teachers are going unpaid, and students are at risk of dropping out of education permanently.


In South Sudan, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has cancelled its flagship girls’ education programme, which had quadrupled girls’ enrolment in school, reaching over 1.2 million girls with cash transfers, helping them to enrol in school and complete their secondary education.


Rethinking the cuts

As the UK redefines its aid spending priorities, the NEU is calling on the UK government to sustain funding for education in emergencies and prioritise investment in teachers in emergency contexts.


Evidence shows that teachers are the single most important factor in children’s learning and recovery. In emergencies their role is even more vital. In addition to teaching, they are frontline professionals, supporting children’s psychological needs

and fostering an environment of safety, belonging and routine.


Despite their indispensable role, teachers in crisis contexts face severe challenges including low or no pay, threats to their safety and wellbeing, and little or no access to professional development and support. Pupil-teacher ratios often exceed 80:1 or even 120:1, and there is an acute shortage of female teachers.


Prioritise teachers to unlock education in emergencies

To mark World Teachers’ Day 2025, the NEU published a new policy briefing urging the UK Government to prioritise teachers across its policy, programming and financing. This means committing to advance the rights, working conditions, and supply of qualified teachers in emergency and protracted crises, ensuring that they are trained, paid, protected, and supported.


Achieving this is impossible without genuine international partnership. Fragile, conflict-affected, and refugee-hosting countries need sustained cooperation and support to implement strategies that address teacher shortages and uphold teachers’ rights.

The role of the wider international community is also crucial. The UN High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession, established by the Secretary-General, highlighted the urgent need for donors to work together on sustainable, long-term mechanisms to ensure the timely and adequate payment of teacher salaries in crises. The UK Government has a key role to play, by providing both financial and technical support.


To unlock the transformative power of education, in Palestine, Ukraine, and every place where children’s futures hang in the balance, we must put teachers and partnerships at the heart of the UK’s global education and development agenda.

Read the NEU’s new policy briefing at www.neu.org.uk/about/international


BY Oliver Mawhinney

International Policy Specialist at the National Education Union

Oliver Mawhinney, • January 16, 2026

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here

I heard it said today by a friend that “You learn a language best when you use it to speak and write about things that are important to you. ”

By Susan Piper • May 6, 2026
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.