Education International fights the global teacher shortage

Union members across the globe gathered July 17 for a welcome breakfast highlighting Education International, a global federation of unions representing teachers and education support personnel, as part of the AFT's 2026 convention.

The breakfast featured EI General Secretary David Edwards and EI Project Director Angelo Gavrielatos. Both spoke about EI's "Go Public! Fund Education" campaign, which urges governments to invest in public education and support teachers.

According to Gavrielatos, there is currently a shortage of 44 million teachers worldwide. The shortage is driven by the fact that teachers throughout the world are underpaid, undervalued and overworked.

In response to this global crisis, EI worked with the United Nations to issue a report in 2024 with 59 recommendations to help countries combat their teacher shortages.

"This document speaks with a clarity that we've never seen before," Gavrielatos said.

Some of the recommendations in the report include that governments invest 6 percent of their gross domestic products and 20 percent of their national budgets in education. It also calls for teachers to be paid salaries comparable to other professions that require higher education and urges governments to stop hiring unqualified teaching staff and relying on contract employment.

But to achieve these global education goals, Gavrielatos said that EI must work to strengthen membership engagement, stakeholder engagement and political engagement to build union solidarity and power. And he said that effective political, industrial and legal strategies are necessary to achieve these goals.

"Now is the time to be as bold as ever, to campaign to get what is rightfully ours, to deliver-for our kids, their families, our communities, our societies, our nations and their world-the better world that we need," Gavrielatos said.

At the end of the breakfast, some attendees had a chance to ask questions of Edwards and Gavrielatos.

Timothy Ferrell of the Baltimore Teachers Union asked how to address the global teacher brain drain, where educators from developing nations leave to teach in wealthier areas. Gavrielatos said the best thing we can do is to extend solidarity to those countries so they can address the "push and pull" factors regarding their teacher shortages.

Manal Hdaife, a public primary school principal and regional branch leader of the Public Primary Schools Teachers League in Lebanon, said that EI's "Go Public! Fund Education" campaign helped her rally teachers in her home country to call on the government to provide the higher wages they deserve.

"We are strong together, so that means a lot for all of us," she said.

[Alvin Buyinza/Photo credit: Alex Palombo]