Report OVE: Investment in Education, Salaries and Working conditions of Teachers in America (pdf)

T he United Nations for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) have built a set of  recommendations regarding the situation of pre-school, primary and  secondary education (1966) and on the condition of teaching personnel in higher and  researchers (1997).

These instruments define rights and responsibilities of the educators (es),  which serve as a frame of reference for governments, employers, unions and syndicates teachers and research bodies. Being generated by two multilateral organisms, these recommendations constitute a guide for governments that  are part of the united nations system. These multilaterals ones are the instances  in charge of its monitoring and since 2015 a  mixed commission to update its contents was formed being the Committee of Experts  ILO / UNESCO on the application of the Recommendations concerning teaching personnel  (CEART), in charge of coordinating this work.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant a new deterioration in working conditions  of teaching staff in America, hit in recent decades by the offensive  neoliberal of privatization, commercialization and standardization of school systems,  as well as job insecurity.

One of the biggest epistemological problems facing syndicates and unions  teachers in each country, is the lack of regional comparative information and analysis of  trends. This limits the claim action and the unity of the workers of the  education, in the midst of a corporate offensive by big capital.

This work by Otras Voces en Educación seeks to contribute to the construction of a  systemic view, with dialectical analysis between the global and the local in terms of investment  in education, salaries and working conditions of teachers, from a clear  perspective of the world of work. We have crossed official data from governments reported to UNESCO, with which  teachers unions and syndicates in America facilitated, as well as researchers and  academics (as) reflected in an information collection instrument. Following the  publication of this Situation Report, we will begin to publicize files  by country that serve as the basis for this work, which we will feed periodically. The contributions of the Global / Glocal Network for educational quality and the Group of Contact International (GCI) have been fundamental to be able to present this  study.

We hope that this report encourages national researchers, syndicates and  teachers’ unions, to strengthen or initiate in-depth studies on each of the  the realities we address