With the teachers' crisis, our future is at stake.
On August 29 and 30 – just a few days before teachers in Catalonia returned to their schools to prepare for the arrival of students this Monday–, more than 50 countries from around the world gathered in Chile to sign the Santiago Consensus, a historic agreement promoted by UNESCO.
The Santiago Consensus is an international commitment to placing teaching at the center of educational policies, with the promise of improving teachers' working conditions, training, and social prestige. The agreement calls on governments to invest in teachers and educational leadership as key to academic success and quality learning.
In a recognized context of a global crisis in the teaching profession, the World Teachers' Summit warned of the growing threats facing the profession: from a lack of resources to a decline in the teaching vocation, which has led to an unprecedented shortage of qualified educators. UNESCO estimates that to guarantee universal primary and secondary education by 2030, an additional 44 million teachers are needed worldwide. This figure includes both retirement replacements and the growing demand for these educational levels. The situation is most dire in sub-Saharan Africa, but significant deficits are also detected in developed regions such as Europe and North America: an estimated 4.8 million additional teachers are needed to alleviate the crisis.
Catalonia also needs a broad national agreement and consensus in favor of education, one that goes beyond the current government. Because it is also facing a structural shortage of teachers, especially in subjects like mathematics and Catalan, with hundreds of vacant positions and teachers without the required training. Added to these vacancies is the increase in sick leave, which this same newspaper revealed last year. There is a worrying discontent in the sector that must be addressed, and this is not only related to the lack of resources to serve students with specific educational needs, although that is also a key factor. Teachers' disenchantment also stems from the lack of pedagogical autonomy and the continuous legislative changes that do not take these needs into account: an example is the removal of screens and digital whiteboards from preschools after the significant investment in recent years in digitalizing schools. Also creating discontent is the disconnect between the initial training they receive and what they subsequently encounter in the classroom; the lack of a warm welcome, support, and mentoring in the early years of the profession, and the lack of incentives and a professional teaching career, not to mention the excessive amount of administrative tasks they must take on in their daily routine.
In this context, the hiring of 1,096 new teachers and the new resources announced for the 2025-2026 academic year are good news and an important reinforcement, but they come amid a climate of discontent in a system that has experienced chronic instability in school teaching staff for years. Temporary teaching in Catalonia was alarming, but thanks to extraordinary and regular competitive examinations, it has improved considerably. However, at the start of the new academic year, one of the main difficulties and concerns affecting the school climate is the instability of the teaching staff.
This summer, the news has been about the hiring of public schools, and the difficulties generated by having to move more than 57,000 teachers between competitions, appointments, and vacancies, generating a lack of pedagogical continuity, a lack of ties with students, and a clear inequality compared to schools with less turnover and more stable teams. The public governance system must change to meet current needs. Ensuring teacher evaluation in public schools must also be a pillar for professional improvement and for recognizing work well done. Educational improvement has a lot to do with teaching quality and a positive school climate.
In the era of post-truth, social media, and artificial intelligence, we need well-trained and excellent teachers more than ever, yet the profession is less attractive. We must recruit and retain teachers before we find ourselves in more serious situations, as is already happening in France and Great Britain. Recruitment and retention depend not only on the salary and working conditions demanded by some unions: teacher well-being has much to do with recovering the commitment, purpose, and meaning of the profession, which is only found in students and their learning. Caring professions—such as teachers, nurses, and educators—are suffering a crisis because bureaucracy and technocracy reduce their human work to protocols and reports, dehumanizing tasks that consist of accompanying and stimulating people.
The bond between teacher and student is much more than a pedagogical tool: according to the Santiago Consensus, it is a collective asset, part of the heritage of humanity, because it transmits values, knowledge, and culture and guarantees the continuity and progress of society. Therefore, now more than ever, in a world of war and conflict, schools are—and must continue to be—a bastion of democracy and peace. Without teachers, there is no education, and without education, there is no future.
