The Teachers for All project aims to ensure teachers are placed equitably where they are needed most through a mixed-methods research approach. The research is being conducted in 11 African countries to analyze teacher deployment data and policies, understand challenges, and identify promising practices. By exploring the relationships between teacher placement, learning outcomes, and school characteristics, the goal is to strengthen countries' capacity to make evidence-based decisions on teacher deployment that improve equity, effectiveness, and efficiency in education systems.

1. PROJECT BRIEF
Teachers for All
How can we ensure that
teachers are placed where
they are needed the most?
©
UNICEF/UN00000/Name

2. PROJECT BRIEF
Overview
Approach
Goal
Equity in teacher placement is a prerequisite for
ensuring that no child is deprived of learning
opportunities because of the school they attend or
their area of residence. Yet, African countries face
acute teacher shortages caused by a limited supply
of teachers and inequity in teacher deployment. This
translates into significant disparities in class size and
schooling conditions, generally to the detriment of
students in remote areas and marginalized
communities. In the medium to long-term, African
countries need to hire and retain more teachers. In
the short term, however, they need to ensure that
teachers already within their education systems are
equitably deployed.
Teachers for All is a mixed-methods research project
that aims to explore how the placement of qualified
teachers may be optimized to improve equity in
learning outcomes.
Working closely with Ministries of Education and
UNICEF Regional and Country Offices, this research
aims to generate timely evidence on the deployment
of qualified teachers and to strengthen in-country
capacity to use data. The objective is to ensure that
decisions on teachers’ deployment are driven by a
quest for equity, effectiveness, and efficiency.
The research is currently undertaken in 11 countries:
Angola, Botswana, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Lesotho,
Madagascar, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, The Gambia,
and Zambia.
In each country, the research is demand-driven and
co-created with national partners, with a focus on
peer-to-peer learning and sustainable outcomes.
Contact Info
Despina Karamperidou
Education Specialist, Teachers for All manager
dkaramperidou@unicef.org
Matt Brossard
Chief, Education
mbrossard@unicef.org
The research is framed around two key themes:
The Teachers for All research involves four phases:
Literature and policy review to understand teacher
recruitment and deployment systems and identify
implementation challenges and promising
practices.
Big data analysis to estimate the associations
between teacher placement and learning
outcomes; determine the key characteristics of
schools facing qualified teacher shortages;
compute qualified teacher shortages/surpluses at
different levels; and analyze the availability and
degree of randomness in qualified teacher
deployment.
Qualitative case studies to unpack key
characteristics of successful deployment and
placement policies and enabling contextual
factors, as well as identifying challenges at
different levels.
Dissemination and policy engagement to
maximize evidence uptake and utilization.
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Unpacking policy gaps and bottlenecks in the
availability and equitable deployment of teachers,
both across and within schools;
Understanding the impact of teacher placement on
student learning outcomes.