Teacher Management in Conflict and Crisis Settings: Addressing resource gaps and enhancing quality in education
Teachers in conflict and protracted crisis settings play an essential role in supporting children and young people’s development, yet they face critical challenges concerning teacher management, including recruitment, deployment, professional development, compensation, and career progression. These barriers affect teaching quality and learning outcomes, highlighting an urgent need for comprehensive, data-driven policies that are adaptable to the unique context of these environments.
This policy brief summarises actionable findings from the ERICC Evidence Review: Teacher Management in Conflict and Protracted Crisis – the State of the Evidence (forthcoming), which documents persistent challenges and promising practices as well as highlights evidence gaps and research needs. The findings may be useful for governments, donor organisations, humanitarian and development actors, and research bodies working with teachers.
The review recommends a multifaceted approach to improving teacher management that is assets-based, to recognise teachers’ inherent knowledge and skills, and prioritise their perspectives and experiences in policymaking. To do so, effective teacher management should include:
- Flexible and responsive policies to recruit, deploy, and train enough teachers across various profiles, and provide meaningful career progression opportunities;
- Equitable compensation and benefits that reflect teachers' contributions as well as market prices, harmonised among education stakeholders; and
- Data-driven policymaking that prioritises teacher participation to value teachers' voices and experiences/expertise in policymaking spaces in ways that strengthen teacher status and professionalisation.
Improving teacher management also requires integrating displaced teachers into the workforce, advancing gender equity in recruitment and support for women educators, and enhancing coordination among education stakeholders to ensure equitable employment of teachers of diverse profiles. Targeted funding should also be directed towards training teachers on pedagogies relevant for conflict and crisis-settings and that culminate in recognised qualifications and establishing stable salary mechanisms to support educators across varied profiles and settings.
These recommendations aim to improve the overall quality of education by fostering a more inclusive and effective educational environment that is responsive to the needs of conflict-affected communities.