Parent Sector : Education Sector (ED)
Duty Station: Canada
Job Family: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
Type of contract : Non Staff
Duration of contract : From 7 to 11 months
Recruitment open to : External candidates
Application Deadline (Midnight Paris Time) : 19 February 2021
OVERVIEW OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE POST
Background
As part of its mandate, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) develops and maintains the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) for organizing education programmes and related qualifications. The latest revision of ISCED was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in 2011.
The UIS has initiated the development of an International Standard Classification of Teacher Training Programmes (ISCED-T) to support the monitoring of SDG target 4.c: “By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States”. In particular, ISCED-T will be used to provide better data for calculation of SDG indicator 4.1.c: “Proportion of teachers with the minimum required qualifications, by education level”.
The development of ISCED-T was endorsed by the UNESCO General Conference in November 2019, which asked for presentation of a draft classification for adoption by the General Conference in November 2021.
ISCED-T will be used to produce internationally comparable data on teacher training programmes (TTPs) and pathways to the teaching profession, and to improve the availability and quality of teacher statistics, especially in reference to national programmes for pre-service and in-service teacher education. The classification will also aid in the development of an international standard for “trained” and “qualified” teachers that could be used alongside the national standards currently used for monitoring.
It is envisaged that ISCED-T will be a three-digit classification, based on and complementing the existing ISCED 2011. A draft classification and associated coding scheme for ISCED-T was developed by the UIS, using three dimensions for classification, in addition to the ISCED level of a TTP:
- target teaching level,
- entrance requirements,
- duration of the TTP.
UIS resources to support the methodological development and drafting of ISCED-T include:
- Draft project proposal for developing ISCED-T.
- Inventory of 812 national pre-service TTPs from 198 countries and territories with information on: name of the programme, ISCED level, minimum duration, minimum entrance requirements, and target level of education at which teachers are expected to teach after completion of the programme.
- Application of the proposed coding scheme to the TTPs in the UIS inventory, as a demonstration of the classification.
- Analytical report describing the content of the TTP database.
- Data collected by the UIS to calculate global SDG indicator 4.c.1, defined as the proportion of teachers who have received at least the minimum organized teacher training (e.g. pedagogical training) according to national definitions.
Under the overall authority of the director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and under the direct supervision of the Head of the Education Standards and Methodology Section (ESM), the Consultant shall perform the following tasks:
- Participate in virtual meetings of the ISCED-T Technical Advisory Panel (TAP), composed of international experts in the fields of classification and teacher education.
- Contribute to and finalise the methodological development of ISCED-T, including review of literature on classification of TTPs, review of the UIS TTP database, identification of dimensions for classification of TTPs, and development of a coding scheme for the classification.
- Prepare the first draft of ISCED-T, with a description of the scope and structure of the classification, the units of classification, the coding scheme, and examples for application.
- Compile and integrate comments and suggestions from reviewers of the first draft (including the TAP, the Technical Cooperation Group on the Indicators for SDG 4 - Education 2030 (TCG), the UIS, and others), and prepare a revised version of ISCED-T for submission to the UNESCO General Conference.
- Prepare the final text of ISCED-T, incorporating revisions requested by the UNESCO General Conference.
