PARIS - President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for greater global support for teachers.
Speaking at the SDG4 High-Level Steering Committee meeting in Paris, France, Ramaphosa said teachers are at the heart of transforming education.
The committee drives global efforts to achieve quality, inclusive education for all and helps shape the education agenda beyond 2030.
"The teaching profession itself stands at the heart of any meaningful education transformation. Across our world, teachers strive to perform their duties and they do so under extremely difficult conditions.
"If there is any class of people in the world who have to bear great challenges and difficulties, it is the teachers, for they are the ones who finally will produce the experts, the scientists, the engineers, even the presidents and ministers of countries.
"All of them go through the teachers of the world. The challenges they face include inadequate compensation, insufficient professional development, overwhelming classroom sizes, and the profound emotional toll of teaching in an era of growing uncertainty as well as mental health crises amongst young people and amongst teachers themselves.
"We cannot transform education without transforming the conditions under which our teachers work and the respect with which we treat them,"