For financial institutions (FIs), digital transformation is essential to future-proofing the business and improving customer experience, employee capabilities, operational efficiency and business economics. This point is particularly relevant in light of the COVID-19 crisis and the ability of FIs to respond.

But what does digital transformation success look like in financial services?

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) and Deloitte have joined together to explore this question. We have gathered insights from more than 80 executives and transformation leaders, from across banks, insurers, regulators and supervisors, and policy makers around the world to explore the keys to digital transformation. We will summarise the results in a three-part series to explore FIs’ approaches to digital transformation and how they can realise the promise of digital transformation.

The second paper in this three-part series—Realising the digital promise: Key enablers for digital transformation in financial services, examines key enablers to digital transformation for FIs across five overlapping themes. For each of these themes, we extended upon multiple levers that FIs can pull to accelerate their digital transformation strategy and achieve desired results.

We have identified the following five themes:

Children make up 46% of the populations of aid-receiving countries and are critical agents of change in their communities. Yet, World Vision’s new report reveals that only 12% of development assistance is child-related.

We know that investment in children transcends generations with huge returns for societies, so why do children continue to be left behind in development funding?

The 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is fast approaching. Yet progress has stalled, and some areas, decades of gains have been thrown into reverse. Children’s rights are in crisis, with more than 1 billion children living in multidimensional poverty, experiencing limited access to health services and education and without their basic needs being met.

Spending on children is minimal

In Putting Children First For Sustainable Development, World Vision uses Ernst & Young Australia’s analysis of the amount of Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding that directly or indirectly targets children. Despite the multiple crises facing the world’s children today, our research finds that globally just 12% of ODA relates to children. Broken down, this means that only 5% of the approximately $207 billion annual global ODA investment is spent on programmes specifically for children, while another 7% is allocated to broader programmes that benefit children.

Children are a barometer of poverty. Children’s well-being reflects the overall situation of family, community and society where they live. Children are especially vulnerable to shocks, trauma and crises, which increase the likelihood of poverty being passed from one generation to the next. To break cycles of intergenerational poverty and achieve truly sustainable development children must be put at the centre.

When ODA is spent on children, whole communities benefit

Quantifying, for the first time, the economic benefit of investing in children, our research finds that for every US$1 spent on child-related programmes, there is a return of US$10 in wider benefits. Investment in children creates real-world benefits, including direct impacts on health and wellbeing, education, living standards and increased opportunities alongside indirect benefits that come from empowering children, their families, friends and wider communities. These indirect benefits account for around US$3 of the $10 return on investment.

For investment in children to be most impactful, children’s whole lives must be taken into account. Children do not live in silos. Education, safety, health and nutrition are all interdependent, and only a cross-sectoral approach that includes investment in transformative accelerators will generate the progress towards the SDGs we want to see.

We are calling on all ODA-contributing countries to:

Increase child-related investment: A minimum of a 10% increase in child-related investment by each ODA-contributing country each year has the potential to double the impact of current funding.

A minimum of a 10% increase in child-related investment by each ODA-contributing country each year has the potential to double the impact of current funding. Consider children in all diplomatic and development policies and strategies: Children should be a priority for funding and key political policies.

Children should be a priority for funding and key political policies. Be accountable to children: Young people should be consulted as part of donor policy-making processes and participate in national and global forums discussing development issues.

‘Leave no one behind’ has to include children too

A key principle of the universal values underpinning the SDGs is to ‘Leave no one behind’. This calls on all of us seeking to progress the SDGs to take an intersectional approach, considering all the barriers and persistent forms of discrimination that marginalise or exclude individuals and communities.

In the UK, civil society organisations have been challenged by politicians and the wider public to work together more by taking increasingly intersectoral approaches to our development programming and advocacy and redressing historic power imbalances. The leave no one behind agenda provides a strong framework for working together and ensuring the voices of groups that have been marginalised are heard by the UK government when it comes to UK ODA spending.

Including children in the leave no one behind agenda does not mean prioritising them over other groups. It means recognising that, just as people are left behind because of their gender, disability, religion or sexual orientation, they are also being left behind because of their age. This is true for the youngest and the oldest in society.

It also means recognising that the risks of exclusion are even greater for those facing multiple barriers. It means building upon the gains we have already made, towards a comprehensive inclusion agenda that truly serves the people most in need of support. If children continue to be left out, we cannot achieve the SDGs.

Empirical studies have shown that supportive fiscal policies, globalisation and free trade are key to achieving strong, sustained and inclusive growth.

By John Samuel

Civil society and SDGs: The core value and vision of Sustainable Development Goals are well articulated in the resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2015 — Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The ethical commitment of the Agenda 2030 is captured by the pledge at the very beginning of the document. “As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge no one will be left behind. Recognising that the dignity of the human person is fundamental, we wish to see the goals and targets are met for all nations and peoples and for all segments of the society. And we will endeavour to reach farthest behind first.“

This pledge is a recommitment of the talisman of Mahatma Gandhi: Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest, and ask if the step you contemplate is of any use to him/her. The collective commitment of the nations of the world to reach ‘the farthest behind first ‘easier said than done. ‘Leave no one behind’ is the call to action to the governments and all stakeholders to reaching out to the most marginalized and excluded people. At the core of this commitment are the principles of inclusion, participation, and human dignity.

The real challenge of making these principles work at the local level is the increasing gap between the people and the policy process. Despite all the good intentions and the lofty ideals of inclusive participation, the fact of the matter is most of the government policies are made by the senior civil servants, policymakers and experts at the corridors power in the capital cities of countries. The gap between policies and people are due to number reasons, including the language, accessibility, high technical content and a rational knowledge framework not necessarily in consonance with the real lives and livelihood context of the most marginalized people.

Most marginalised people live in rural hinterlands and urban slums with less access to resources, language and process of power-relations in the policymaking process. Hence, ‘leave no one behind requires’ an active and deliberate effort to reach out to the most marginalized people. Reaching the ‘farthest first’ requires a commitment for inclusive participation and space for the most marginalized people to voice their issues, demands and perspective.

This requires a deliberative effort to go beyond the bureaucratic confines of the government to include civil society organisations to ensure the voice and participation of the poorest and marginalised included in the process of implementing SDGs.

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Sustainable development goals and governance

The realisation of Agenda 2030 requires concerted efforts by the respective governments and all other stakeholders to commit financial resources, implement SDGs at the national as well as the local. While 15 SDGs are about basic human development, economic development and environmental sustainability, the SDG 16 and SDG 17 are about the enabling conditions to realize all other SDGs. The role of civil society is well articulated in the SDG 16 and 17. The participation of civil society is important to ensure effective implementation of all SDGs. The involvement of civil society is imperative from the perspective effective and accountable governance and inclusive institutions at all levels.

The governance aspect of SDG is well articulated in the SDG 16: Promote Peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. It is indeed difficult to realize SDGs without peace, stability, strong institutions, justice, peace, human rights and the rule of law.

The 12 targets of SDG 16 include ‘substantially reducing corruption and bribery in all forms ‘; effective accountable, transparent institutions at levels ‘; ensure responsive, inclusive participatory and representative decisions at all levels. None of the 12 targets is possible without the effective participation of civil society organization both in terms of effective implementation and monitoring of SDGs.

The SDG 17 is about ‘Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development ‘. The Goal 17 to is important enabling governance conditions in relation partnership, financing, technology and capacity development, trade and multi-stakeholder partnership and accountability in relation to the implementation of SDGs. A Multi-stakeholder partnership is crucial for the effective implementation of SDGs. The multi-stakeholders are well defined in one of the targets: Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.

Despite the Systemic power and resources, the government alone will not be able to realize SDGs at all levels. The participation of the private sector, civil society and other national and international non-government actors are crucial to the realization of the Agenda 2030. Such a multi-stakeholder partnership approach requires a governance perspective.

Governance is the arena of how power is exercised, decisions are made, policies are developed and implemented within the interface of various actors and institutions in a given context. The active participation of civil society is one of the important aspects of democratic governance. With the paradigm shift in digital technology, social media and information flow, the dynamics of policymaking and practice changed dramatically as more and more people respond and participate in the policy and political discussions.

The digital civic spaces and the participation of civil society through social media network further strengthened the role of civil society in governance This also broadens the scope of governance that include digital freedom, social media, and platform economy. To realise the pledge of ‘leaving no one behind’ requires an ethical commitment and political will to make it happen. This requires for conditions:

Civic space, civic rights and civil society to enable and empower the participation of people, particularly marginalized people, at all levels in promoting, implementing and monitoring SDG

The active role of local governance in localizing SDGs to ensure that no one is left behind

Allocation of financial resources to ensure SDGs are realized for the most marginalized and excluded people

Participation of women and marginalized people in implementing and monitoring SDGs

A multi-stakeholder partnership where government work closely with the private sector, civil society and international institutions to realize SDGs

Transparency and accountability at all levels to ensure resources are used with integrity, effectiveness and efficiency at all levels.

It is in the broader context of the all the SDGs, and with particular reference to SDG 16 and 17, the role of civil society and civil society organizations become crucial in realizing SDGs at all levels.

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Civil society and SDGs

The character and politics of civil society organizations are determined by the civic rights, civic spaces and civic values in a given country. The rights and responsibilities of citizens shape civic values. At the core of civic rights is the freedom of expressions, freedom of association and commitment to human rights for all. Hence, Civil Society is more than an arena of associations or organized space beyond the state and market. Civil Society too is very varied and influenced by politics, economy and laws and regulations within country.

Civil society and civil society organizations are by definition heterogeneous, reflecting the dynamics of context, culture, language, economy and politics. Civil Society can’t be effective or active without civic spaces and civic rights within the national context of country.

Civil society organizations can play very important roles in realizing the SDGs. Following are the specific roles of Civil Society organizations

Civil society can strengthen demand side through public education

One of the challenges of Sustainable Development Goals is to translate them in a way people can understand and relate with their lives and experience. The most important stakeholders in the process of implementing SDGs are the people. However, the reality is that most of the people are simply not even aware about what constitutes sustainable development, what is meant by Sustainable Development Goals and how they will improve the lives and living condition of the people, particularly the marginalized people at the grassroots level.

In a context where most of the marginalized people have relatively less access to education, health as well as government information, there is a significant challenge in reaching out to the farthest. This is partly due to the fact that ‘technical language’ of SDGs often becomes a hindrance for people to understand and appreciate the relevance of SDGs.

The researches and case studies in different parts of the world indicated that public awareness and demand for services immensely improved the effective delivery of government services.

Effective public awareness and education require not only translating the language of the SDGs but also relating to the experience of the people within a given context. In the context where people are not literate, it is essential to adopt innovative and creative means of communications, in consonance with the culture and language of the community.

The participation of young people, women and marginalized communities in public education often helps to develop people develop more awareness about their own modes of living, lives, conditions and context. For example, the public education and awareness initiatives of the Institute for Sustainable Development and Governance in Kerala included public art, songs and state-wide cultural presentations to make young people and marginalized communities aware about SDGs.

This also resulted at the grassroots level people demanding about services from the local government institutions and also made people more about how they contribute to the budgets and why the services are the legitimate rights of the people rather than favours given by the government or a political party or leader.

The public awareness and education also help to democratize information and knowledge where people are enabled and empowered to participate, to claim and to realize SDGs in the context of their lives and livelihood.

Civil society can foster inclusive participation

We live in a world with multiple levels of active and passive discriminations and marginalization based on gender, caste, creed, race, religion and language. Hence, marginalization is not an accident, but is a function of how the dominant power-relations operate at the subnational and local level.

Often the political economy of unequal and unjust power-relations reproduces existing inequalities and injustice in the society. Despite all the intensions to reach out the farthest, the reality is that public policies are largely influenced by the dominant power relations negotiated between political elites, bureaucratic elites and economic elites. Often the mainstream media and civic elites to confirm to the dominant power-relationship within in a given national context.

Civil Society organizations working at the grassroots level and at the level of local governance can play a very significant role in fostering inclusive participation. This is due to the fact most of the community based civil society organizations, involved in poverty eradication, livelihood development and delivering services work directly with the most marginalized. Hence, such civil society organizations not only have direct domain experience and knowledge but also a more significant level of trust at the local level.

Civil Society also brings perspectives of women, LGBTs, Dalits, Adivasis and poor people that help the government to design and implement SDGs in ways sensitive to the issues, contexts and demands of the marginalized people.

Civil society plays important role in public advocacy

Public advocacy is a process of making a public argument, influencing the formulation and implementation of public policies and influencing peoples and social attitudes that strengthen democratic society. Public policy can be done on behalf of the people or marginalized of by the people by themselves. Transformation often happens when the advocacy is people-centric. People-centred advocacy is a set of organized actors aimed at influencing public policies, society attitude and socio-political process that enables and empower the marginalized speak for themselves.

Civil Society Organizations across the world played a very crucial role in shaping the SDGs. It is in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012 that the demand for SDGs emerged. Civil Society organizations from different parts of the world contributed to the making of the Goals and targets of Agenda 2030. There have been around 1200 civil society consultation from 2012 to 2015 that influenced the process and outcome document of SDGs.

Though civil society organizations played a vital role in shaping the SDGs, the real challenge remains at the level of implementation of SDGs, particularly in reaching the most marginalized people.

While most of the countries have begun to use the language of SDGs and made them a template for the public policy discussions, the real challenge is the lack of political will to allocate adequate budget and ensure the effective implementation on the ground. The official rhetoric of SDGs has increased, and policymakers claim to have included SDGs as a priority. However, there is not adequate budget allocation for realizing SDGs, and a significant part of the budget often doesn’t reach the people.

Delay of services and quality of services and entrenched corruptions and lack of accountability often leads to a big gap between the rhetoric and realities of realizing SDGs. Within the context of India, this often results in SDGs not reaching out to the ‘farthest ‘. The largest number of poor and hungry people are in India.

It is precisely due to this a people-centred advocacy is crucial to realize SDGs at all level. People-Centred advocacy involves public education, the participation of people, and evidence-based policy asks and consistent follow up of all aspects from the national to the local level. This is due to the increasing gap between policy promises and policy performance in many countries.

Civil society can play a role in localising SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals become real at the local level. Urban and local governments are the government agencies working closest people. In the context of India, the 73 and 74th amendment of the constitutions of India ensured a very important role for the local government institutions in relation to the governance and development. Almost all SDGs have direct relevance to local government as the local government is responsible for delivering many services and also reaching out the most marginalized.

Over the last two decades, the capacity of the local government institutions has significantly increased everywhere. In countries, like India, active women’s political participation made a qualitative difference to the process of local governance. The budgets of local government too increased many folds.

However, there are a number of major challenges in localizing SDGs. Some of these challenges are systemic. For example, the local government institutions get the financial resources often at the last quarter of the financial year, leading to delay of the implementation of the social security provisions to the poor. Another systemic issue is the varying degrees of the capacity at the local government level. While some of the local governments have a relatively better capacity, most of the local government institutions have less capacity and resources to deliver.

In many parts of India, dominant caste /religious power dynamics often hampers the equitable delivery of the services. Marginalized and excluded communities often do not get the benefits of the programme specially designed for them. For example, special funds for Scheduled tribes or scheduled castes often get underspent or diverted.

Civil Society Organisations can play an important role in improving the capacities of the Local government to deliver government projects. Apart from the capacity development of Local Self Government, civil society organizations also can contribute to the empowerment of local communities to demand services and seek accountability.

Localisation of SDGs requires the prioritization of SDGs within a given context of the local area. While some of these SDG targets are related to the government, a large number of SDGs targets are to do with human behaviour. For example, gender equality can only be achieved when there is a shift in the attitude and behaviour of the people.

A case in point is the basic lack of civic attitude wherein waste is dumped in water bodies or roadside, resulting in affecting the health of local communities. Violence against women has increased significantly in many parts of India. Communal violence and the sense of fear at the local level too have increased. There is a sense of erosion of rights among minority /migrant communities in many communities across the world, and active and passive discriminations also play a role in undermining the localization of SDGs.

In an entrenched patriarchal society, the real change with regard to SDG 5 requires attitudinal change. This involves continuous community education and awareness building and reports when there is violence against women and children. Likewise, the realization of SDG 16 requires significant work at the local level. In many countries, corruption to is decentralized. As a result, considerable amount of money meant for housing, education, health or infrastructure development gets siphoned off by the corrupt vested interest at the local level.

This also requires more efforts for ensuring transparency and accountability at the local government level and monitoring budget at the level of local government.

Civil society organisations in service delivery

Civil Society organizations have played a very crucial role in reducing poverty, injustice and rights violations in many contexts and countries. Governments of many of the least developed and developing countries don’t have adequate budget resources to deliver basic development in the respective countries.

Lack of financial resources and capacity resulted in the lack of progress of SDGs in many countries. There are significant evidences from the least developed countries and countries in transition that civil society organizations contributed significantly to the realization of some of SDGs and many of the targets. This is evident in the case of Bangladesh and many of the countries in Africa.

International and national civil society organizations often raise financial resources locally, nationally and internationally to work at the grassroots/community level to work with marginalized communities. Such delivery of service in relation to nutrition, food, access to education and health helped these communities to better equipped to realize the SDGs. Civil Society organizations also helped to build more gender sensitivity, human rights education and empowered people to participate in the sustainable development.

In the post-disaster situation and during the COVID 19 pandemic, civil society organizations played an important role in India and in different parts of the world to provide basic service delivery of food and nutrition and health facilities. In the post-disaster context, CSOs play a very critical role in strengthening the livelihoods and economic and social resilience of communities.

Civil society can bring in accountability

The significant challenge to the realization of SDGs is that the lack of political will to allocate financial resources and to enable governance conditions to deliver on SDGs. Governments tend to highlight SDGs in a customary manner and make policy promises and rhetoric to deliver SDGs. However, adequate budgets are not allocated to achieve SDGs. Even when the budget is allocated, the general tendency is underspending budget meant for the most marginalized communities or diverting the money for some other purpose.

Budget promises and allocations often not get translated into practice. Many governments provide aggregated data, and the devil is in the disaggregated details. More often poor people from socially and economically marginalized communities fail to get out of the vicious circle of poverty and injustice.

Unless people are empowered with information, knowledge, participation and confidence to seek accountability, many of those in power positions in the government cease to be accountable. Accountability needs to be demanded, and transparency needs to be asked. Right to information played a crucial role in promoting accountability, transparency and public argument on democracy and development in many countries.

Monitoring of SDGs requires context-specific indicators. Any governance assessment or monitory of SDGs need to consider context, culture and political dynamics. Tools and framework for monitoring SDGs become effective when they are relevant to the local context.

Civil Society organizations alone can’t deliver sustainable development. A multi-stakeholder partnership framework is vital for realizing the SDGs. This is due to the fact the scope and ambit of SDGs are relatively very high in relation to MDG. It is not easy any of the actors to deliver 17 SDGs with 169 targets. The Agenda 2030 requires a joint partnership effort. When it comes to the realization of SDGs., civil society can play a strategic constructive engagement with the government without compromising the autonomy and agency of the civil society organizations.

While civil society organizations are more innovative with grassroots experience and domain knowledge, the private sector has financial resources as a part of their corporate social responsibility. In many countries, civil society organizations and the private sector joined hands to work with government in a strategic manger.

As indicated earlier, civil society organizations are not homogeneous. Civil society organizations have different kinds of budget, organizational size and budget. Hence it is important to make a distinction with a community-based organization with more volunteers and less funds and a big international NGO with corporate structure and thousands of highly paid employees. These two civil society actors are as different as chalk and cheese. Their priorities and politics are not the same. While big corporate international NGOs are overtly pre-occupied by their ‘brand-equity’ and ‘market-share’, it is often smaller community organizations that make a big difference.

It is essential to realize and recognize the fact that within the civil society too, there is an unequal power-relations, very different priorities and a diversity of political perspective. The very diversity and pluralism are the strengths of civil society organizations tend to create unequal access to power. Hence it is important to go beyond the framework work of elite civil society organizations working with big corporates and bureaucratic elites.

Most of the multi-stakeholder partnership happens at the macro level and at the level of capital cities of the countries. However, the challenge is the realization of SDGs in marginalized communities in remote villages or in the labyrinths of urban slums. It is at the local level, and it is at the level of the most marginalized communities where the partnership with local government and private sector can make a real difference.

(John Samuel is a policy and governance expert, social entrepreneur and development economist)

Reference

1. Samuel, John (2002), What is people-centred advocacy? PLA Notes, 43:9-12

2. Samuel, John. “Public Advocacy and People-Centred Advocacy: Mobilising for Social Change.” Development in Practice 17, no. 4/5 (2007): 615-21. Accessed August 25, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25548260.

3. Samuel, John (2018) “Leave No Behind: Human Rights Based Approach to Sustainable Development”, Forum-Asia Working Paper Series No. 4

4. Hyden, Göran and Samuel, John (2011), “Making the State Responsive: Experience with Democratic Governance Assessment, United Nations Development Programme

A few years ago, one of my secondary school teachers passed away. His name was Juan Canal and he taught history and geography. But this is not what I remember the most about him. What I remember are his efforts to engage and capture the imagination of all students, even of those less comfortable discussing Ancient Greece or the pre-Inca cultures. I remember his eagerness to find innovative ways to engage students, and our discussions on leadership and social responsibility. I didn’t really grasp the significance of those discussions at the time. However, I remember those debates decades later.

Teachers shape the future of millions of students every day, affecting how we treat each other, the way we work, how productive we are, and even how happy and confident we are as adults. Through this, they shape societies and countries. Everyone remembers by name that teacher that many years ago said or did something that was an inspiration, a life changer. Those are the teachers that understand how critical their day-to-day actions and behaviors are in shaping the futures of their students.

Research shows that the quality of teachers is a major determinant of children’s learning and well-being. Going from a poor-performing teacher to a great teacher can increase student learning by multiple years of schooling.Great teachers also have a substantial impact on the well-being of students throughout their lives, affecting not only their academic achievement, but also other long-term social and labor outcomes.

Yet, a large share of children do not have access to high quality teachers. A survey in six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa showed three worrying facts.

First, high teacher absence leads to students receiving only two hours and fifty minutes of teaching per day, just over half the scheduled time. Teachers being absent is the clearest symptom of a lack of understanding of the importance of the teacher-student interaction for learning.

Second, 84 percent of grade 4 teachers have not reached the minimum level of mastery of the curriculum they teach.

Third, less than 1 in 10 teachers exhibit good teaching practices, such as regularly checking for student’s understanding and providing feedback.

Studies in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Lao PDR, Peru, and Tanzania show similar quality issues in different settings.

Poor teaching is not the fault of the teachers, but the result of system-level policies that do not appropriately recruit, prepare, support, manage, and motivate teachers. A handful of countries, such as Finland, Japan, and Singapore, boast a cadre of successful teachers. In most other countries, teacher policies are either ineffective or lack internal consistency. Entry into teacher preparation programs might lack selectivity, and teacher entry-level qualifications might be set much lower than other professions. Good teacher performance might not be recognized or rewarded. Teachers hiring or promotion might be stained by politics or clientelism. Unprepared and poorly trained teachers might be expected to teach a complex curriculum, which even they have a weak grasp on.

Too many students across the world sit in classrooms exposed to ineffective teaching every day, every year, as they go through school. No wonder that schooling does not assure learning and that we are living a learning crisis.

Covid-19 has deepened the crisis. The pandemic has challenged education systems to ensure learning continuity, substantially increasing the demands placed on teachers. Education systems, more than ever, require effective teachers that facilitate and support learning instead of delivering content; that use a combination of in-person and digital methods to deliver lessons; that foster creative thinking, communication, and collaboration; and that instill a love of learning, how to persevere, and have self-control.

As schools gradually reopen, teachers will have the challenge of rapidly assessing students’ knowledge to identify learning gaps and adapt their teaching to the level of each student. Further, they will need to provide psychosocial support and manage their own stress, as students will return to schools after a very stressful time. It is a tough task. It is very difficult and demanding to be a good teacher, especially now.

The extraordinary nature of the challenge calls for an equally powerful response. Before the pandemic, the World Bank launched the Global Platform for Successful Teachers to help countries enhance their teacher policies to improve teaching and learning. The platform is built around five key principles: 1) Make Teaching Attractive; 2) Improve Pre-Service Education; 3) Improve Selection, Allocation, Monitoring and Feedback; 4) Provide High-Quality Professional Development and School Leadership; and 5) Use Technology Wisely.

The platform drives change by supporting governments with technical advice, financial support, and tools and resources. The World Bank is currently supporting the work of more than 16 million teachers, about a third of the teacher population in low- and middle-income countries, covering all the principles mentioned above. For instance, to make teaching attractive, the Dominican Republic has embarked on a comprehensive teacher reform that improves the selection, training, induction, and evaluation of teachers. Ethiopia and Zambia are improving pre-service by strengthening the curriculum and establishing a practicum component. The Peruvian Ministry of Education increased their capacity to implement merit-based promotion nationwide. To improve professional development and school leadership, the Edo State in Nigeria uses tablets to deliver scripted lesson plans that facilitate teachers’ classroom work, track attendance and use of lessons, and provide feedback. The World Bank has also helped countries use technology to improve teaching and learning. For example, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic are using computer-assisted learning technology to help teachers tailor instruction to students’ learning needs.

This operational support is complemented with tools and resources publicly available to policymakers, researchers, school leaders, and teachers, that can help in the implementation of the five principles.

These are just a few examples. The education community and society in general has a long way to go to support our teachers so that every classroom has their own Juan Canal. Especially now, that we are facing the worst education crisis in a century. We need to work together and act today to empower and support our teachers so that the magic of learning can happen in each and every classroom worldwide.

For more on our Global Platform for Successful Teachers, read here or follow on Twitter (@WBG_Education) or contact us at teach@worldbank.org.