Report on EI World Congress

July 22th-26th: Education International Congress: Over 1,600 representatives of Education Internationals’ member organisations were in attendance at the 5th World Congress held in the Estrel Convention Centre. The elected representatives and staff responsible for Higher Education within Education International reported on the work of the previous 3 years and present current issues.

Participating representatives from the national teacher trade unions shared recent developments, discussions and concerns in their countries. For ESU, this Congress was an ideal opportunity to present and discuss our proposed motions and amendments.

ESU was invited to give a short presentation about our work, about our partnership with EI and how to improve it and about our work in the field of the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy.

EI prepared an extensive report on the follow-up to UNESCOs’ recommendations concerning the status of Teachers from 1998. This was presented to the UNESCO commission of experts on the topic (CEART) and it was concluded that UNESCO must dedicate more time to following up on their recommendations. African countries in particular expressed their discontent at the work done by UNESCO.

ESU gave a presentation on the status of the Bologna Process and on what the partnership between EI and ESU entails. ESU argued for more cooperation between teachers and students on the national level and asked teachers to involve themselves more concretely in the fight against tuition fees and corruption. We discussed the possibility for joint capacity building in those countries where student and teacher unions are not that strong. These suggestions were taken into account and it was agreed that ESU and EI will sign a new partnership agreement this year.