Working group on teacher recruitment to meet in Lesotho

Lesotho's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Training, Lesao Lehohla

Senior officials from 11 Commonwealth countries will gather in Lesotho from 23 to 25 February 2004, for the first meeting of the Commonwealth Working Group on Teacher Recruitment.
 
Chaired by Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General Winston Cox, the meeting will be hosted by Lesotho's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Training, Lesao Lehohla. The inaugural session of the meeting will be open to the media.

The Working Group was set up following the 15th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in October 2003, to develop appropriate and ethical codes of conduct for the recruitment of teachers in the Commonwealth.

Senior officials will consider whether present practices afford sufficient protection to countries that have invested heavily in teacher training and to teachers recruited for service abroad. The Group will also advise on measures countries should take to prevent the excessive loss of teachers through unregulated recruitment practices; and on recovery measures which should be employed to assist and train more teachers in seriously affected countries.

The Working Group will submit a draft agreement on teacher recruitment to Commonwealth education ministers by April 2004 and the document is expected to be finalised by a Ministerial Group by September this year.

Countries represented on the Working Group are Barbados, India, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mauritius, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, St Lucia, Seychelles, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Zambia.

Representatives of civil society organisations including the Commonwealth Consortium on Education, the Commonwealth Teachers Grouping and the University of Nottingham Centre for Comparative Research in Education will attend the meeting as permanent observers.