Balancing teacher quality and quantity

The world is facing a shortage of trained teachers. According to the 2010 Global Monitoring Report approximately 10.3 million teachers will be needed globally to staff classrooms from Bangkok to Canada. The situation is worse in Sub-Saharan Africa. Estimates suggest that approximately 1.2 million new teachers will be needed in Sub-Saharan Africa alone to achieve universal primary education goals by 2015. Increases in primary school enrollments, drought, and HIV-AIDS have exacerbated the need for well trained teachers. Despite the need, the focus is on balancing quality with quantity. An effective teacher is deemed a critical element, although not the only one, in a student's success in the classroom. This paper focuses on the dilemma of meeting universal primary education goals in Sub-Saharan Africa, while maintaining teacher quality in fragile contexts.