We need to start treating teachers as essential workers: WEF official

We need to start treating teachers as essential workers: WEF official

The world needs to start thinking of teachers as essential workers just like doctors, according to Saadia Zahidi, managing director of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Zahidi was speaking at a panel discussion on preparing and empowering the education workforce on Day 2 of the World Government Summit (WGS) in Dubai.

Accompanying her on the panel was Sarah Al Amiri, UAE’s Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology, who highlighted that technology was not the answer to all the issues faced by the education sector.

“We need to continuously remember that technology is a tool,” she said. “When we discuss AI and its deployment into the education sector, we need to ask ourselves what are the needs today in every single classroom. As effective as online education was, we haven’t bridged the gap in education caused by over two years of online learning. The solutions to our problem could be technology or could not be technology,” the minister added.

Overburdening teachers

Teachers have been dealing with changes all their lives and now is the time to use tech to alleviate some of their burdens, according to Dr Sonia Ben Jaafar, CEO, Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education.

“Teachers are tasked with doing administrative