Ramaphosa urges better teacher conditions to reform global education

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a sharp call to action to the global community, warning that international education targets will remain out of reach unless nations fundamentally transform how they treat and compensate their teaching workforce.

Addressing the Transforming Education Summit (TES+4) in Paris, Ramaphosa stated that the teaching profession stands at the absolute heart of any meaningful education reform. However, he noted that teachers globally continue to work under increasingly untenable conditions.

"Across our world, teachers strive to perform their duties under extremely difficult conditions," Ramaphosa said, pointing to a stark list of systemic failures: inadequate compensation, insufficient professional development, overwhelming classroom sizes, and the profound emotional toll of navigating an era of growing mental health crises among young people.

Teachers hold key to global education

Ramaphosa stressed that transforming education requires improving the conditions in which teachers work and restoring the respect they deserve. He said achieving SDG 4 depends on a clear and deliberate commitment to equity and inclusion, ensuring that every learner, regardless of gender, physical ability, location, or socioeconomic background, has access to quality education. Without placing equity at the center of global education policies, he warned, reforms risk reinforcing the same structural inequalities they seek to address.

With the international community now halfway between the 2022 summit commitments and the 2030 deadline, the South African leader warned that the time for incremental policy adjustments has passed, calling for urgent and transformative action to accelerate progress.

"This is not a time for incremental adjustments or business as usual," Ramaphosa stated. "This is a time for bold, system-wide transformation that builds more resilient, adaptive, and future-ready education systems." He added that true resilience means building systems that act not as "fragile branches bending in the wind, but sturdy forests with deep roots and the capacity to regenerate."

Political will and financing are paramount

Achieving this vision, he argued, requires a broad range of global efforts: sustained political commitment at the highest levels, innovative and sustainable financing, and actively centering the voices of young people as partners in shaping policy.

Closing his address, Ramaphosa offered a glimmer of hope from his own country to illustrate the power of education to dismantle ignorance and unlock human potential.

Despite systemic challenges, South Africa recently achieved the highest school-leaving certificate pass rate in its democratic history. Crucially, the majority of students who qualified for university entry came from impoverished communities.

"These are young people who will go on to pursue their dreams at a university, technical, or vocational college of their choice," Ramaphosa said, noting a cornerstone of the country's social equity policy: "where they will study for free."