AlHijjah 8, 1435, Oct 2, 2014, SPA -- A worldwide shortage of teachers has pressured a number of countries into hiring educators with little or no training, which undermines the educational progress of school-age children around the globe, the United Nations warned Thursday. The Institute for Statistics of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said in a statement that at least 93 countries have "an acute teacher shortage" and that roughly four million teachers would have to be recruited to achieve universal primary education by 2015. "A quality universal primary education will remain a distant dream for millions of children living in countries without enough trained teachers in classrooms," UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said in the statement. "Teachers are the core of any education system. Hiring and training new and already established teachers is fundamental to protecting children's ability to learn in school."
