Rationale

In recent years, Latin American and Caribbean countries have made important interventions to extend mandatory education and increase the coverage of primary or basic education. However, improving the quality of education remains the main challenge faced by education systems in the region. Governments are striving to implement policies that promote quality of education by ensuring that it is made available to all and is equally distributed.

A special report prepared by UNESCO's Institute of Statistics (UIS),"Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015", provides an assessment of teacher status and quality of education at the international and regional levels. This report affirms that:

While the sufficient number of teachers provides the opportunity to reach international goals on education, it is the effectiveness of teachers in the classroom which will deliver the Education for All promise. Quality education produces good learning outcomes – and the initial training and preparation of teachers contribute to this aim."

The report "How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top" (McKinsey, 2007) describes three important aspects of successful educational systems:

1. 1. Get the right people to become teachers
2. 2. Develop them into effective instructors, and
3. 3. Ensure the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for each child.

ITEN aims to meet the need in the region to improve the quality of initial teacher training and in-service teachers to enable them to provide relevant education for the twenty-first century.