The global teacher shortage stands at 44 million: that is how many additional primary and secondary teachers the world needs by 2030, according to the Global Report on Teachers published by UNESCO and the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 in 2024. About 15 million of them are needed in sub-Saharan Africa. The shortage has two different engines: in some regions there are more children than the system can staff, and in others teachers are leaving faster than they can be replaced. This article explains the size of the gap, why it happens, the models now trying to close it, and what is still unproven.
In this article
How big the shortage is
Source: UNESCO and International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, Global Report on Teachers: Addressing teacher shortages and transforming the profession (2024).
The 44 million figure is the number of teachers the report estimates must be recruited for every child to have a primary and secondary education by 2030, the target set in Sustainable Development Goal 4. It is a projection, built from enrolment, population and staffing data, so treat it as an order of magnitude with a date attached and check the Teacher Task Force site for updates.
Put next to another UNESCO figure, the scale becomes clearer. The 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report counts 273 million children, adolescents and youth out of school in 2024. Bringing them into classrooms is impossible without adults to teach them. The two problems are the same problem seen from different sides, which is why we treat them together with our article on out-of-school children.
Two different shortages with one name
“Teacher shortage” describes two situations that need different answers. Mixing them up is the most common mistake in writing on this topic.
| Expansion shortage | Attrition shortage | |
|---|---|---|
| What is happening | The number of children is growing, and new teaching posts are needed faster than teachers can be trained | The posts exist, but teachers leave before retirement and too few people enter the profession |
| Where it dominates | Regions with fast population growth, above all sub-Saharan Africa | Many high-income systems; the report attributes most of the need in Europe and North America to teachers leaving |
| What it looks like in a school | Very large classes, teachers without full training, multi-shift days | Vacancies that stay open, subjects taught by non-specialists, heavy use of substitutes |
| What tends to help | Faster and cheaper routes into teaching, with support once in post; funding for salaries | Working conditions, workload, pay, status, and routes back for people who left |
The headline attrition number shows why the second kind is growing. Among primary teachers, the share leaving the profession each year almost doubled between 2015 and 2022.
Global primary teacher attrition rate. Source: UNESCO Global Report on Teachers (2024).
A system that loses 9 in every 100 teachers each year has to recruit at nearly twice its old pace just to stand still. Recruitment campaigns alone cannot outrun that.
Why teachers leave, and why too few arrive
The Global Report on Teachers and the United Nations recommendations that followed it describe a profession whose conditions and status have not kept pace with what is asked of it. The causes they discuss fall into four groups.
Pay and status
Where teaching pays less than other work open to graduates, fewer people choose it and more leave it. Status follows pay, and both shape who applies.
Workload and conditions
Class size, administrative work, and responsibility for needs that schools are not staffed to meet. Many who leave still love teaching itself.
Training and early support
New teachers placed in the hardest posts with little mentoring are the most likely to go. Long, costly training routes also keep capable people out.
Money in the system
The report puts the cost of the new teachers’ salaries at US$120 billion a year by 2030. Where budgets are tight, posts go unfilled even when candidates exist.
It is worth saying plainly: teachers are not the problem here, and neither are schools. People leave a job when its design asks more than one person can give for long. That is a design fault, and design faults can be repaired.
Six models trying to fix it, with their trade-offs
No single approach closes a gap of this size. These are the main families of response you will find in policy documents and in the field. We describe the logic of each and the cost it carries, and we do not rank named programmes, because results depend heavily on context.
| Model | The idea | The trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Shorter, alternative routes into teaching | Let graduates and career changers train on the job instead of through a multi-year degree | Faster supply, but quality depends on the coaching they get after they start |
| 2. Community and para-professional teachers | Recruit local adults, train them for a defined role, and supervise them | Reaches places where qualified teachers will not move; needs a clear path to full status |
| 3. Retention first | Cut workload, improve pay and conditions, mentor new teachers | Often the cheapest teacher is the one who does not leave, yet it needs budget and political will |
| 4. Bringing people back | Flexible and part-time roles for qualified teachers who left | Uses skill that already exists; timetables and contracts have to bend to make it work |
| 5. Sharing teachers through technology | One specialist teaches several sites online, with an adult in each room | Spreads scarce subjects; depends on connectivity and on the in-room adult |
| 6. AI-supported training and coaching | Use AI to review lessons and give feedback so that training and mentoring scale | Promising and new; evidence on learning outcomes is still thin |
On qualifications. Who is allowed to teach, in what kind of institution and with which licence, is set by national or state law, and it differs between public schools, private schools and out-of-school programmes. Do not assume a route that is legal in one place is legal in yours. Ask your ministry or department of education, or the teacher regulation body, before you design a staffing model.
Where AI-supported teacher training fits, and what needs proof
Model 6 attracts the most attention and the least evidence. The argument for it is simple. The slowest and most expensive part of preparing a teacher is skilled feedback on real lessons: someone watching you teach and telling you what to change. There are not enough mentors to give that to millions of new teachers. If AI can carry part of the load, training could become shorter and coaching more frequent.
The argument against it is also simple. Nobody yet knows whether children taught by teachers trained this way learn as well as children taught by conventionally trained teachers. That is an empirical question, and it deserves a trial, not a slogan.
One organisation working on exactly this question is Ranius, run by NIJIN Inc. in Japan. Its own site describes it as “education infrastructure that stands beside school”, made up of teacher training with AI in the loop, a new staffroom where teachers worldwide learn together, and, for children, a career path beyond the diploma. According to the site, Ranius aims to turn the route into teaching from a four-year university course into about two months, through a sequence of apply, train, coach and certify, with AI reviewing lessons and coaching. It reports more than 1,200 teachers trained and about 1,000 lesson recordings made with consent.
What makes it relevant to this article is how it proposes to test the claim. Ranius is preparing a non-inferiority trial, planned to start in the United States in December 2026, comparing teachers without a licence who were trained with AI against licensed teachers supported by human mentors. Its one fixed condition for research partners is that “unfavourable results are published too.”
For researchers and engineers. Ranius is looking for collaborators in teacher education, measurement, child development and AI systems to work on trial design, rubrics and inter-rater reliability, training procedures, and engineering such as transcription and automated scoring. Involvement can be pro bono (2 to 5 hours a week), part-time or full-time. Authorship, data access and publication are agreed at the first meeting.
Read about research collaboration with Ranius · Ranius official site
What a founder or school leader can do now
You cannot hire 44 million teachers. You can decide how the adults in your own organisation are found, prepared and kept.
- Widen the doorLook for people who can earn children’s trust, then check what the law lets them do.
- Train on real lessonsObserve, practise, get feedback. Short cycles beat long lectures.
- Design the weekFlexible and part-time roles keep people who would otherwise leave.
- Measure and say soTrack what children gain, and publish the bad news too.
NIJIN Academy, the alternative school NIJIN runs in Japan, is one place these choices are being made in practice. It opened in September 2023, combines a metaverse campus with 48 physical classrooms across Japan, and offers about 100 live online classes a month. More than 900 children have enrolled since opening (cumulative). A school of that shape cannot be staffed in the conventional way, which is part of why the company works on teacher training as well.
NIJIN is now looking for people to start an academy in their own country. A Country Head is both business head and principal. The plan is to set up a local company and give the Country Head shares in it. As a guide, compensation is 10% of revenue (excluding consumption tax), capped at JPY 50 million once revenue reaches JPY 500 million or more; it is a guide only, decided by the person leading the company as it grows, and no income is guaranteed. Teaching experience is not required. Read the Country Head role, or start with our guide on how to start an education business.
Questions and answers
How many teachers is the world short of?
UNESCO and the Teacher Task Force estimate that 44 million additional primary and secondary teachers are needed by 2030, including about 15 million in sub-Saharan Africa (Global Report on Teachers, 2024).
Is the shortage only a problem for low-income countries?
No. In regions with growing populations the need is for new posts. In many high-income systems the need comes mainly from teachers leaving. The causes differ, so the remedies differ.
Why are teachers leaving?
The report points to pay, workload, working conditions, status and weak support early in a career. Global primary teacher attrition rose from 4.62% in 2015 to 9.06% in 2022.
Can technology replace teachers?
That is not what the serious proposals claim. The models described here use technology to share scarce teachers across sites or to give teachers more feedback and training. Whether AI-supported training produces teaching of equal quality is still being tested. For one way live online teaching is organised around teachers, see how to start an online school.
Can someone teach without a licence?
It depends on the country, the state and the type of institution. Check with your education ministry or teacher regulation body. Do not rely on general articles for this.
How can I take part in research on AI-supported teacher training?
Ranius accepts research collaborators through a form on its site, followed by a 30-minute call with its founder. No CV is required. See the collaboration page linked above.
Work on the shortage from where you stand
Researchers and engineers: collaborate with Ranius. Founders: start a NIJIN Academy in your own country. Either way, we talk first.
ApplyRoles and related reading
- Research collaboration with Ranius
- Out-of-school children: the global numbers, the causes, and what founders can do
- What is a metaverse school?
- How to start an online school that children keep attending
- How to start an education business, from a problem to a first paying family
- School refusal: what Japan’s futoko teaches school founders
Sources:
- https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/global-report-teachers-addressing-teacher-shortages-and-transforming-profession
- https://teachertaskforce.org/what-we-do/Knowledge-production-and-dissemination/global-report-teachers
- https://www.unesco.org/sdg4education2030/en/articles/un-recommendations-teaching-profession-what-you-need-know
- https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/more-children-out-school-7th-year-row-273-million
- https://ranius.nijin.co.jp/en/
- https://nijin.co.jp/recruit/ranius-research-collaboration-pro-bono/
- https://academy.nijin.co.jp/