By Albert Motivans, head of education indicators and data analysis, UNESCO Institute of Statistics, and Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

This year’s World Teachers’ Day, on October 5, focuses on one of the most urgent global education problems: a huge shortage of professional, well-trained and well-supported teachers.

The scale of the global teacher gap is revealed in new figures released this week by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS). About 58% of countries and territories around the world currently do not have enough teachers in classrooms to achieve universal primary education (UPE) by 2015 – the second Education for All goal and the major education target in the Millennium Developments Goals.

Countries will need an extra 1.6 million teachers to achieve universal primary education by 2015 and 3.3 million by 2030, according to the UIS. The forthcoming 2013/14 Education for All Global…