Qualified and trained teachers
What you should know about this indicator
- Not all teachers have the same level of academic preparation in the subjects they teach. This indicator measures the percentage of teachers at each education level who have at least the minimum academic qualifications required for teaching their subjects at that level in their country.
- It captures the share of teachers who are academically qualified, expressed as a percentage of all teachers at that level. For example, if there are 1,000 secondary teachers and 900 have the required academic qualifications, the indicator shows 90%.
- The "minimum academic qualifications" refers to whatever subject-matter credentials each country requires - university degrees in relevant fields, subject-specific certifications, or other requirements that demonstrate mastery of the content being taught. This focuses on subject knowledge rather than pedagogical training (how to teach).
- Values below 100% suggest some teachers are teaching subjects without the academic qualifications their own country deems necessary. However, cross-country comparisons should be made with caution since requirements vary significantly between nations.
- The data comes from administrative records collected at schools and other organized learning centers, typically including information on teacher academic credentials and employment status.
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Share of qualified teachers in pre-primary education”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2023) - “Global Education”. Data adapted from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260402-174958/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.html [online resource] (archived on April 2, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in DataFull citation
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of qualified teachers in pre-primary education” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved April 10, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260402-174958/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.html (archived on April 2, 2026).Download
Quick download
Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&level=primary&teacher_type=qualifiedMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&level=primary&teacher_type=qualifiedExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&level=primary&teacher_type=qualified")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&level=primary&teacher_type=qualified", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&level=primary&teacher_type=qualified").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&level=primary&teacher_type=qualified")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&level=primary&teacher_type=qualified")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/qualified-and-trained-teachers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false&level=primary&teacher_type=qualified", encoding("utf-8") clear