The Oslo Summit on Education for Development aims to mobilize strong political commitment to achieve the Education 2030 targets that are proposed as part of the sustainable development agenda. It will explore four areas: education financing, girls’ education, education in emergencies, and quality of education. This background paper addresses the last of these areas – quality education. While improving quality is a complex endeavour and requires a broad range of interventions which pre-supposes sufficient financing and solid general education policies, this paper focuses primarily on teachers and effective teaching as key to achieving relevant learning outcomes. Ensuring that qualified, professionally trained, motivated, and well‐supported teachers are available for all learners is essential for addressing today’s key education challenges in poor and rich countries alike. The quality of an education system can exceed neither the quality of its teachers nor the quality of its teaching.