According to the EFA (Education for All: a branch of UNESCO) Global Monitoring Report: “By 2015, 4 million teachers will be needed in East Asia and the Pacific, and 3.6 million will be needed in south and west Asia.” The goals of the EFA is to expand early childhood care and education, provide free and compulsory primary education for all, promote learning, life skills for young people and adults, increase adult literacy by 50 per cent, achieve gender parity by 2005, gender equality by 2015, and to improve the quality of education by 2015.  However, the recession has reduced the progress.  

"The real question is the impact of the crisis on the poorest countries and on the most marginalised populations. The financial crisis has erupted into a full-fledged economic crisis that threatens to drive between 50 and 90 million people into extreme poverty," Unesco Assistant Director-General for Education reported.

In times of recession younger students are held back from entering school in hopes to save money and older children are withdrawn to help bring income to the family.  Further, child labor increases, which breaks the progress that many of these countries have already achieved.  To top it off, teaching quality has been affected due to “teacher absenteeism, low teacher morale due to poor salaries and working conditions, and the effect of HIV/Aids on teacher mortality rates.” – Bangkok Post

Further Reading

Education for All at risk

EFL Report: http://www.efareport.unesco.org/