Teaching standards could help to give impetus to reform, but only if all stakeholders in the system - universities, administrators, supervisors, principals and above all teachers - are accountable for putting them into practice. There is also a strong perception that the teacher recruitment process is neither fair nor well designed to identify those candidates with the requisite qualities to become a good teacher. Costa Rica has already taken steps to address these challenges in the last five years, these need to be accelerated if the country is to ensure that all students are taught by a teacher that is qualified to teach. Unlike many OECD countries, most of the largely private universities providing teaching programmes in Costa Rica do not have a selective admission process, and the number of places available in initial teacher education programmes is not based on a projection of teaching needs.