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.