World Teachers’ Day

In the UK, this tends to take the form of a hashtag being shared on social media and some people sharing some nice messages thanking former teachers. There is a place for that: the day does offer an opportunity to celebrate teaching worldwide, to take stock of achievements and praise those working in the teaching profession. It’s all very nice, but the whole concept was founded around something far deeper than some thank you messages and the like.

Every year since 1994, UNESCO have organised World Teachers’ Day to celebrate the anniversary of the ‘Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers’. This recommendation was adopted internationally on October 5^th 1966 and recognised the central role of teachers in education while stating education as a fundamental human right.

In recent years, World Teachers’ Day has been themed around specific subjects. In 2018, the theme was ‘The right to education means the right to a qualified teacher’. This was quite a big topic for the UK where in the year prior to this more than 600,000 pupils were taught by unqualified teachers and the number of unqualified teachers rose by 60%. This was pretty startling given that way back in 1966 UNESCO had succeeded in having it recognised internationally that all pupils had a right to be taught by qualified teachers. This year, the theme is again a poignant one for the UK as well as it is internationally, ‘Young Teachers: The future of the Profession’.

A focus on young teachers is important at a time where more than a quarter of teachers with just two to five years’ experience stated they intend to leave the profession in the next five years. Even 15% of teachers with less than two years’ experience expressed their intention to leave the education sector when asked during ‘the State of Education’ survey by the NEU. That’s more than one in every ten teachers who have likely only just finished their training and NQT year already feeling like they’ve had enough of teaching. A staggering 77% of teachers with less than five years’ experience stated that workload was the reason they would consider leaving the profession. Perhaps what is most notable in this is that this percentage is significantly lower for teachers who have been in the profession for longer than five years. What does this mean for this year’s World Teachers’ Day focus on ‘Young Teachers: The future of the Profession’? It means that this is the time to reach out to those young teachers. Now is the time to offer support, to advise, to nurture and to show them why teaching is such an important and worthwhile career choice.

There is nothing wrong with sharing some praise for all educators on social media and I hope that the #WorldTeacherDay and ‘ThankATeacher trends are as successful as ever, but this World Teachers’ Day, I urge everyone to try to go that extra mile. Reach out and ask other staff how they are managing, ask if there’s any way in which you can support or help them. If you are a young teacher or new to the profession yourself, ask for that help and support – it is out there. Please keep teaching, you’re doing something amazing, and you are changing the world every day.

Lee Peckover is a proofreading manager at Classroom Secrets. Alongside his work at Classroom Secrets, Lee is an Early Years researcher and is currently completing a part-time master’s degree. Lee has a BA in English Literature and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Early Years and Primary Education (Level 7). He lives in Bradford with his wife Zoe and his seizure assistance dog Albie.