Respected, but still overworked and underpaid – we are simply not valuing our teachers highly enough, says Geoff Barton in SecEd

One of the great strengths of British education is the quality of our teachers. That shouldn’t be a surprise in a country which boasts great universities, teacher training, and educational leadership.

But given our national tendency towards gloomy self-deprecation, we sometimes don’t fully appreciate the excellence of our public services.

So, it is refreshing to be given an international perspective in a recently published report by the Varkey Foundation, across 35 countries, asking the public for their views of teachers. Its Global Teacher Status Index ranked the UK 13th overall, and the second highest European country of all those polled, just behind Greece. It also found that UK respondents have a higher opinion of their country’s education system than those in all the other major European economies.

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