I recently spoke at a researchED event attended by several hundred, ordinary, working teachers who cared enough about being good at their job to spend their day off with others, all equally determined to be good at what they do.

Some had travelled hundreds of miles. More than 100 were on the waiting list. I’ve done researchED before and will do it again because it’s a genuine grassroots movement, driven by impeccably professional motives. These teachers are acutely aware that the work they do matters. They think if there’s research out there that could help them do it better, then they should know about it. They don’t care much about where it comes from, or who might be grinding the axe, as long as it works. Which is where I come in.

Contrast that with the cutting-edge publicity given this week to the Global Teacher Prize. A million-dollar golden ticket being offered for the fourth year running by the international not-for-profit organisation, the Varkey Foundation, its self-proclaimed mission is to ensure “that every child should have a good teacher”. 

I cannot think of a better way to alienate all those good, great and entirely professional teachers already working in schools, not just in the UK, but around the world, than to reduce what they all do, every working day, to the level of a Willy Wonka-style lottery.

The prize is awarded by the prominent Global Teacher Prize Academy, made up of headteachers, educational experts, commentators, journalists, public officials, tech entrepreneurs, company directors and scientists from around the world. Trawl through the list of names that comprise this academy (there are 207 of them), and you will find precisely one who appears to be a headteacher, perhaps, and another five who appear to have had some teaching experience in the past. The rest is an international smorgasbord of professionals from a wide range of sectors.

They all appear to share that all-too-common, contemporary weakness: a desire to vent their social conscience on schools, children, and the teaching profession. Interestingly, the only clear common thread I could find reading through all 207 bios was just how often the word “digital” crops up in connection with their business or career.

Look at the judging criteria, and that social conscience slaps you in the face. “Achieving demonstrable student learning outcomes in the classroom” has to compete with less obvious criteria, such as “Achievements in the community beyond the classroom”, “Helping children become global citizens” or “Encouraging teachers to stay in the profession”. 

I’ve little doubt that the prize’s many supporters are genuine in their desire to raise the status of the teaching profession. Where I differ from them is, like all the teachers I met a researchED, we understand what teachers actually do. All the emotional, fluffy unicorn, heartwarming stories the organisers and supporters no doubt regarded as indicators of success are in fact pretty repugnant, long-past-their-sell-by-date red herrings. Teaching isn’t about making yourself feel good.

‘The job isn’t about filling empty vessels’

Several times every day, in every single school, in every corner of that globe thet global citizens are so fond of reminding us we all live on, children walk into a classroom; then they walk out of it again knowing more than they did when the door was opened for them. That’s the job. The quicker and more deeply it sticks, the better. Quite often, you have to repeat it. Sometimes, in spite of every trick and strategy you use, and for reasons you have no control over whatsoever, it doesn’t stick. Knowing when to accept that is part of the job, too.

The job isn’t about moving children one or more rungs up the social ladder. It isn’t about filling empty vessels, lighting fires or…pick a substandard metaphor of your choice.

What you do as a teacher might, one day, lead to these things. You may well be instrumental in getting a child onto a university course. That’s bread and butter to hundreds of thousands of secondary schoolteachers. You may well be a primary teacher who sows a seed in a child’s mind that doesn’t take root until they have long since left your classroom. But these are complete distractions. These things are not what you’re paid to do because you’re neither a Victorian governess nor a private tutor. You’re a schoolteacher and that means every day you face classrooms full of children, all too roughly at a similar stage in their academic development.

Whether you want to use the word crisis or not, the UK faces well-publicised difficulties, both in recruiting trainees and retaining teachers. Most teachers in the UK, and indeed around the world, doing their job well will have taken one look at the Global Teacher Prize, and had the same, slightly bemused reaction. They will find the idea of comparing their performance to those colleagues they know and respect, because they too are doing all they can to teach effectively and to a high standard, slightly repellent.

The idea that what they all do - hour after hour, in the necessarily isolated and self-contained space of their classrooms, the unique lessons they deliver to uniquely gifted or struggling children - is in any way comparable will strike them as profoundly flawed. They will also know what a lottery is.

I’m completely in accord with the Varkey Foundation’s mission, to ensure that every child should have a good teacher. I just don’t think offering a million-dollar prize is an effective way to either keep hundreds of thousands of good teachers in post or encourage others with the potential to join them. 

Joe Nutt is an educational consultant and author. To read more of his columns, view his back catalogue

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