Covid has at last opened people’s eyes to two inescapable facts. First, teaching is a challenging and highly skilled job (it turns out that it is not as simple as “anyone can do it”); and second, when there aren’t enough teachers, the whole of the rest of society feels it.
Of course, neither of these will come as news to anyone already in education. But that’s not the point. Rather, as millions of people have come unprecedentedly up close and personal with education in the last two years, these realisations have the potential to be game-changers for how teaching is perceived by society more broadly.
The widespread interest and involvement in education during the pandemic presents us with the opportunity to sell a new vision for teaching in the 21st century to the non-teaching public and create a fresh new image for our profession.
And with applications to initial teacher training still heading in the wrong direction despite the Covid bounce (SecEd, 2021), this is more needed than ever. Because as a society we continue to undervalue the teaching profession, and as a result many potentially excellent teachers are put off from even considering becoming a teacher.
