2017 Pearson Teaching Award Silver Winners announced 

Silver Plato

Today, Thank a Teacher Day, 56 Pearson Teaching Awards Silver winners will celebrate their success. Selected from thousands of nominations, these outstanding local heroes of education will be presented with their prestigious Silver Pearson Teaching Awards in schools and colleges across England, Ireland and Wales. See the list of winners here. Congratulations to all the Silver winners, and also to those who have been highly commended by the judges.

The Pearson Teaching Awards are an annual celebration of exceptional teachers, created to recognise the life-changing impact an inspirational teacher can have on the lives of the young people they teach.

Silver Award winners will go on to the UK final of the Pearson Teaching Awards, a glittering ceremony held in central London on 22nd October.  There they will find out which of them has won one of just 11 Gold Plato Awards, the UK’s “Oscars for Teachers”.

This ceremony, “Britain’s Classroom Heroes”, will be filmed and broadcast by the BBC as a showcase of excellence in education.  Previous award presenters have included former prime ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair, acting legends Alison Steadman, Sheila Hancock and Timothy West and sports and TV personalities including Helen Glover, Brendan Cole and Nadiya Hussain.

Michael Morpurgo, the award winning children’s novelist and newly appointed President of the Pearson Teaching Awards,  says “Becoming an inspirational teacher is a serious, admirable commitment.  And memorable, outstanding teaching should be celebrated by educators, pupils, parents and throughout society.  With these awards we’re taking the time to recognise the remarkable, often unappreciated efforts of fantastic teachers up and down the country.”

Rod Bristow, President of Pearson UK said: ‘It’s an honour for us to support the Teaching Awards each year. Great teaching can have a huge impact on a child’s education so it’s vital for us to recognise and celebrate inspirational teachers, for their commitment to teaching and learning and for improving the life chances of the next generation.  All those receiving a silver trophy today should feel extremely proud of their achievement and I Iook forward to meeting them at the final ceremony later this year. “

The list of winners will be published at 4pm on Friday 16th June.

Notes to Editors:

The Pearson Teaching Awards is open to every school in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  The awards were established by Lord Puttnam CBE in 1999 and are managed by the Teaching Awards Trust, an independent charity. The Trust’s mission is to celebrate excellence in education.

Pearson is the world’s learning company, with 40,000 employees in more than 80 countries working to help people of all ages to make measurable progress in their lives through learning.  www.pearson.com/uk

Michael Morpurgo is one of Britain’s best-loved writers for children. With a writing career that spans 4 decades, he has written over 100 books, selling more than 5 million copies in the UK and over 35 million worldwide. A former Children’s Laureate, Michael has won countless prizes, including the Smarties prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Whitbread Award, and was awarded an OBE for Services to Literature. Michael was also awarded an MBE in 1999, along with his wife Clare, in recognition of their work in founding Farms For City Children, a charity that has enabled 100,000 children to visit the charity’s 3 farms over the last 40 years.

The award categories are: