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The award is the brainchild of the Education Charity, the Varkey Foundation based in Dubai, and is being supported by educationalists and policy makers from around the world.

Former US President, Bill Clinton, is the honorary Chair of the Varkey Foundation.

The Global Teacher prize is aiming to raise the profile and status of teachers around the world.

The Award will be announced at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai – the world’s leading assembly of prominent figures from the public, private, and social sectors addressing ways to deliver on the promise of education, employment, and equity for all.

The Global Teacher Prize is to be an annual event from 2015 onwards – a sign of the Varkey Foundation’s commitment to raising the standards of education around the world.

Entrants from all over the developing and developed world have been whittled down to just Ten Finalists – one from Afghanistan, three from the United States, one from Haiti, one from India, one from Cambodia, one from the UK, one from Kenya, and one who has founded schools throughout South East Asia.

NOTES TO PRODUCERS.
The following VNR features footage shot on location in all of the countries listed above, as well as interviews with all 10 Finalists.

There is also an interview with the Founder and Trustee of the Varkey Foundation, Sunny Varkey.

The VNR includes shots of the Bazaar in Kabul, shantytowns in Haiti, villages in Kenya and Cambodia, as well as all the Finalists teaching in class.

There is 3 minutes of extra footage of all Finalists including interviews with students, parents, and fellow teachers, as well as extra color shots and extended clips with the Finalists themselves.

Dropbox link for 10 x 3 minute packages

Vimeo link for 10 x 3 minute packages

The result plus interview with the winner and further background footage will be released on a separate VNR on Sunday the 15th feed within hours of the announcement.

For more information go to www.globalteacherprize.org/

For download information on the longer (3min approx.) videos on each candidate, please see below
Dropbox link for this year’s GESF 2015 videos:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nhwmnvmkdp4mme7/AAClwbkTLO-jrIvLlBoXixh3a?dl=0

Login details to add videos and sub folders:
Harsha.sharma@gemseducation.com
gem$boxcontent (password)

Vimeo PRO (20GB/week) login details:

www.vimeo.com
harshasharma.mail@gmail.com
GESF2015 (password)

THE TEN FINALISTS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE.

Azizullah Royesh (Afghanistan) Kabul.
School: Marefat High School.
Forced to leave formal education at the age of ten, Aziz has nevertheless devoted his life to education. He has faced and continues to face enormous danger as a result of his determination to offer Afghan boys and girls a liberal education. School numbers have grown from an initial thirty-seven students in Kabul to more than four thousand – forty-four per cent of whom are girls. Islamic extremists have attempted to storm the school and have called for his execution. But he and his students continue to turn up each day undaunted.

Guy Etienne (Haiti). Port au Prince.
School: College Catts Pressoir.
Working in one of the poorest countries on earth, he has had to improvise to teach science under arduous conditions. He believes that the key to teaching students in countries like Haiti is to ensure that everything they learn has a practical use in their daily lives. It is the country’s best hope of a brighter future.

Jacque Kahura (Kenya). Kilifi.
School: Bofa Primary School.
Working in a region which has been split by horrific religious and ethnic violence, she has been instilling into students that we can control what comes out of our mouths; we can control our actions, and we can control our emotions. She has been making them think about the way they treat others, and reaching out to young girls in particular, distributing sanitary towels to remote villages to try to encourage wider debate about the role of women.

Kiran Bir Sethi (India). Ahmedabad.
School: The Riverside School.
Kiran has founded her own internationally acclaimed school where making children care for each other and care for the world is the primary focus rather than concentrating on making students the fastest, strongest, and smartest. She believes that if children do good, they will also do well.

Madenjit Singh (Cambodia, East Timor)
School: Science of Life Studies in various locations in South East Asia.
Madenjit has developed a revolutionary teaching program which gives poor students in Asia the chance to learn English at an astonishing speed. He says anyone can learn the language in three to six months, studying for just one hour a day. He believes nothing is more potent in helping lift children out of poverty. Once they can speak English, a world of new opportunity opens up to them. They are able to find jobs with real prospects.

Nancie Atwell (USA). Southport in Massachusetts, USA
School: Centre for Teaching and Learning.
Forty years a teacher, she has developed a whole new system for engaging children with writing and reading which has been taken up by hundreds of teachers around the world. She runs workshops where the children themselves decide what they will read and write. She has an unrivalled reputation for instilling literacy and a life-long love of literature in all her students.

Naomi Volain (USA). Springfield in Maine. USA
School: Springfield Central High.
Curiosity, fun and, rigor characterize her classes. Her teaching of science is completely hands-on. Her inner city students spend many classes outside learning about the natural world in a way they might never experience. She also has close links with NASA, who regularly allow her to borrow genuine moon rocks to use in her class.
(N.B. In the footage featuring Naomi, there are shots of students looking at small dark pebble-like structures under glass. These are moon rocks)

Phalla Neang (Cambodia).Phnom Penh.
School: Phnom Penh Thmey.
Following the brutal genocide by the Khmer Rouge, which killed up to four and half million people, Phalla became the first person to set up a school for blind children in Cambodia. Her school now also houses deaf students as well. It has transformed the lives of thousands of children who would otherwise have had no access to any type of education. She was also integral in translating the Khmer language into braille.

Richard Spencer (UK). Billingham.
School: Middlesbrough College.
The winner of numerous teaching awards, he has developed his own unique style of teaching biology. His students learn biology poems, sing biology songs, and dance the biology dance. They tour the school as a nephron or as a digestive system, bringing science to glorious life. As he himself says; “Lessons don’t have to be all singing and dancing, but why not once in a while.

Stephen Ritz (USA). The Bronx.
School: Public School 55.
Teaching in the poorest Congressional District in America where 37% of people are so-called food insecure, he has transformed attitudes by teaching children all about growing their own food. A continuing experiment, which is working and ‘bearing fruit.’ He believes that by teaching children about nature, they learn to nurture. They gain confidence and self-belief.
All footage has been shot on behalf of the Varkey Foundation and is cleared for unlimited use in all territories.

Shows: 
00:00 Azizullah Royesh from Kabul in Afganistan. He teaches at Marefat High School.
Shot of local market

00:02 Exterior shot of school

00:04 Aziz teaching class

00:19 Shots of students in Kabul

00:23 Interview with Azizullah Royesh
‘In my view, you cannot change the mindset and the overall cultural vision of the community unless you provide education for the girls because the boys or the male focus of the community, they just can’t follow the footprints of their fathers but these are the girls that they can bring a change in the mindset of the community.’

00:45 Guy Etienne from Port au Prince in Haiti. He teaches at College Catts Pressoir.
Shots of Etienne entering his class and teaching students

01:00 Shots of Port au Prince

01:05 Exterior of school

01:10 Interview with Guy Etienne
‘I am always happy to transform my students like change makers for the community because I still believe that education, it’s the only way that we can use to develop a country.’

01:30 Jacque Kahura from Kilifi in Kenya. She teaches at the Bofa Primary School.
Shots of Jacque teaching her students

01:44 Jacqui talking to local villagers
‘Standard of education is good but it is not good enough’

01:49 Jacque and her team handing of books, pencils etc to villagers

01:59 Interview with Jacque
‘My passion about teaching, my passion about development, my passion about getting people out of poverty and more importantly, getting the children to school, remaining in school and completing school is what really drives me.’

02:15 Kiran Bir Sethi from Ahmedabad in India. She teaches at The Riverside School.
Shots of the local area and markets

02:19 Shots of Kiran teaching and talking to her students

02:42 Interview with Kiran
‘Every today we are recommitting to the idea of education, that our children will find their passion and along side, develop a deep compassion to what they can be as a presence in this world and add surplus to the world, a surplus of kindness, a surplus of compassion, a surplus of talent, a surplus of skill.’

03:00 Madenjit Singh, who teaches in Cambodia and East Timor. His school is the Science of Life Studies in various locations in South East Asia.

03:02 Shots of students and various classroom locations

03:18 Madenjit Singh talking to students
‘For anybody to learn English, if you have a high IQ, you will figure that out. But what if you don’t have a high IQ, you wont be able to figure it out. So what we are doing is we are helping you understand all of this.’

03:29 Interview with Madenjit Singh
‘Within 3 to 6 months you can get almost anybody to be able to learn this language, 1 hour a day.’

03:35 Madenjit teaching his students

03:45 Nancie Atwell from Southport in Maine, USA. She teaches at the Centre for Teaching and Learning.
GV’s of township, kids playing in the snow

03:50 Nancie teaching her students

04:01 Sound up of student reading ‘I will stay here.’

04:04 More shots of classroom

04:09 Exterior sign of the school

04:12 Students boarding a bus

04:16 Interview with Nancie
‘You know, it really is fascinating, it’s kind of authoring an heir when you figure something out that will move this kid from where he is to the next stage in his development as a writer and reader, I love it!’

04:30 Naomi Volaine from Springfield in Massachusetts, USA. She teaches at Springfield Central High.
Exterior shots of the school

04:33 Shots of the classroom and students

04:57 Interview with Naomi
‘I think environmental education has to be supported worldwide, at any level, in any country or village or city, students need to learn about the earth because without it, there’s nothing, nothing at all.’

05:15 Neang Phalla from Phnom Penh in Cambodia. She teaches at Phnom Penh Thmey.
Shots of street in Phnom Penh

05:19 Phalla and students in class

05:45 Interview with Phalla – audio track 1 in Cambodian, track 2 is English translation
‘No one had Cambodian children, especially visually impaired children so I wanted to do something for them. I think that they have a right to the same education as other children.’

06:00 Richard Spencer from Billingham in the UK. He teaches at Middlesbrough College.
Exterior of the school

06:04 Shots of Richard teaching in his classroom

06:08 Richard teaching his class biology using music

06:28 Interview with Richard
‘To see students develop over 2 years, to come in as quite young 16 year olds with not always a lot of confidence but to see them develop and develop a love of biology over 2 years, it’s just fantastic and there is no other job like it.’

06:45 Stephen Ritz from The Bronx in New York. He teaches at Public School 55.
Bronx gv’s

06:49 Stephen teaching class, learning to grow food from seeds

07:01 Shots of the different vegetables growing in the classroom

07:09 Stephen and students eating lunch, made from what they have grown.

07:12 Interview with Stephen
‘We have children here who have never seen what real food is and we also have kids here who have emigrated from other countries in search of food so people are constantly hungry and to think that food is the entry point for public education, for reading, writing, for literacy, for maths, for aspiration and inspiration is incredible.’

07:30 Interview with Mr. Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation.
‘Teachers play a very, very important role in educating a child. Without good education you knowthe world can be in turmoil and that’s what you see in today’s world. I mean, education is the solution to every conflict, peace in the world, and the inequality that you find in the different genders, the rich and the poor divide.’

07:55 ‘I think the fact that all these very, very important people have acknowledged what we are doing is simply because they value the role of the teacher in the school and I think it is so important that we rally behind the teachers because they are the only people who can make a difference in the world.’

08:14 ‘We had 5,000 nominations, we had 1,300 odd applicants, and we had a response from almost 130 countries. It is a phenominal thing for the first year of this award and so going forward I am sure we will do better and better and improve upon what we have done so far.’

08:35 ‘How do you get good students to take teaching as a profession, this is very, very important and only way we can do that is by trying to raise the respect, the reward and the celebration of the teacher and so by doing this global teacher prize we are hoping that good students would be inspired to take up teaching as a profession.’

09:03 Shots of Mr. Varkey visiting a classroom at Gem’s Wellington School in Dubai.

09:27 Exterior shot of the Atlantis Palm Hotel in Dubai, the venue for the 2015 Global Education and Skills Forum, where the winner of the global teacher prize will be announced this Sunday the 15th March.

09:33 Interior shot of setting up for the conference

09:49 ENDS