UAE education foundation launches USD 1 mn best teacher award

A UAE-based Indian education foundation has announced a massive one million award for world's greatest teacher and the hunt for the same will commence next year.
Varkey GEMS Foundation (VGF), the philanthropic arm of GEMS Education, will select the best educator from candidates nominated by individual nations around the world and judged by an international jury committee.
The process will be audited by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a multinational professional services firm headquartered in London.
The details of the award will be released in 90 days and nominations will formally open at the Global Education and Skills Forum in March, 2014, a statement released here said.

Sunny Varkey, the founder and the chairperson of VGF, said the award is aimed at promoting teachers as stars and highlight the enormous impact they have on people.
"Our goal for this award is to emulate the Nobel Prizes, but in the field of education. We will endeavour to find the greatest teacher in the world starting in March 2014, at the Global Education and Skills Forum which will be held in Dubai, chaired by former US President Bill Clinton," founder of the Varkey GEMS Foundation, Sunny Varkey, said.
"We will invite all countries of the world to participate in the prize through national nominations, and citizens of each nation will be encouraged to root for their candidates and their most illustrious teachers to create an atmosphere of global excitement about the selection of the greatest teacher.

"All that will help us achieve our goal of raising and improving the status of teachers around the world," he said.