The first ever winner of the $1 million Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize is set to be revealed at an award ceremony to take place in Dubai, UAE.

It will be a part of the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) 2015 on March 15 at Atlantis The Palm.

Widely referred to as the Nobel Prize for teaching, it will be given to one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession.

The winner will be presented the prize by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and Sunny Varkey, founder of the Varkey Foundation, in front of dignitaries, education ministers, international education experts and global business leaders.

Besides celebrating the teaching profession, GESF 2015, which supports the UN Global Education First Initiative, will focus on finding real solutions to help solve the current global education crisis, said a statement.

Despite the UN Millennium Development Goal to achieve universal primary education by this year, 58 million children worldwide still do not attend primary school.

According to Unesco, of the 650 million primary school-age children in school, 250 million are not learning the basics.

In low-income countries, one in three children are unable to read after five or six years in school. At current rates of progress, Unesco estimates, it will take until 2072 to eradicate youth illiteracy.   

Vikas Pota, chief executive officer of the Varkey Foundation, and convener of the GESF, said: “We know that global education needs real solutions now. At GESF 2015 we will focus on practical, scalable ways to achieve them. Governments, companies and NGOs all have a stake in tackling the global education crisis.

“Their efforts are urgently needed to plug the annual funding gap of $26 billion needed to achieve basic education for all children in low-income countries. But their efforts to date have not met the scale of the challenge.

“This is why GESF represents a coalition of organizations and partners committed to solving the current crisis. These conversations may only be beginning but time is running out for a generation that could, with a good education, contribute so much.”

GESF 2015 will bring together over 1,200 delegates including 25 education ministers, 15 former heads of state, social activists, business leaders, education entrepreneurs and NGO heads, to find innovative solutions that are practical and scalable in delivering a high quality education for all, he added. - TradeArabia News Service