Colin Hegarty: Global Teacher Prize finalist!

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Shine-Annual-Dinner-2015-Colin

Our very own Let Teachers SHINE winner, Colin Hegarty, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Global Teacher Prize! Colin has been nominated for his outstanding work in children’s maths education, both inside the classroom, and out of it.

HegartyMaths

After working in the city for finance firm Deloitte, Colin took a dramatic career change by becoming a teacher. Armed with a first class degree in mathematics from Oxford and a great love for learning, Colin excelled at teaching.

With a simple solution for his students’ demand for free maths tuition before taking their GCSEs, Colin began uploading videos online. Children from all over the UK started watching, able to access the videos with one simple Google search, and so HegartyMaths was born.

It was at this point that Colin approached SHINE. He won our Let Teachers SHINE award and received the funding to help build his own website, enabling his videos to reach more children who were in need of maths tuition for their exams but had no way of accessing a paid tutor. Colin has since gone on to win the Pearson Teaching Awards.

The Global Teacher Prize

The Global Teacher Prize, now in its second year, and dubbed the ‘Nobel Prize’ for teaching, is a $1,000,000 award and the largest prize of its kind. The prize was set up to emphasise the important role teachers play in society, and bring recognition to those who are making an outstanding contribution to the profession.

Colin is one of 50 finalists for the 2016 Global Teacher Prize, who have been shortlisted from thousands of nominations and applications from 148 countries around the world. The top 50 finalists represent 29 countries, and are highlighting the importance of teaching through their exceptional work within it. The winner will be announced at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai in March 2016.

To see the BBC news story about the award, you can visit their website here.