GTC builds connections at Education Show

last updated:12 Mar 2010

The vibrancy, diversity and innovation evident at this year’s Education Show (4-6 March 2010, NEC Birmingham) reflected just how far teaching and resources have come since its inception 20 years ago.

Aptly situated right at the heart of the show, the GTC’s stand attracted interest from delegates ranging from trainee teachers to head teachers and from local authority officials to training providers.

Why the Education Show?
As well as being the UK’s largest showcase of innovative educational resources, the primary audience focus for the Education Show is classroom practitioners.

'The vast majority of the 15,000 people who visit the Education Show are looking for inspiration to improve classroom practice, which makes it a key event for the GTC,' says GTC Chief Executive Keith Bartley. 'It gives us the perfect opportunity to showcase the full range of ways in which the GTC supports teachers in aspiring to the highest professional standards.'
 
Face-to-face contact with all of the GTC’s 560,000 registrants throughout the course of the year is impossible, so the Education Show also provides valuable time for one-to-one advice and help with individual queries and issues.

Broadening interest
Maintaining and providing access to its register of qualified teachers is central to the GTC’s mission and there were plenty of registration related queries from trainees, newly qualified teachers, qualified teachers, training providers and even career changers.

But with greater awareness of the registration process within the profession, we dealt with a wider range of queries at this year’s show.

'One of our aims was to give visibility to other, perhaps lesser known, areas of our work such as policy advice, research, teacher support networks and the Teacher Learning Academy,' says GTC head of Marketing and Public Relations, Leah McTaggart.  'We wanted teachers to see for themselves that we are here to support best practice in the widest and most pragmatic sense.'

Spotlighting resources
The stand heightened the profile of the Teacher Learning Academy, for example, which is gathering momentum as a highly effective way of supporting personal development through practice-based professional learning and research.

'The show also gave our staff the opportunity to demonstrate how our registration database (Employer Access) is a tremendously powerful resource for supporting recruitment, instantly accessing records and providing a vital public safeguard,' says Leah.