Whenever I ask people about what they remember most from school, it’s never the textbook, the curriculum, the whiteboard or the worksheets. It’s always a teacher who stands out. There will always be a Mr Jones or a Miss Smith, whose passion for a subject and their ability to bring it vividly alive have stayed with their pupils, long after both have gone their separate ways.

I’m no different. I was lucky enough to go to a school where there were many memorable and committed teachers - but there was only one Mr Butler. He made the syllabus for British government, economics and commerce interesting and enjoyable.

He was happy to argue the points, told me to read the works of the great economist J.K. Galbraith, and sparked in me a love for a subject that I then followed into university - and that, I suppose, eventually brought me to Parliament.

Today is Thank a Teacher Day. Out of all the anniversaries and special calendar days that seem to grow in number every year, this is one that stands out.

Without our great teachers, there would be no great schools. Without our great teachers, there would be few of those thunderclap moments of revelation or inspiration that capture a child’s imagination and send it spinning into an entirely new orbit. 

We all need to be thankful for our teachers, wherever we went to school and whatever subjects we liked best when we were there.

I now have the privilege of being education secretary. It’s the job I always wanted since I first became a politician. It means I now have even more teachers to be thankful for - some 457,000, in fact.

‘Tackling workload is top of my list’

Since January, I’ve had a chance to say thank you in person to quite a few of you, as I spend as much of my time as I can visiting schools and seeing for myself how you continue to work magic in your classrooms.

As you are reading this in Tes, the chances are that you, too, are a teacher or thinking about training to become one. I’d like to say thank you for choosing this profession. We need you and value your dedication, professionalism and passion.

Thank you for your incredible hard work - day in, day out - in classrooms across the country. Thank you for bringing education to life and inspiring the next generation. Thank you for unlocking every child’s unique talents and helping them grow into happy, confident adults.

Because of your efforts, we have 1.9 million more children in “good” or “outstanding” schools, more than 150,000 more primary school children on track to read fluently and hundreds of thousands more disadvantaged pupils reaching the same standards as their more affluent classmates. These are wonderful statistics that should fill you with real pride.

But I know that behind each of those hard-won figures there is a teacher who went that extra mile with a pupil who was struggling or who routinely gave up their time to run out-of-school clubs. You will have done all of this without the expectation of praise or recognition. I look forward to recognising all of your efforts and achievements at tonight’s Tes schools  awards, as well as celebrating the award winners.

I have made championing this profession my No 1 priority at the Department for Education. Top of my list is to make sure that your workload is manageable and that you spend time doing what you came into the profession to do: teach, not get bogged down with admin or other chores. 

Second on my list is to make sure that everybody in this country wakes up to the fact that what you do is sometimes a thankless task and that we all owe you an enormous debt of gratitude. Thank you.

Damian Hinds is the secretary of state for education