What makes the International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP), taking place today and tomorrow, so remarkable is that it is just about the only event where teaching union leaders and education ministers sit down together as equals to learn from each other and agree practical policies that will improve the professional lives of teachers.

The summit - organised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Education International (EI), together with the host country - takes place this year in Lisbon, Portugal. For the last two years the original host country, the US, has refused to attend - in what looks like an attempt by the Trump presidency to eliminate another of the Obama administration’s achievements.

It is an attempt which has patently failed. Eighteen countries are present and correct, including the UK, Canada, Germany, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Finland.

Past ISTP events have focused teacher policy agreements between unions. Governments have mainly concentrated on teacher learning and professional development. For example, the Scottish government agreed in 2015 to collaborate and develop an outcome agreement on improving attainment. In 2014, Sweden set up a national council on professional development and a career registry with its teacher unions. At a previous summit, the US agreed to establish a stakeholder meeting to expand teacher leadership opportunities.

While these are concrete achievements, unions say what they most value is the opportunity to have an informal dialogue with ministers face-to-face.

Teaching debates

This year’s ISTP themes are different. The first, “schools at the centre of their communities” is certainly broader than previous years. It’s an ambitious attempt to identify the conditions which enable schools to be confident enough to be outward facing and establish positive symbiotic relationships with their local communities. It will address how spiralling declines in teacher recruitment and morale in schools in the toughest areas can be tackled. The bugbears of public education systems-choice and competition, unfair funding and admissions systems and privatisation will no doubt hover over the debates.

The second plenary on “pedagogies for the future” again steps out in a new direction. Refreshingly there is a consensus between the OECD and unions that teachers are core to the future of pedagogy - not massive online courses (MOOCs) designed to replace teachers. The big issues for discussion will be how teachers can innovate and make mistakes without being punished by punitive evaluation systems.

The final debate at the Summit will be on teacher wellbeing. Despite a mass of evidence from teacher union surveys over the years, teacher wellbeing has rarely been on government agendas. Perhaps surprisingly, for the first time, a summit is focusing on this issue.

Global survey

Working with EI, the OECD is proposing to set up a global survey on teacher stress, wellbeing and its links to student achievement. There is a sense among a growing minority of governments, including the UK remarkably, that this is an issue that must be grasped.

The danger with all international conferences, summits and conventions is that they end up being here today and gone tomorrow; just another set of talking shops where networking can take place. In an increasingly dangerous world, where intolerance is undermining pluralism, the fact that teacher unions and government Ministers can still meet and seek to agree how to enhance the confidence and effectiveness of the teaching professions in their countries is a cause for optimism. Perhaps the latest example of why this is so important is Andria Zafirakou’s wonderful achievement in winning the Global Teacher Prize.

Ms Zafirakou’s achievement is about celebrating the diversity of her students and her local community-precisely the core theme of this year’s International Summit on the Teaching Profession.

John Bangs is a special consultant for Education International

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