Celebrated scientist and television personality Lord Robert Winston has warned that Britain “fails to value” its primary teachers.

He told the TES at the Bett conference in London that more needs to be done to invest in children early in their experience of the education system.

“[Young children’s] brains are plastic,” Lord Winston said. “They are losing and gaining synapses all the time.

“There is a failure in this country to value primary teachers. As a country we don’t realise how important they are.

“And I think that one of the problems is that you have these great teachers but they are very unlikely to have a degree or an A-level in science.”

Lord Winston went on to suggest that the academic and education sectors were “underestimating the power” of advances in neuroscience.

“The combination of FMRI imaging and psychological experiments could prove to be very powerful,” he said.

Lord Winston has recently invested in the Dream Learners website.

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