Teacher in 387: Plato founds the Academy

It is also the largest profession in the world: UNESCO counts roughly 94 million teachers across all levels of schooling, and estimates that 44 million more will be needed by 2030 just to reach universal basic education. The route in varies — Finland demands a research master's degree, England a degree plus Qualified Teacher Status, Korea a brutally competitive state employment exam — but nearly everywhere the pattern is the same: a degree, supervised classroom practice, and a state license.

This page follows the job from the scribal schools of Sumer through Comenius's first picture textbook, the Prussian compulsory-schooling decree and the normal schools that made teaching a trained profession, to Montessori, Freire and today's AI tutoring tools. It covers how people actually become teachers in different countries, what the craft consists of hour by hour, who reached the top of the profession and how, what teachers earn from Luxembourg to India, and how much of the work automation can realistically absorb.

What qualifications do you need to become a teacher? In almost every country, teaching in a state school requires a university degree, a period of supervised classroom practice, and a government license or registration. The packaging differs: a four-year Bachelor of Education, a subject degree plus a training year like England's PGCE, or a master's degree as in Finland. Private and international schools sometimes hire without local licensure, but the degree requirement is nearly universal.