World Teachers' Day 2023: Date, History, Theme, Significance And All You Need To Know

World Teachers’ Day is celebrated annually on October 5 to honour all teachers around the world.

The theme for World Teachers' Day 2023 is "The Teachers We Need For The Education We Want: The Global Imperative To Reverse The Teacher Shortage."

With this theme, the 2023 celebrations will aim to put the importance of stopping the decline in the number of teachers and then starting to increase that number at the top of the global agenda. 

UNESCO proclaimed October 5 to be World Teachers’ Day in 1994, celebrating the great step made for teachers on 5 October 1966, when a special intergovernmental conference convened by UNESCO in Paris adopted the UNESCO/ILO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, in cooperation with the ILO.

As per UNESCO, this recommendation sets forth the rights and responsibilities of teachers as well as international standards for their initial preparation and further education, recruitment, employment, teaching and learning conditions. Since its adoption, the Recommendation has been considered an important set of guidelines to promote teachers’ status in the interest of quality education.

October 5 also celebrates the adoption by the UNESCO General Conference in 1997 of the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel.

UNESCO says that it is a day to celebrate how teachers are transforming education but also to reflect on the support they need to fully deploy their talent and vocation and to rethink the way ahead for the profession globally.